Forgotten Runes Volume 2

Forgotten Runes Volume 2 Imredave

Forgotten Runes Volume 2 From September 1, 2010 to August 31 2012

Imredave

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For my 81 loyal followerers

Preface Imredave's Forgotten Runes Blog 2009-2012

Contents City of Mystery

1

Reactions to Essentials edition

2

Notebook Doodle Dungeon One

3

Ruins of Thetra Mage College

4

Ruins of Thetra Mage College: Above Ground Key

5

Death 4e Style

8

Ruins of Thetra Mage College level 1

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Ruins of Thetra Mage College Lower Levels

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Battle maps coming soon

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Stones Battle Map

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Ancient Temple Plaza Map

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The French connection

22

City of the Dragon Lords

23

Cliff Top Battle Map

24

Rural Longhouse Plans

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Old School City Dungeon layout

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Old School City

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On combat systems

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Old School Dungeon Links Page

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Blydron Environs Map

32

Forgotten Runes for the Forgotten Runes

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Wilderness Map River Kingdoms 2

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Happy St. Stephens Day!

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Wilderness Map River Kingdom 1

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Henrich's Fortress

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New Blog Layout

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Mapping the World with Hexes

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Henrich's Barony and the World

48

Hungarian RPG now in English!

50

Montgomery's Tower

51

Plan B

53

Bad Neighbor Mountain

55

Hexes and Villages

59

City of Caen

61

Piasa Bird

63

World of Bad Neighbor Mountain

66

Crimson Blades of Ara Review

70

Dungeon in the Raw

72

Multipurpose Wilderness/Dungeon Planner, DM Reference, and Char Sheet

74

A is atmosphere, F is for flame on, Z for zzzzzz (loud snoring)

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City of the Pyramid

77

Tenochtitlan another City of the Pyramid

80

Spanish Victory for Cortez with help from Friends

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Now thats a Map

83

Curiouser and Curiouser

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Swag from Origins

85

The Grid, the Grid

87

Substistance Farming and the Man

88

Ultima Underworld 2

90

Mega Dungeon Format

91

Zatoichi versus Yojimbo

93

Every man a once and future King

95

Skyrim the RPG?

97

Old school Assassins (Rant but short)

99

Skyrimic Sandbox Roll-up Chart

100

Skyrimic Sandbox Chart revised

102

A gaming session that will live in infamy (rant)

105

Regreting the Passing of M.A.R. Barker

107

H is Halls of Undermountain

108

Doom of future past

110

Diablo III so far

112

Carcosa!?

113

Dungeon Crawl Classics the good, the bad, the funky

115

I go down the well

116

Adventure Burner not so hot

118

Happy 4th of July

120

Classes, Skills,Feats and Powers an analysis

121

The Rulenomicon

124

And now for something completely different

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Menzo"bore"nzan

129

Summer of Kickstarters

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City of Mystery September 05, 2010 I thought this was a map of Kome drawn for our Gardasiyal campaign. She-who-must-be-obeyed says, how can it be an Empire-of-the-Petal-Throne city when it has no obvious temple district. She ought to know she drew it. Now it's yours for what ever

game needs a city.

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Reactions to Essentials edition September 12, 2010 Well I picked up my copies of the Rules compendium and Heroes of the Fallen Land. Although I am still reading my way through them, I thought I would post some quick reactions. I liked the selection of contents for the Rules Compendium I think I actually could carry this book, instead of the Dungeon masters guide and Players guide. However I am not impressed with the 320 pages they used to do it. I guess its back to boiling the rules down to four 8.5x11 inch sheets that will fit in my interchangeable Dungeon Masters screen. She-who-must-be-obeyed pointed out the new format does not lay flat and without the hard cover may get ground to shreds in the backpack. Mr. Minmax pointed out on Thursday that although the new character builds are simpler they have lost a lot of power of the old characters, most egregious is the lack of marks for the fighter. If I wasn't addicted to free mods from Living Forgotten Realms I could go back to pushing for old school play. Oh well, at least the rules fit in my nifty new red box. Addendum: After throwing the Rules Compendium in mt backpack and using it for awhile, it occurred to me that I missed one of the important features in my review. It actually has a DECENT INDEX for a change. It has become my new arbitrator for rules disputes.

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Notebook Doodle Dungeon One September 25, 2010 A dungeon level doodled into my spiral bound science lab book. I particually like the large areana in the center whith the illusionary wall marked with dotted lines on its right side. Athough there are slopes and staircases this is the only level of this dungeon drawn.

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Ruins of Thetra Mage College October 05, 2010 The infamous killer mini dungeon. Outside in the sands. Key Fridayish. Level one next week

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Ruins of Thetra Mage College: Above Ground Key October 09, 2010 As promised here is the key to the map posted earlier this week. I am afraid the mountain lion encounter is what gave this dungeon it's killer reputation. He's a bit more than a first level fighter can handle. The Ruins Above Ground General: The ruins of Thetra lie half a mile east of the village of the same name. The whole area is covered by drifting sand. Taking the road which lead west from the village, the party will round a large sand dune and come upon a ruined wall with a 20’ wide opening in it. The road leads through the opening. 1. 10’ high walls crenelated though many of the merlons are missing with a walkway on top. Generally in a bad state of disrepair 2. Large courtyard paved with flagstones 3. 30’x30’ one story stone building with a pyramidal shaped roof of slates. In each wall there are 3’ 6” tall 6” wide arrow slits. 4. Staircase leading 15’ down to a set of oaken doors studded with iron spikes. The doors are shut and appear to be barred from the inside 5. Ruins of a large tower wall ranges from 10’ to 15’. In the SE corner 10’ up is a 3’ wide 5’ high arched window. The top of the arch is broken off. Next to the window is a staircase going down. The sill

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of the window contains a secret compartment with a large iron key and a small gem 6. The trapdoor will drop a person stepping on it 20’ into a corridor heading N and E 7. Bones of some large reptile, probably a dragon, buried in the sand. Underneath the dragon are the skeleton of a man, some pieces of chainmail and a broken corroded sword carved with strange runes thrust into one of the vertebrae. 8. A great gnarled tree. Around the base of the tree will be found the bones of wild animals. Occasionally a freshly killed animal will be seen hanging in the branches. There is a secret door in the trunk which leads to a ladder going down. 9. In this depression are the burrows of a band of 18 desert foxes. One of the burrows leads to first level. All of the burrows are large enough for a small man to crawl through, and can be enlarged fairly easily. There is a 1 in 10 chance of finding the right tunnel without the foxes help and the 8 adult foxes will attack anyone who tries. Encounters (roll a six sided die) 1. Old man with a sieve sifting sand. Old man is a 9th level MU. He searches for the ring of the netherworld. If the party helps him there is a 1 in 100 chance a party member will find it. 2. A party of 7 men, 2 dwarves, a mule and a camel collecting

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dragon bones. Men are a 4th level mage, a 3rd level Cleric and five second level fighters. Dwarves are 3rd and 6th level fighters. 3. 1-4 foxes. These will run off towards the west (see 9) 4. Mountain lion lurking in the oak (8). He will attack anyone who investigates the oak too closely 5. Large beetle crawling across the flagstones of the courtyard. The beetle is metallic blue with a faint outline of a face on its back. The beetle is a polymorphed 8th level magic user. 6. Nothing

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Death 4e Style October 14, 2010 Well it actually happened! I actually killed a character in 4e, and not some low level but a 15th level wizard. Here's how how it happened: For some weird reason all my friends highest level characters seem to be wizards. So here they are running through one of the new second season Living Forgotten Realms high level modules (to those unfamiliar with LFR it seems after getting their feet wet with softball mods the LFR writers have stepped it up a notch with killer mods) with a party composed of three wizards and a druid/assassin. They are in the last encounter fighting a solo elite with a couple throw-away 100 hit pointers (against the wizards 100 hits will last about a round and a half). Luckily the solo elite has a few trick up his sleeve, like an interrupt that teleports players attacking allies next to him, a recharge on a 4,5,6 6d10 encounter attack, and a +4 vicious weapon that does an extra 4d12 on crits and action points (Trust me an actual 15th level player swordmage is going to have all this and more). So after the wizard attacks one of the 100 pointers, the elite solo whip the wizard out to the center doing a bit of damage, and hits the wizard on his turn with the encounter, at which point the wizard is down to 2 hit points. Being the kind of DM I am and having played 4e long enough to know that most players can come back from 2 hit point to maximum in a single round, what do I do? I action point. What do I roll 20!? Well the wizards not dead until minus -42 so there's still a chance as crits base damage is only 36, but then the extra 4d12 get rolled 1 point, 2 points O.K. so far but

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then a 9 and a 12 for a total of 60 points. Game over! Of course 4e players are not used to death so the player storms out of the room complaining about viscous DMs, Evil adventure writers, and claiming he's selling all his 4e books on e-bay never playing again, before his fellow adventures can explain they have a scroll in their pocket that will bring him fully back, or the druid/assassin can crank out three 100 point crits in a row to bring the elite soldier down. I think I played the encounter as the rules allow and the writer intended, but having angry players always leaves a sour taste in my mouth. So what do you think? Should I play the dice as rolled , or fudge the damage so he is at -41 unconscious but still alive, or not have used the action point in the first place? She-who-must-be-obeyed points out that since a mere 3 points would taken him out the crit would have been far better spent putting 60 points on the druid/assassin and represents a total waste of 57 points, but that's just the way she rolls. P.S. Due to the fact that this is the weekend for Con-on-the-Cob, level 1 of the Ruins of Thetra Mage college may not appear until next Friday.

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Ruins of Thetra Mage College level 1 October 22, 2010 As promised, key below the map.

Level 1 1. The walls of this room are covered in soot. There is a large pile of burned timbers in the southeast corner of the room under the stairs Mixed with the timbers is a 3’ metal rod. The rod is a wand of secret door and trap detection. It has only 9 chares left. If it is picked up it will glow indicating the secret door to the south. 2. Trapdoor drops any who stand on it 20’ to the second level

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3. On the North wall are five plaques. On each plaque is a name, two dates, followed by many mystic runes and symbols. The first is labeled Gnithil 101-228. Opening it will fire five magic missiles into the party. There is nothing inside. Next is Dloc 228-354. Opening this tomb will release a blast of cold air. The inside is lined with frost. A vaguely human form can be seen in the bottom. Anyone reaching into the tomb will feel intense cold. Anyone persisting in holding their hand in will take 1-6 points of damage per round. Underneath the frost is the body of an ancient man. On the body are a jeweled ring and a pouch of 5 gems. The third is Kesom 354-463 after opening dense black smoke will pour out. The smoke will drive all from the room. The fourth is labeled Powane 463-561. A pair of animated swords will attack the openers of this tomb. The swords attack as fifth level fighters and are not harmed by normal weapons blows, although anything capable of destroying a normal sword will destroy them also. The magic of the swords be disabled by grasping one sword and striking the other with it (roll under half your dex to grab the sword: sword is AC 4 for purposes of hitting). After the swords strike each other both will crumble in flakes of rust. Inside the tomb is a skeleton in rotted robes. Along side the skeleton is a red hide scroll case filled with rotted parchment and a box holding four dry bottles with crystals on the sides. The scroll case is of salamander hide and impervious to fire. The bottles contain the remnants of potions; filling the bottles water will restore the potions to operating condition. The last is labeled Rothi. Inside are a copper crown set with a topaz and a long sword. A voice will warn of dire fates to befall any who touch the items except the “rightful” owner. In this case possession is 10/10ths of the law. All tombs will be

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found resealed after the party leaves the area though any item removed will not be found there again. 4. 10 beds line the walls of this room: 6 on the west, 4 on the east. The remains of two more are piled in the south-east corner of the room. In front of the of the second and fifth beds on the west and second on the east, there is a large trunk. In the bottom of the trunk in front of the fifth bed is sack with two gems. In the ticking of the third bed on the east are 185 gold pieces. The whole room is infested with giant rats. The rats will not be readily apparent but anyone looking under a bed will be attacked by 1-6 rats. There are 24 rats in this room, but they will only attack all together if all party members are wounded. 5. On the south wall is a painted mural of blue sky with clouds and sea gulls. In the northeast corner are 5 silk, feather filled pillows mostly rotted. The mural on the south is enchanted. Anyone staring at the mural for long periods of time must save versus magic or fall asleep. Underneath the pillows are two sleeping giant centipedes. 6. In the center of the room is a round oak table. On the table sits a large silver bowl studded with gems. Seated by the table is a human skeleton with both elbows on the table staring at the bowl. The skeleton wears ragged robes and a peaked hat. Anyone touching the skeleton will cause the skeleton to collapse into a heap of bones. Inside the cap is a scroll case strapped in with leather thongs. Inside the scroll case is a magic scroll. Back to the bowl. Anyone looking into the bowl will see a dancing blue flame and must save versus magic or be entranced by the flame. Entranced

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persons will do nothing but stare into the flame until the flame is extinguished or blocked from their sight. The flame may be put out by any normal means, but spread to any burnable item touches. 7. This room is filled with broken furniture. In the back of the room is a large chest. In front of the chest are a scattering of silver pieces (47). The chest is filled with 2000 silver pieces. While the party is investigating the room two large spiders will drop from the ceiling over the entrance arch and attack the party. Hidden in the le of a broken chair is a scroll 8. In this room 12 rats are chewing on a body in the northwest corner. Strewn round the room are the bones of various creatures. Closer inspection of the body will reveal that it is a human adventurer. Its backpack has been emptied and its belt pouch slit. Hidden in the body’s boot is a magic dagger +1, +2 versus smaller than man size. Note: the door to room 9 is locked and has a spy hole. 9. This is the lair of two wererats. Furnishing the room are two beds and a table with two chairs. Normally one wererat will stand guard while the other sleeps. If there is a fight in room 8 both will be up and ready to fight. If the wererats are alerted and the party continues on to room 10 they will set up an ambush in room 8. Their treasure is in a small box under one of the beds. The small box is trapped with a poison dart which will fire at the opener. Inside are 20 platinum, 5 gems, a gold broach and 2 potions 10. Nothing

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11. Trying to open this door will cause three spears to drop from the ceiling. One is +1. 12. In the center of this room is a large pillar. On the pillar sits a pillow with a large gem sitting on it. A curtain covers the northeast corner of the room. Behind the curtain is a mural of a man dressed in black whose face is totally devoid of features. Anyone removing the gem will disappear. Following this what appears to be that person will step from behind the curtain. This is actually a doppelganger. The party member will be found with the gem in room 13 Underneath the pillow is a small scroll with the following inscription. “Canst thou face the faceless man? Seeke ye the light of day while thou still can. See the once proud tower almost gone. Sit ye there and wait for dawn. Underneath the Sun the key does rest. Bring it hence and place it in the place that’s best.” A small keyhole will be found in the face on the mural 13. In this room is a pile of 3000 gp, a magic sword and a scroll. A small stream of water trickles down from the southwest corner. On the wall is the inscription “Canst thou eat gold?” 14. This room holds 8 skeletons. Two of these stand guard at each exit. Although the guards can be clearly seen from the entering corridors, none will attack until the party members attack or try to pass the guards

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15. This room is the same as 14 except there are 11 skeletons 16. The ceiling of this room has collapsed. It is filled with broken rafters and sand. A minimal amount of digging from the west door will uncover a suit of +1 chaimail.

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Ruins of Thetra Mage College Lower Levels October 29, 2010 Just enough dungeon to connect all the stairs slopes and trap doors from level 1 and outdoors. Numbered but not populated. C' connects the sloping passage from B14 with the trapdoor from B2, and the hidden staircase from B15. D' connects the long staircase near B16 with the staircase from A4, and the open area off of B9. E is reached by a secret door in the trunk of the Tree in D3. Had intended to expand these levels as play on level B progressed. However the TPK on level A, followed by a lifetime ban on this dungeon from She-who-must-be-obeyed, rendered that effort moot.

P.S. for an interesting corollary of the problems this dungeon

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encountered read this review of Death Frost Doom . Unfortunately, sometimes even the best sounding dungeons on paper do not click with the players in the field. This dungeon did teach me a lot about player-DM interaction. Most of my modern dungeons are a lot less scripted and adapted on-the-fly to suit the players motivations. Good for playing, bad for producing a module for publication and universal appeal.

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Battle maps coming soon November 06, 2010 Sorry no old school maps this week. I have been hard at work cranking out battle maps for my 4e 14-17 adventure this week and have not had time for much else (well maybe a little Starcraft 2). I think the rock jumble is one of my best ever. I'll try and get a picture of it up after I see how it plays tomorrow.

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Stones Battle Map November 09, 2010 I used my 27"x34" gridded flip chart paper and colored pencils to draw a huge pile of boulders from a crashed earth mote. Starting at 30' high and rising to over a 100'. Sprinkled with some monsters that push people off ledges. Of course my players sneaky gits that they are bypassed it with fly spells and teleports.

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Ancient Temple Plaza Map November 13, 2010 Ancient Temple Plaza within the ruined city of Imrataxi. An evil temple which controls the characters minds combined with a Elder Brown Dragon lurking in the sand. The buildings surrounding the Plaza filled with the dragons lackey minions as well. Rock pile in the North East corner is the start of the Stones Map. Not as much color as the stones map (Hey, what can I say? my hands get tired these days). Should have colored this one first, since it was where most of the battle was fought. If I'd have known someone was bringing a Swordmage who could not only chase down a dragon from 21 squares away, but teleport them both back to where the Swordmage started as well, I'd of planned different. I brought encounter 2 in as reinforcements. When we started to run low on time I brought encounter 3 in as reinforcements as well. A real donnybrook and great fun, but one that only used one of the three battle maps I'd drawn as well. As they say the plan seldom survives first contact with the player characters.

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The French connection November 15, 2010 *** UPDATE/WARNING weekly spyware checker turned up the main page for world of Selandia as a KNOWN BAD WEBSITE. I am not sure the spyware checker is right and it does not explain itself further, but as a favor to my followers I have taken the imbedded links down. Good artwork,Bad people *sigh* *** Was catching up on my geomorphs over at dysonlogos where he reminded me of Pascal Faeriss' blog which I forget to check because it is not a Google blog which links to my dashboard. Once again I decided to life on the edge and give my High School French a whorl. After a brief detour where I discovered that jeu de role means roleplaying game and some French sites sell their stuff for cash just like us Americans, I stumbled on a site for the world of Selandia. The language of jaw-dropping artwork for maps is universal. Pascal has even written a few modules for the setting, which I downloaded even though they are in French. C'est bon! P.S. working on translating the key to Locnerac (on the french side of the site), but since I am to entry 5 of 212 after 1.5 hours don't expect it anytime soon.

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City of the Dragon Lords November 27, 2010 A little Turkey day bonus post (btw a belated Happy Thanksgiving to all). Here's a concept sketch I did while waiting for the turkey to cook, after spending the night before looking at maps of Crater Lake. It's the fabled City of the Dragon Lords (read my Dragon Armies posts for more information) where commands for the Dragon Armies issue forth. My players have picked up a teleport card to this spot while raiding the Fortress of the Black Dragon pirates. Therefore I need to be prepared before some fool ranger decides to bring matters to a head by launching a frontal assault on many thousands of spawn of Tiamat backed by dozens of dragons on his own.

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Cliff Top Battle Map November 27, 2010 The next battle map. This is the top of the crashed earth mote. It connects to the stones map via the slope in the lower left corner. Key terrain features include the octagonal pyramid, the sinkhole, the rope bridge to a still floating earth mote, and a 40' high cliff on the north end. Assess to the cliff top is via the large boulder in the upper right. The map was also to include trees but these are not marked as I have a very nice set of plastic ones from GW. One tree is of course close to the cliff to provide an alternate route to the top of the cliff P.S. I left the dragon minis I used as paperweights in this time so you could see them too :) P.P.S. The tree have become legend, after several sessions of She-who-must-obeyed saying "Did you bring the trees"and me saying "No, you didn't pack them for me". We finally brought the trees to a session, at which point I criticaled three times in a row. Now the current player response is "Oh no! Not the trees!!" so of course I have to bring them every time.

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Rural Longhouse Plans December 05, 2010 A couple of house plans based on historic buildings. Just right for that creepy farmstead, or abandoned warehouse, you know you'll be needing. Courtesy of She-who-must-be-obeyed.

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Old School City Dungeon layout December 11, 2010 This diagram shows the Tower and Bridge from the Old School City map overlayed on the first three levels of my old school dungeon. The City is in black, outline of first level is in blue, outline of second level is in green, outline of third level is in red. *** NEW IMPROVED DRAWING COURTESY of She-who-must-be-obeyed ***

Here's two dungeon cut throughs as well. Top cut through is from East to West; bottom cut through is from North to South.

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Old School City December 11, 2010 Blydron, the last River Kingdom outpost. Gateway to the Northern Forest and the Great Gorge. This is the City I started to draw to go over the top of my Old School Dungeon. Note: SE corner was never drawn. Overlay map of the City and Dungeon as well as Dungeon Cut-through to follow.

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On combat systems December 11, 2010 My surfing of the blogosphere led me to discuss critical hits. This got me to discussions of combat systems in general and brought back some thoughts about contrasts in style that I had during the early days of role-playing. When Runequest first came out I though it was cool due to it's hit locations, damage reducing armor and blocked shots. It seemed way more realistic than the d20 to hit d8 damage of AD&D. However, as I actually played the Runequest combat system, I realized most fights consisted of large quantities of misses, followed by a combat ending critical where some vital component of the unluckiest combatant went flying. I also noticed that even the smallest trollkin has the potential of slicing off your Runelords head. I quickly realised it is a combat system completely incompatible with the Conanequese hero versus the 30 pirate scum style combats I like to run. Even if you discount the critical problem, no one enjoys waiting for me to roll the five rolls per attack needed to find out that all 30 pirate scum have missed. Don't even get me started on the hours required by Runequest to roll individual stats for each of the pirate scum. I reverted back to good ol' AD&D and have stuck with it's various incarnations ever since (although 4e is pretty close to failing the Conanequese test as well). Every time I feel the itch to tamper with the combat system (being mathematically inclined I am capable of devising five new combat systems before breakfast) I remind myself of my Runequest experience and conclude the AD&D system is pretty solid and not really in need of replacement. Besides, it gives me time to daydream up new magic systems instead.

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Old School Dungeon Links Page December 17, 2010 Having recently been adding stuff to my posts of the Dungeon and Campaign I ran from 1976 to 1979, I though it might be a good idea to post a page of links to my posts on the subject. So here it is. Dungeon Maps Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 City Map Blydron Wilderness Map River Kingdoms Map 3 Layout Overlay and Cutthroughs

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Blydron Environs Map December 17, 2010 Wilderness map of the environs of Blydron at five miles to the hex flat to flat. Blydron is the river crossing labeled 1. To the southeast you can see the start of the Great Gorge and the Great Glacier in the mountains beyond. To the north you can see the lakes and swamps of the Northern Wilderness. Red lines indicate patrolled regions around towns and castles. According to the interpretation of the rules we played by then one could clear up to 25 miles distant from ones stronghold so red lines are a maximum of 4 hexes out from the center. I marked most of the smaller towns and hamlets as not patrolling that far.

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Hex grid courtesy of that pad I got from Game Designers Workshop in 1975.

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Forgotten Runes for the Forgotten Runes December 18, 2010 In honour of increased traffic and a free Saturday (She-who-must-be-obeyed is out Chrismass shopping with the Mother-in-Law), I have added a new banner to the website. Background (courtesy of Wikipeda Commons) is from the as yet untranslated Codex Rohonc , a manuscript found in the western Hungarian town of Rohonc. The symbols seem to be in the style of Old Hungarian runes but there are far too many different symbols. Truely forgotten runes.

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Wilderness Map River Kingdoms 2 December 26, 2010 Here is the wilderness map just East of Blyron. Edge Hexes overlap previous map. This map marks the end of the Northern forest and the beginning of the River Kingdom proper. Patrolled zones on the Eastern edge are the start of the interlocking castles that protect the River Kingdom from wandering monsters.

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Happy St. Stephens Day! December 26, 2010 Well I didn't quite have enough time on Christmas to get on the blog and post, what with the mother-in-law coming over for diner and the house needing cleaning. Total Christmas swag painting for 12 goblin spider riders I already bought, a sweater, an encyclopedia of signs and symbols, and a check. I guess I didn't get my request for the fabled lands adventure books to Santa soon enough, although I did get a promissory note for more to come from my sister who sent me the sweater. My last minute search for fantasy Christmas images free-of-copyright did produce some interesting images, but none suitable for the PG rating I try to keep this blog at. My search for St. Stephen, patron saint of Hungary, did far better. Here is Emperor Franz I of Austria in the robes of the Grand Master of the Royal Order of St. Stephen. Ermine trimmed red hat with the jingle bell on the end remind you of anyone?

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Wilderness Map River Kingdom 1 December 31, 2010 The heart of the River Kingdom. Proud Vassa (7), the capital of the River Kingdom, plies its ships on the Narrow Sea. Rhys (1) on the isle of Anton would rival Vassa but the Northern Ocean is often too rough for trade. The hill baronies (3)(4)(11) and (12) are notorious for backing the Duke of Rhys against Vassa in disputes. Vassa makes sure the Griffins teeth (5) and (6) are manned by Barons loyal to Vassa. Notice the interlocking patrol zones between the Castles of the River Kingdom. Not all areas are completely patrolled though. There is lots of unpatrolled country in the Coast Hills in the North, and the Crag lands to the South, and the Griffins Leg marsh near Vassa, and who knows what dark secrets lurk in that little grove between (12), (14), and (19) P.S. This being a sandbox era campaign I usually let the dice determine who lived in what castle when the party knocked on the door. Unfortunately those notes are rather sparse.

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Henrich's Fortress January 08, 2011 My posting of my River kingdoms maps brought some memories back from She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed. She has the following to say about Castles and wilderness campaigns:

The first campaign I was in was under the original D& D rules. Wilderness was new then and our ref had bought nine pieces of heavy weight hex paper, each measuring two feet by three feet.

When we met to play he would lay them out on the carpet and we would sit on the floor to play. It was an impressive graphic which added a lot to the atmosphere of the game. But we liked the map so much we did not go into any dungeon. “We found another treasure map? I sell it to the npc.” Our ref despaired. So once one of my characters made fifth level he persuaded me to found a barony. The thinking here was that it would make me poor and force me to go adventuring in the dungeons to keep solvent. He also had some untried roll-up charts about finding mines in your barony. Long story short the mines made me wealthy and I never did set foot in a dungeon while in his campaign. I remember asking about trade. I had to include an existing road and buy a company. My notes include comments about

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making and selling carts at 100 gold each and buying cart horses for 30 gold each from another player. I had seven villages, five of humans, one of elves, but the one village on the road was composed of dwarfs. After that every cart driver we encountered was a dwarf. This campaign is the only one I have played in where I created a stronghold. I had to not only draw up the fortress but also compose a coat of arms for my character and keep the monthly books. My mage decided to work a deal with my fighter so he could put up a tower within the patrolled land and not need to go through the agony of clearing land, keeping troops or making me keep more books. I also had a cleric and he settled next to my friend who played the dwarf king up on Frog Island. The king (and his army) graciously accompanied my cleric while land clearing. When the ref rolled up the races in my villages his bemused look attracted our attention. “They are ALL dwarfs.” He told us. And here's a picture of the fortress her fighter Henrich build with the money from the mines:

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New Blog Layout January 08, 2011 Yeah you caught me. I've been playing with blogger rather than writing cool posts. Now back to work...

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Mapping the World with Hexes January 15, 2011 ****** Warning this post contains mathematics and computer science ****** Working on my old world maps has raised some interesting questions once again, long neglected by real world cartographers like: How wide are the Rocky Mountains? How many real world cities fit in a 5 mile hex? The first step to answering these questions is to lay out the real world on a hex grid. Since the world is really big we need hex which really small, which is the first step. Pixelating the Hex After scanning my current 10 hex to inch hex paper into the computer and wasting two hours trying to clean the smudges by repainting the image pixel by pixel I concluded there had to be a better way. I started to work on laying out the smallest pixel pattern I could create which would preserve a hex shape. The hex shape can be build from a 30 60 right triangle. The geometry of this triangle such that if longest side is 1 the shortest side is 0.5 which is quite nice. However, the other side is the square root of 3 over 2 an inconvenient irrational number about 0.866 to three decimal places. All computer scientist know an irrational number is very hard to draw in pixels because one can only use an integral number of pixels per drawing Luckily for me I discovered that the ratio 6/7 (0.857 to three decimal places) is very close (99% of 0.866). I therefore proceeded to lay out a pixel patten for a grid based on the

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6/7 ratio. Here is the result

A pixel pattern 12 squares high by 20 squares wide. Note: the bottom line is part of the next pattern I just left it in so I could see the hex. A little jagged you may say but take a look at in the next picture (Original is at 140 ppi, your ppi may vary depending on your screen). It really looks like hexes.

Here's an 8.5" by 11" sheet gridded at 20 hexes to the inch. Use with caution! To quote She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed "I wanted to look,

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but I wish I hadn't". Perhaps it is less headache inducing in a different color. Feel free to experiment yourselves. I am going to use it mostly as a digital overlay for other things.

Finally as the penultimate goal of our project, here the grid superimposed over a nice Dymaxion world map in public domain. I like Dymaxion maps because they are based on mapping the world to a d20 and are composed of equilateral triangles which fit nicely with hexes. You can read more about them here and here. The map is 2008 pixels wide which for a d20 is half the circumference of the earth or roughly 12,450 miles. This works out to 6.2 per pixel, or at our 12 pixels per hex, 74 miles per hex. Enjoy!

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P.S. Future projects may include reworking the map to 50 miles per hex; getting height and vegetation maps to more accurately find mountains, forests, and deserts■; scaling portions up to a 5 mile per hex resolution. However this is about all the math I take for now. Errata: When I posted this morning I had claimed 7 pixels per hex or 43 miles, My pixel grid is actually 7 pixels per side and 12 pixels across or 74 miles per hex.

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Henrich's Barony and the World January 23, 2011 Some more stuff from the first Campaign She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed played in so long ago. First is the wilderness map surrounding Henrich's castle. Henrich's castle is the crown near the eastern edge. Numbers are villages and mines. One of the numbers is Montgomery the Mage's tower (I'll have to ask She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed which one some time. You''ll see more about Mongomery's Tower in a future post).

Next is the Map of the entire Continent stitched together from several maps of different scales. She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed informs me that since she had to draw the maps by borrowing Jerry's Ref

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maps while they were playing the area they played the most (the NW quadrant) has the least detail. ■Luckiy she had some detail maps of the area near Henrich's castle. She also points out that the islands NW of Henrich's castle weren't there originally. However, when one of the players complained that there were no islands left for him to put a castle on, Jerry the DM said "I can fix that that!" pulled out his pens and then there were islands NW of Henrich's castle. **Note: Revised Map posted 2/1/2011***

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Hungarian RPG now in English! January 24, 2011 Good news! Gabor has published a rules light translation of his Hungarian role playing game Kard és Mágia which I blogged about here. Now I can take that long standing backburner project off the stove entirely. You can get Gabor's translation from here. I am sure Gabor did a much better job than I could, after all he actually speaks Hungarian ;)

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Montgomery's Tower February 01, 2011 Here we have today another piece of Jerry's World, Montgomery's Tower. Montgomery decided, that rather than go through all the fuss and bother of clearing his own Barony, he would just live in Henrich Barony. But he build his own tower in the mountains next to Henrich's village number 5. Take a look at Henrich's Barony here to see where. While your there take a look at the revised World map as well. I mentioned that some commentors were less than satisfied with the colors to She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed and she worked furiously on recoloring it until her arthritis flaired up (being old is not for sissies) and she declared it FINISHED. I suggested she might add a key so you could tell what was what and had to make a hasty exit from the computer room (purple is Mountain, grey-brown hills, blue water, green forest, orange desert, and mottled yellow-green swamp). I suggest if you have any further comments on the world map you keep them between between you and me. So without further addo here's Montgomery's Tower (It even includes the costs in case you want to build a duplicate for your OD&D campaign).

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Plan B February 07, 2011 Well there I was working away on hex gridding over the map of Doomsday England, a pet project to try and figure how many villages actually fit in a five mile hex (from the overlay it looks to be 7-9, you can read more ideas about division of land at Redwald). Suddenly it occurred to me it was probably in poor taste and perhaps a violation of copyright to publish a map taken from a couple of figures from someone else's book, even if I had smashed them together and overlaid a grid upon them. Although the book author seems unlikely to be checking my web site, my status as a someday want-to-be author and game publisher always leaves me leery of violating intellectual property rights. After all, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you want to check out the base maps look on pages 38-39 of H. C. Darby's Domesday England, Cambridge University Press 1977 (I have the 1986 paper back edition. Its a reasonable read for a scholarly introduction to the data in the Domesday Book, a Norman survey of the land and loot they got when they took over England {for tax purposes of course}). From the book I gleaned Redwalds division into Hides, Tithings, and Hundreds leaves out many other land divisions in use in near Anglo-Saxon times including wapentakes, ridings, lathes, and rapes. Real life is seldom simple. Never-the-less I am no longer planning on posting my five mile hex map of Domesday England this week. I will not be posting my Domesday map until I find a source for the basic information in open source. As a result this weeks offering to the web will be a bit later than my usual target of near the weekend. I am working on a fine old map and adventure

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from the 1980's (Hope to have it done later today or tomorrow).

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Bad Neighbor Mountain February 08, 2011 Here is a map from my graduate school days in 1982. Since the new Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master Guide suggested using 25-50 mile hexes that's what I mapped the world in. However I found the hexes at this size lacking in gamable detail. As a solution to this I hit on the solution of drawing a detail map of a single hex on one piece of paper. Here is my detail map of one of the Mountain Hex near the city of Anva

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Of course I couldn't draw such a beautiful map and not show it to the players. However I wanted key for where the monsters lair that players couldn't. The solution an overlay of tracing paper with the DM's key on it. Here's the map with the overlay in place on top of it. Note trying to get a piece of tracing paper to line up in the scanner is not an easy task, the key is slightly off, you can spot if you look closely at the crosses that mark the mountain peaks next to the

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numbers giving the mountain heights.

:Here's the key for the numbers 1) The village of Telgrin; Major attraction "Ye Olde Magic Shop" Fireworks and novelties; 10th level Illusionist 2) The Earls Hunting lodge; 3rd level fighter acts as grounds keeper 3) Hermits hut, burned and ruined

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4) Goblin camp: 14 goblins 4 wargs, Hermit 16th level cleric held prisoner will not harm anyone not even goblins 5) Ruined castle 6) Ruined castle 7) Trail to the lost city 8) Wachtower, lost city can be seen from here 9) The dragons roost and here's a little adventure I wrote (the point of drawing the map to begin with). A brief aside this adventure follows the infamous plague dungeon She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed wrote and DMed in my world after reading A Distant Mirror, If I can cajole my way into the secret notebooks I may post more on that dungeon. Going after Carsolar Trin is in plague trouble again. Anva has volunteered Carsolar the mighty cleric to help. But where is Carsolar? Rumor has it he is up in the hills looking for the Snic-ker-snee the famous blade of legend. Carsolar is of course the 16th level cleric being held at 4 Throw in a few wolves on the road into to town to start things off a brief inquiry in town leads to directions to the hermit hut 3 battles with wandering warg riders leave trail back to the goblin camp a battle in the goblin camp frees Carsolar leading to a triumphant return to Anva to collect the ample reward Remember this is Old School, none of that purple prose to clutter up the adventure, just some notes to myself to remind me of the theme them improvise the rest, springle liberally with random encouters to liven up the slow spots and throw some curves to delinerize the plot and I'm good to go.

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Hexes and Villages February 12, 2011 The little brown book's Underworld and Wilderness adventures explains that a barony can clear hexes up to 20 miles away and that within that area there will be 2-8 villages of 100-400 inhabitants (Other editions dodge this bullet by not even addressing Baronies in the core rules).This has always seemed a bit skimpy to me. With my newly created hex overlay and H. C. Darby's Domesday England, Cambridge University Press 1977, I decided to check the village density of Norman England. To this purpose I have created the following 5 mile to the hex map. Please note that Wales and Scotland were not surveyed, so are blank:

As you can see the village density in most places far exceeds 8 villages in a 20 mile radius. Densities of 10 villages or more per 5 mile hex are not infrequent. She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed who did the

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shading of the hexes by density says I should use this information to make a new roll-up chart, but that must wait for another post.

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City of Caen February 19, 2011 Here is a map drawn from a 17th Century Panorama of the French City of Caen. She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed has re-imagined it back to the Middle ages by pulling out the star forts, horn works, and bastions, and has also converted it to a top down view. Enjoy!

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Piasa Bird February 25, 2011 Aldorbans post of his picture of the Piasa bird sparked old memories which precipitated another dive down the internet rabbit hole. I have a certain fondness for the Piasa Bird, the Piasa bird trail patch being one of the coolest patches one could get by hiking with the Boy Scouts in '70s Illinois. Believing it to be an Native American petroglyph I was shocked to discover that not only that the current Piasa bird was painted in the 2000's, but the previous one I admired as Native American rock art was painted in 1934. The original petroglyph was quarried away in the late 1800's for limestone.

First description is from the French Explorers Pere Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet traveling the Mississippi River in 1673. Jean Jean-Bapiste Louise Franquelin drew the following from their description.

First known picture is from someone who saw it was John Caspar Wild's, page 136. Unfortunately the scan on the internet is not a

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very good one, the description in the text is better. I downloaded the image from the internet and enhanced the contrast to bring the very faint image in the original scan out.

A better old picture is from Henry Lewis's although it does not look like a Native American petroglyph.

The current painting at the rock is below (from Wikimeida commons)

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This link here is my favorite Piasa Bird, not being fond of the garish colors most paintings use. Note: I have not posted it here as I am unsure whether the owner has placed it in public domain. P.S. O.K. I must post now having wasted far too much of my precious "snow" day on this post. Although it has a curious relevance to a map I was planning to post later. P.P.S. I have spend so much time on the Piasa bird I am now listed on page two of the google search. This of course necessitates posting of even more of the pictures I have found.

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World of Bad Neighbor Mountain March 05, 2011 Here are several maps of the campaign I ran from 1982-1985. ■My Regulars have already seen the detail map of Bad Neighbor Mountain from this campaign. I started this map by tracing coastlines out of my Altas and combining them. The bottom of this map is a backwards outline of Finland combined with the tip of India (Note: I ignored scale for the most part). I then placed the outline on a hex grid which I filled in with mountains, lakes, rivers, and settlements. The hexes are 25 miles across. Note the concept behind this map was to place it in the southern hemisphere, so the climate gets warmer as one moves towards the top of the map. The southern tip I envisioned as glaciated lake country similar to Minnesota or Finland. ■

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Once I had the large map done, I took it to the copy store and made several copies to start laying different aspects of the campaign out. Below is an inset of the political divisions. Orange is the Anvan empire, a once great power slipping into decline. Light green is the Free city of Lirpan. Dark green are the Dwarven Holds in the mountains. Light blue is the southern elven forests. Dark purple are the towns of the sea raiders. Finally magenta is the Valley an area of small feudal states, where most of the adventures took place.

After laying out the political map on the southern tip. I noticed some issue with the map as I had drawn it. First the entire continent was completely mountainous. Second the terrain north of the lake country was completely the same repeat of mountains, rivers and towns BORING!!! So being the creator, I took the part I liked ,used a pair of scissors to cut that part away from the rest of the map, and taped it back down on a blank piece of hex paper which I then redrew as below. Now north of the valley is the Sea of sand.

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■Finally, I copied the map again using the enlarge function on the copier to give me a bigger map of the region I was most interested, used a light box to trace the map onto a blank piece of white paper, and worked it over with colored pencils to produce the map below, which I used as my map to show the players.

Of course almost all these steps can be done much easier with a computer graphics program these days (although I am still fond of

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the look and feel of my colored pencil work). ■

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Crimson Blades of Ara Review March 15, 2011 My friend Carter Soles over at The Lands of Ara has graciously posted the game system he and and friend Dave Miller wrote in 1989. You pick up the rules for "Crimson Blades of Ara" over at his blog. Although the author claims these are rough notes they are a dam site more impressive than my pencil scribbles on lined paper I call notes. As with many youthful endeavours it is chock-a-blog full with novel ideas and concepts, despite Carters claim that he was reinventing Runequest without knowing it (actually about all that Runequest and His system share are a use of a list of skills to determine abilities and percentile dice to resolve actions). Actually his character point chart with its exponential increase cost as skills move towards 100%, solves one of the great shortcomings of Runequest. Runequests advance system based on dice rolls against skills you use rewards lucky rather than skillful play, and results in great silliness amongst the power gaming crowd of continual weapon switching and trivial skill checks. All in all I was quite impressed, although I have not completed my analysis of the combat system which seems to exude a strong preference for some weapons over others. I am unlikely to attempt to run the whole game as written, but will likely borrow pieces for my homebrew rules. The crown jewel of these rules are the skill and trait level cost chart. I also enjoyed the eastern school mages who cast spells by "the creation of small, animated beings called golems"; Orge player characters which are immensely strong but forced take quirks to compensate; and the two strikes per round combat system which allows you the ability to

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drop your chance to parry a opponents blow and counter attack instead. I thought having the agility stat determine who goes first, while dexterity and strength determine (for the most part, longsword is agility based) your chance to hit was wise; Fantasty trip and its successor GURPS put dexterity on both who goes first and your chance to hit biasing their games to uber dexers with nothing else. I am intrigued by the concept presented of different weapons having different caps on how much skill one can apply to ones attack, but I'll want to finish my math analysis before I can say I am in favor of it. A big thanks to Carter and Dave for sharing. Pick up a copy and check out for yourself. If you are unhappy you can always ask for your NO MONEY back.

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Dungeon in the Raw April 01, 2011 Here's a dungeon I call "Palace of the Dragon Prince". I sketched it out a couple of weeks ago■ in hopes of cleaning it up and entering it into the one page dungeon contest. Unfortunately business travel and a nasty computer virus on the computer with the scanner intervened. Everything is back under control, but I ran out of time to improve my entry. I thought about sending it in "as is". However, without clean-up it is unlikely to win, and in order to enter since they want real names I would have to reveal my "secret identity" for all the world to see. She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed says she thinks its "cute" the way it is, so I am posting it on the blog. Be aware that even the way it is, it more than sufficient for me to DM it, because that's the way we do it OLD SCHOOL.

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Multipurpose Wilderness/Dungeon Planner, DM Reference, and Char Sheet April 02, 2011 What we used for wilderness and dungeon planning, dungeon master reference notes, and character sheets, and many other purposes Old School:

My little joke for April 1st, but also true■.

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A is atmosphere, F is for flame on, Z for zzzzzz (loud snoring) April 19, 2011 Ok I have completed the complete alphabet in a single post, can we move on. Maybe is the fact that its tax day (as usual I did just enough to make sure Uncle Sam owed me money and pushed it off to October), or maybe its the fact that the stats show that a blank piece of note book paper has shot up to my third most popular post (someone on stumble-on though it was cute), but I feel the urge to complain about the mindless A-Z meme that has inflected my Old School Renaissance. Most blogs are luckily if they can get one post out a week, but it is usually from the heart and thought provoking, but the A-Z meme has led them to believe they can up their production to one a day with some meaningless trivia. Most of them are sputtering out about O, so soon things will be back to normal, and I can stop skipping over posts at greater than the normal rate. I of course did have to look at P is for Prostitute at Appendix N (little imredave wanted to see it, however he was disappointed). Appendix N does point out that "Old School" it should be H is for Harlot. It did bring back memories of a certain adventure in She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed running of the city of Karse. We had turned down an alley way into a small square, and encountered a lizard woman in fish net stockings leaning up against the wall near the entrance to the bar, clearly indicating we were no longer in the high class neighborhood. Since we were in desperate need of a certain substance from a certain alchemist shop across the square we pressed on. We were also not surprised when the 1st level got shanked (We were surprised later to find out it was one of our party

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members who shanked him). She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed later reviewed her notes to find out a little more about the lizard lady, and discovered that all it actually said was "Rough Bar". Such is the power of imagination. Well its time to go to work, so this rambling flame must end. Next time something of substance.

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City of the Pyramid April 23, 2011 At the junction of the great causeway and the great underway lies a nexus of great power. After the fall of the elves during the Golden age it was here the golden ones came to build pyramid temples to their dark gods. Seven tiers for the Burning One, Five for the Breaker of Hope, a mere two for the Mistress of the still pool, an unimportant goddess worshiped only by females and pondlings. Still her pyramid is required to balance the fearsome dread of the uncounted tiers of the underpyramid of the Drowner in Darkness. The Treader of the Secret Ways required no pyramid, stealing his worship by masquerading as the other gods. Once the pyramids were complete the Sorcerer Kingpriests focused their energy to forge the Great Artifact. During the catastrophe the Great Artifact was split into to the sphere, the cube, and the tetrahedron. As the artifact was split into three so were majority of the golden ones, into the kobolds, lizardmen, and weygn. Their ensuing battles to reunite the Artifact soon destroyed the city, and the inhabitants dispersed into the black swamp which broke the canal walls and swallowed the city whole. Their descendants still squabble, fight, and dream of reuniting the artifact to restore the glory of the Golden age. A mere half days journey from the newcomers Clerics Post on the Great river, the ruined city still lures adventurers to doom and glory. The lizardman "people of the turtle" will lead you there for a few trinkets, but warn that the "people of the shark" who inhabit the ruins proper are not as friendly, and are only fond of strangers as barbecue. Below is the mosaic in the chamber of the map showing the city as it was in the Golden age.

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Note: The City of the Pyramids served as my anchor dungeon for my great river campaign of the early '90s■. She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed still remembers this campaign with fondness.It was a bit of a breakthrough in style for me as well as I replaced my megadungeons of the past with little 3-5 room mini

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dungeons which could be completed in a night or two. However most of the mini-dungeons remained connected by the Great Underway a 30' wide straight barrel vaulted corridor leading on for miles leading god knows where (although one was bound to stumble on to a secret door leading to the next mini-dungeon just in time for the next session). Due to its connection to the Great Underway my wandering adventurers found themselves in the City of the Pyramids more often then they would have liked.

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Tenochtitlan another City of the Pyramid May 14, 2011

I am afraid last months posting of my City of the Pyramid has thrown me into to research mode. Although I have known the of Cortez's conquest of Mexico since my youth, I had not appreciated the size of the city. According to my sources it was a city of 200,000 souls at a time when the largest cities in Europe, London and Venice, were only 100,000. Seville the largest city most of Cortez's had seen was probably only 60,000. To conqueror it with only 600 men took some cojones, definitely not first level fighters. Above is a woodcut from 1524 based on the conquistadors descriptions. Below are a couple of more contemporary illustrations from Wikmedia based on the archaeological evidence.

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Spanish Victory for Cortez with help from Friends May 15, 2011 One of my commentators to the previous post is certainly correct about the Spanish needing help from native allies. Unfortunately I think that worked out better for the Spanish. The book on pre-Columbian agriculture, I picked up highlights the precipitous collapse of the native population and a shift in farming from using all the varied habitats to just those suitable for planting with a plow or raising cattle. The collapse can be attributed to old world diseases (Guns, Germs, and Steel is a great book on this subject), but the lack of recovery may be more due to the shift in farming. It also interesting that New world seems to have several cultural collapses including the Maya in the 10th century, the Anasazi in the 13th century, and Teotihuacan, about 25 miles to the north of Tenochtitlan (and probably a bigger city as well) abandoned in the 5th century. The Spanish spend some time hiding out in Teotihuacan after being thrown out of Tenochtitlan, before hooking up with the Tlaxcalans for the final defeat of the Aztecs. Central America is certainly a more populous and complex place than the new world campaigns I have run in the past. However, when I try to add complex and interesting large civilizations to my campaign, I am roundly booed by the players for interfering with their exploration and looting of ancient ruins. Perhaps the loudest complainer is She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed who does not see the same drawbacks in her urban based Medieval European campaigns. More on this in another post.

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Now thats a Map June 29, 2011 Part picture book, part map the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 is an Aztec artifact from 1540. It was for painted the Lords of Cuauhtinchan to show the Spanish their claim to the territory they ruled. The first part starts with the emergence from the the lords ancestors from the cave of Chicomoztoc (legendary origin point of the Aztecs and several other tribes) and follows their journey to found the town of Cuauhtinchan. The second part shows the environment around Cuauhtinchan. The map is analyzed extensively in the book Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 edited by Davíd Carrasco, and Scott Sessions, UNM press 2007. You can also listen David Carrasco's lecture at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe New Mexico here. Among other things he explains rediscovering the map in a kitchen drawer of a wealth patron. Now I return to my monastic cell to further contemplate Mesoamerican Agriculture (unfortunately Cultivated Landscapes of Middle America on the eve of Conquest has far less interesting maps and a vocabulary that requires a Dictionary close at hand) and the vagaries of web pictures and copyright. There is a good argument to be made that a photo of a map drawn in 1540 isn't really copyrightable. However since I appreciate the work the book editor is doing, and part of the book sales support his work, I elected not to post my scan of the whole map, and merely link to the picture he uses to promote his lecture tour instead.

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Curiouser and Curiouser July 01, 2011 I am looking at my blog stats and being a bit bemused. My blog had over 9,000 views last month versus a mere 1,000ish the month before. So in a month which due to business travel and the nephews graduation I posted almost nothing I get a ninefold increase in traffic. Whats my most viewed post? A blank piece of notebook paper!

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Swag from Origins July 04, 2011 Living pretty close to Columbus, a trip to the Origins dealers room is a family ritual. Not a lot of swag for me as She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed blew one chunk of the budget on Warhammer bits (well technically the Orc bits are for my army), and my son is equipping the 7th Federation fleet (not sure where the battle star will fit in it, but it was cool so we bought it too). Got some free RPG day leftovers as free was definitely in the budget (mostly WoTC, but Goodman's Dungeon Crawl Classics Starter as well). Limit on free RPGs was two per customer, but this is where having a wife and son with me paid off (my son used one of his picks for something a space ship on the cover). Picked up the new hardbound Arcanis (enjoyed the beta test version I picked up at Gencon last year so thought I'd give it a go). I'll post a full review sometime soon. Was severely tempted by the Hackpedia of Beasts pre-order, but gave it a pass. I am glad it is all in one book, unlike the book 1 A-C, book 2 D-F, etc of the previous edition (I gave up about L). However, I remembered how unimpressed I was with the monsters in the previous edition (suffered from me-too-ism by re-replicating all the monsters in the d20 SRC with little change). I also don't really need to be buying books just to throw in the box of Hackmaster rules gathering dust in the corner (Hackmaster and I don't see eye-to-eye on taking the core d20 rules and making them more complicated). And finally the real find of the show, White Dwarf 34. I have been after this bad boy ever since She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed ran me through the Starstone adventure in 1983, and we saw the note that White Dwarf 34 contained

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another module by the same authors "Trouble at Ember Trees ". Five pages of old White Dwarf microprint (I did have to use my scanner to enlarge the print, as my eyes can't handle microprint any more) goodness with FOUR maps and SEVENTY EIGHT encounters. They just don't write'm that way any more. Heck, five pages will barely fit ONE fourth edition encounter. And where did I find this gem? Was it in the glass case at Crazy Egor's (Talisman Timescape another on the "how did I miss that" list was, but the price was too dear)? Was it got from the Troll and Toad auction after some fevered bidding war? No, it was in the $3 bin of old junk we want to get rid of at the Comic book vendor booth. WOHOOOO! some days the collecting gods smile on you.

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The Grid, the Grid July 10, 2011 The nice map posted at the City of Iron got me thinking. You see Gavin, the artist, decided to draw his map free hand without a grid, and that got me thinking. If your going to show to the players when I don't see a problem of no grid. If you need to sketch in on a battle map, or describe it verbally for me at least a grid is quite useful. Of course these days drawing the map and adding a grid later is pretty simple (It could be done in the old days but required gridded chartpak and some skill with an x-acto). I usually tried to grid the room floors and leave the walls blank, the opposite of the artists at the White Dwarf and Judges Guild who tended to grid the walls and leave the floors blank. I'll not comment on his choice of red lines with purple shading,as that is a matter of personal preference. Although, if you are running "Old School" and not showing the map to anyone else, I would not spend a lot of time trying to make the map look "pretty". I would however grid it for the reasons already mentioned.

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Substistance Farming and the Man July 10, 2011 As a complement to my map of village densities in 11th century England, I have been working on a map of village densities in the Old Northwest territory (which Ohio were I live happens to be part of) during the 18th century. I have nice map of village locations in 1759 courtesy of the Atlas of Great Lake Indian History, Helen Hornbeck Tanner ed. University of Oklahoma press 1987. However, I have run into to issues. First, the Old Northwest territory is too big to map comfortably with five mile hexes. Second, after over 200 years of warfare and smallpox, village densities are measured in hexes per village rather than villages per hex. As such I had set this project aside for a bit. My recent posts on the Aztecs have let me back to thinking about Native Americans once again. While researching Aztec farming techniques at the library, I peaked over at the Native North American section right next door and obtained The Miami Indians of Indiana, Stewart Rafert, Indiana Historical Society. The Miami, a small tribe, feature prominently in Atlas of Great Lake Indian History for their control of the portage (now Fort Wayne, IN) between Lake Erie and the Wabash River (a substantial short cut to the Mississippi River if you are traveling by Canoe). Since Miami Indians of Indiana was an easy read and allowed me to procrastinate further on the turgid but important sounding Cultivated Landscapes of Middle America on the Eve of Conquest I read it cover to cover. One of the most fascinating parts of it is the tribe continuing to live its lifestyle of the men hunting and fishing, and the women growing a little corn

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and a little squash on a mere 10 square mile reservation IN INDIANA from 1847-1872 (a population of roughly 148-250 people over the time period). I am a bit surprised since 10 square miles (6,400 acres) is only a little bigger than one our modern factory farm which will have 10 people living on it if the farmer has a big family (not sure how many people it feeds I'll have to look that up). The legal manoeuvrings which allow them to stay in Indiana while the rest of the Native Americans forced west at gun point are also quite interesting (a lot of it has to do with the local non-native American tavern owners and lawyers liking the tap into the yearly U.S. Government hard currency (silver dollars) payment the tribe collected as a treaty settlement. It unfortunately also lead to only the Miami who moved to Oklahoma being recognised as a "tribe" by the U.S. Government. In 1873 the reservation was broken up into 63 farms and divided amongst the residents. Many Miami being brave soles prompt tried their hand more conventional farming. Unfortunately this involved borrowing the $1,000 from the bank to equip a conventional farm and selling the farm to the bank when the inevitable "bad year" hit and bank could not be paid. The 1994 U.S Government wrangling that the guy who ruled in 1895 that Indiana Miami were no longer a tribe was wrong, but since it had been too long (mostly because the Bureau of Indian Affairs ruled in the several lawsuits since the ruling that because the Miami were not a tribe no lawsuit could be brought) is also a prime example of why people of my generation have a great distrust of government (also known as "the Man). There is an interesting corollary between the treatment of Native Americans and the "screw job" conducted by the enclosure of 16th century England, as well as the Oklahoma farmers during the dust bowl, but this post is long enough already.

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Ultima Underworld 2 August 27, 2011 So I have lost a month playing an old computer game. My son quite frequently decides that we need to play '90s Dos games, and we had a two-for sitting around which included both Ultima underworld (which we have played a great deal already) and its companion Ultima Underworld II (which we have not played much). So of course we got the dosbox and dfend out (two great little programs for running '90s games which do a much better job of handling the weird memory gyrations of '90 dos than Microsoft) and began to play. Since my sons approach to playing involves slaughtering everything that moves and letting Dad figure out the clues and puzzles. I have long ago swallowed my pride and realized that the way though most games is to use the cheats and walk-throughs available on the Internet (This is especially handy when all the creatures who were supposed to give you clues are dead, or angry at your attempt to cut them to pieces). So I have been spending a lot of time listening to this German guy as he works his way through. Embedded File () The Ultima underworld series still has my most favorite set of skills for roleplaying. I am totally stealling it for my roleplaying game (don't hold your breath kiddos, I have been writing my own roleplaying game for over years and not published anything yet).

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Mega Dungeon Format September 19, 2011 Comments on the Megadungeon format question posed by a fellow blogger at Grognardia a few weeks ago: My favorite megadungeon format the "Ruins of Undermoutain" boxed set:

Large poster map for the dungeon Book of special keyed encounters Book of random role-up encounters to fill in the rest It's pretty close to all you need.

My least favorite megadungeon format "Return to Undermountain" Everything in one book so you have to flip back and forth between the maps and the encounters Map arted up to make them unreadable and CROPPED!? No non set piece encounters, as matter of fact everything off the linear railroad plot blocked off with rock falls to ensure no

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"sandboxing" ever

As my friend refers to this module "a little tiny crappy piece of Ruins Undermountain" The second edition large boxed sets remain some of my most favorite adventures the "Ruins of Myth Dranor" is a close second to "Ruins of Undermountain" although it is not a classic megadungeon. The one thing Myth Dranor adds to the repertiore is the mini-dungeons on cards which gives the DM some flexibility, however I recommend against printing the key on the back as this leads to a lot of card flipping.

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Zatoichi versus Yojimbo October 12, 2011 ***Warning Spoiler*** Re-watching one of my favorite samurai flicks "Zatoichi versus Yojimbo". I keep thinking the'res got to be a D&D adventure in there somewhere. Zatoichi after a harrowing escape in the rain decides to head for a peaceful village of the beaten path, which he remembers for the smell of plum blossoms, the babbling brook, and the cool breeze. When you see the dead body floating in the brook that Zatoichi doesn't see being blind, you know things aren't going to go well for Zatoichi (they never do). Turns out some crumb bums are stealing gold by clipping coins at the Shoguns mint, and hiding it here in this out of the way village. Unfortunately it seems that every villain within a hundred miles has heard the rumors. Plot is driven by strong characters: Zatoichi the blind swordsman who keeps trying to do good, but usually ends up cutting everyone to sushi. Yojimbo who pretends to be a drunken mercenary, but is actually a secret agent for the Shogun, and then there's the third guy who's sent by the Shogun to see whats taking Yojimbo so long, he's got his own secret army and a two shot pistol for when he doesn't feel like slicing people in half. The main plot problem I encounter for samurai flicks is of course rather than working as a team like a good D&D adventuring party the main characters end up squaring off to see who's the better swordsman. Zatochi and Yojimbo both draw blood when fighting but avoid killing each other. Unfortunately Yojimbo kills pistol guy so no sequel for him. "Incident at Blood Pass" is another of my favorites with a somewhat similar plot, but this time the gold is just passing through and no

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blind swordsman, only the drunken samurai. How about you? Ever figure out how to convert a samuria flick into an adventure? How'd it work out. P.S. One thing I like about samuria flicks not many reoccurring villians. Once the two guys draw swords, usually only one of them is walking away.

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Every man a once and future King November 08, 2011 Finally made it through King Arthur the truth behind the legend by Rodney Castlon. I have had an interest in the real King Arthur since writing my high school research paper on it, using a different book by Geoffry Ashe for most of the facts. Chock full of interesting facts and tid-bits. Chapter one boils the hard evidence down to two mentions in the Easter Annals. Chapter Two is a very thorough going over of the literature we do have, including stone markers, genealogies of Welsh and Irish Kings, and poetry, as well as books. An 1120 manuscript is the source for both The Easter Annals and Nennius's Historica Brittonum. Although Nennius wrote his part in 830 A.D it is proposed that the Easter Annals were added later, about 960-970 A.D. Nennius draws from several earlier documents and has been somewhat discredited in that he already including some of the more mythological elements in his descriptions of Arthurs life. Gildas's Book of Complaints written about 540 AD does mention the battle of Badon, Arthur's victory over the Saxons, but fails to mention Arthur. Even more troubling is that Arthur may actually be a nickname (Welsh for bear = arth). Gildas does mention one of his contemporary kings as "the driver of the chariot of the bears stronghold". The Anglo-Saxon chronicle written by the other side is most notable for a lack of much expansion during the 50 years of the supposed time of the battle of Badon. It of course fails to mention Arthur or even the battle of Badon itself. All of this may seem like skimpy evidence, but given my experiences with histories of this time period I am inclinded to give Arthur the benefit of the doubt (After reading an interesting book on the battle of Caane, you

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know the famous battle battle where Hannibal whipped the Romans, which points out the main record we have of it is a history written 80 years after fact by the grandson of one of the generals, I am inclined to examine ancient history with a lax view to the documentation). The rest of the book dispenses with trying to further verify the existence of Arthur and launches into a description of what we do know about Sixth century Briton. She-who-must-be-obeyed has promised a battle map of one of the hill forts proposed as a location for Camelot complete with hall (know from the post hole pattern). Unfortunately since Camel is Briton for windy, there are a lot of river Camels in Cornwall and Wales. There are also a great many kingdoms, apparently the Britons didn't have mayors, sheriffs, or village elders, just kings. Gildas points out that if the Briton kings had spent less time fighting each other, they might have done a better job of beating the Angles and Saxons. One of my favorite parts of the book is its description of Tintagel, part Castle, part Christian Church, and part pagan ritual site. I especially like the carved foot print in the rock, that book speculates was used by ancient Kings to swear allegiance to the land. There is also the tunnel carved in the rock leading nowhere, a grave that is purported to change size periodically, and numerous other oddities. All in all an interesting dive into the historic Arthur. The back has a bibliography of numerous other books on the historical Arthur, apparently British scholars have been at this subject a while.

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Skyrim the RPG? November 29, 2011 Like many people I suspect, I spent most of Thanksgiving playing the new Elder Scrolls computer game Skyrim. The Elder Scrolls has always had an interesting skill based system that I thought might make a good paper and pencil RPG. This time they have boiled the stats and skills down to the mere essentials. Only three stats Magicka, Health, and Stamina. Eighteen skills broken down into three categories Combat: Smithing, Heavy Armor, Block, Two handed, One Handed, and Archery Stealth: Light Armor, Sneak, Lock picking, Pickpocket, Speech, and Alchemy Magic: Illusion, Conjuration, Destruction, Restoration, Alteration, and Enchanting I think 5 schools of magic much more wieldy than D&D traditional eight, and most of them seem to be well balanced in power. I need to remap the spells into a more d20 format. I like that each of the paths has its own route for making things. I think the alchemy part is the one system I enjoy most although its a lot of book keeping for a pen and paper game, perhaps I just need to pass out reagent points as treasure. Enchanting runs a close second, although I'd just give out charge soul gems as treasure rather than having to charge them. I have yet to put together the evil little axe I used in Morrowind to conquer the world, it gave the damage it did back as health for me, the Gaulador Black blade

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seems similar but it does only 10 health per hit, and is constantly running out of charges. Smithing is O.K. but maybe not as powerful as the other two (or perhaps I haven't got the knack yet). I do wonder who makes all the pots and pans, clothing, wooden bowls, cups ecetera since all you can make is armor, perhaps I'll go back to 3rd editions craft. I will NOT be using 4th edition's "yeah you can make that, just mark of the gold you would spend to buy it" system. Rather than use a check every time you use a skill (due bad experiences with Runequest) I think I'll go with using experience to buy skill levels. Skill checks will be done by rolling a d20 and adding you skill to beat a difficulty (not sure how the computer does it). I have to reserve judgement on the skill perks system until I understand it better. Playing my traditional battle mage wearing heavy armor and swinging a one handed axe, while throwing spells with the other I ended up with my perks scattered all over the map, including a few throw into enchanting and smithing. A more optimal character would be focused in a few skills and just buy stuff from NPCs, but who'd make the Fortify two handed while having 13% weakness to frost, and 4% barter increase potions then (Strangely enough the NPC seem to pay extra for the extra properties, and I'm more than happy to sell it to them 'cause I sure as heck ain't drinking it). Well I think the big computer is done rebooting, so its back to the land of Nords for me again. Unfortunately, either the graphics card or the sound system is a bit unstable cranking out the horse power needed for Skyrim, so its save early, save often and reboot as necessary. Fortunately I have played many such games before and am patient, I figure its just the computer saying "O.K. its time for a break to do other things".

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Old school Assassins (Rant but short) January 23, 2012 Ever since their appearance in Blackmoor,Assassins have been problematical. Their all-or-nothing instant kill is anathema good role playing, and fits poorly with the rest of the rules. Second edition was right to remove them. In my opinion "Blackmoor" was the rules supplement which revealed that just because it was "Official" didn't mean it was either fun or a good idea.

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Skyrimic Sandbox Roll-up Chart January 23, 2012 Yes Alduin is dead! Now I can spend a little time on my long neglected blog. Thumbing through my Skyrim clue book (I learned long ago that good clue book can turn a game from a frustrating few hours to several months enjoyment) I encountered a little table with seemed to cry roll-up chart so here it is (roll d20 whenever your sandbox generator calls for habitation): 1. Hunter Camp 2. Lumber Mill 3. Military Fort 4. Military Camp 5. Mine 6. Orc Stronghold 7. Town 8. Animal Den 9. Bandit Camp 10.Dragon Lair 11.Dragon Priest Lair 12.Draugr Crypt 13.Dwarven City 14.Falmer hive 15.Forsworn Redoubt 16.Giant Cam 17.Hargraven Nest 18.Spriggan Grove 19.Vampire Lair

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20.Warlock lair Be warned this chart is very old school in two respects. One, the putzy Hunter Camp is the same chance as the high level Dragon Priests Lair. Two, the exact details of what each encounter means are left to the DM (I may to flesh out the encounters a bit more later). Well that's it for now, I am back to the conundrum of how to rise to the top of the assassin's guild without slaughtering a lot of innocent people.

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Skyrimic Sandbox Chart revised February 04, 2012 Hopefully some of you noticed the roll-up chart I posted a few days ago (unfortunately I double posted on that day got lots more hits on the second one). Alright, so the last iteration was a little too flat for my tastes (too many chances for the first level adventurers to be eaten by dragons). So here is a new one sorted by distance from civilized area. Decide which zone you are in and roll a d6 to determine the settlement.

Settled 1. Lumber Mill 2. Military Fort 3. Town 4. Mine 5. Bandit Camp 6. Roll on Borderlands Borderland 1. Hunter Camp

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2. Military Camp 3. Orc Stronghold 4. Forsworn Redoubt 5. Animal Den 6. Roll on Wilderness Wilderness 1. Giant Camp 2. Spriggan Grove 3. Draugr Crypt 4. Dwarven City 5. Falmer hive 6. Roll on Places of Mystery Places of Mystery 1. Hargraven Nest

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2. Dragon Lair 3. Dragon Priest Lair 4. Vampire Lair 5. Warlock lair 6. Dungeon Masters choice Design notes: The bandit camp and animal den could be easily swapped, same for the falmer hive and hargraven nest. There is not necessarily a clear demarcation between wilderness and places of mystery, but I tried to put the tougher encounters on the places of mystery chart

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A gaming session that will live in infamy (rant) March 09, 2012 Well my character yesterday successfully proved that you can die in fourth edition D&D, if the dragon breaths on you twice in the same round. However, more egregious than that was watching one cowardly player decided that even though he was not was not even bloodied yet it was time to run. If anyone needed an example of what morale is they only needed to watch what happened next, as with the exception of one brave dragonborn (as he pointed out, in the new Forgotten Realms dragonborn HATE dragons) the rest of the party decided that the smart more was to run. This left the bloodied dragon holding the field with a mere 60 hit points left. The fact that the encounter ended at the map edge in typical 4 edition fashion made the running away alot more succesful than it would have been in an old school game. Even so, the wizard nearly bought the farm as well , as the cowardly player opened the portcullis the wizard had been firing magic missles from behind to make his escape. This allowed the dragon to swoop down on the next turnand nearly finish the wizard as well . If had not been for the late rememberance of a "wizards escape" power and a DM that allowed take backs the wizard would have died as well. Of course the wizard used his teleport five squares to leave the map. As my character's corpse is branded with it's new slave tattoo, my character invokes the infernal powers of the Internet (think Servilla in the TV series ROME episode Death Mask ) to curse the cowardly player's character forever (or the next three death saving throws, which ever comes first).

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Cowardice has a new name and it is "HUG BOT Mach 2" Embedded File ()

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Regreting the Passing of M.A.R. Barker March 28, 2012 I am a bit late with this as he passed March 16th. One of the greats of the early years, his Empire of the Petal Throne is still a most playable game, and a lot more clearly written than original D&D which was the alternative at the time (although I never liked his let's randomly roll for spells). We have him to thank for one of the first introductions of skills to the game. His system for this is still better than a lot of implementations done today. I found the night I spent with M.A.R. Barker at a Chinese Restaurant more memorable than the game of Rail Baron I played with Gary Gygax.

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H is Halls of Undermountain April 08, 2012 O.K. so I am not really doing the alphabet thing, I am lucky to to post once a week let alone 26 posts in a month (By the way I did think the Tekumal project was doing an awsome job with their alphabet post introduction to the world of Empire of the Petal Throne, but then they have a big weatlh of marterial to draw from). I wanted to instead post my review of the new 4th edition supplement "Halls of Undermountain". One might think that this yet another attempt by WoTC to cash in on past glories by slapping the name of some old favorite on random shlock to boost sales (Witness the re-release of "The Tomb of Horrors", yes the tomb is in there but its EMPTY!?). However "Halls of Undermountain" is actually pretty good and somewhat true to the end-of-first edition orginal . It contains the entire first level of Undermoutain and 79 keyed rooms for encounters (unlike the little tiny piece of undermountain detailed in the 3.5 edtion "Return to Undermountain). It even has RANDOM TABLES to fill the rooms which are not keyed. Although I have not yet pulled out the old first edition boxed to do a room by room comparision, the new encounters do include many mysticaly wacky but deadly tricks and traps that are characteristic of the first edition. Unfortunately it also contains some of the "no, you can't dissamble the trap and rebuild to use it against montser, because it only works in this room, Why? because the DM says so." I found so objectionable in the first edition. It has also gone back to a old school format for presenting the encounters, by simply giving a page reference in the monster vault for each monster in the encounter (thank God, if they had tried to lay out 79 enounters with

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a battle map and detailed stat block for everyone this book would be 500+ pages and weigh a ton). For those who like plot there are three adventures strung together. However, these plots are accomplished by roaming the dungeon, and there is very little to keep the players from wandering off on their own. Unfortunately once they hit fifth level their ability to wander down to the 2nd level is limited, because this supplement only cantains level one. Given WoTC production schedule, I will have to wait a least six months for 2nd level, and probably and enternity for the twisted caverns of level 4 (I have been waiting for the twisted caverns ever since they decided to jump to 5th level in the second boxed set, I suppose I could write my own twisted caverns since there is actually part of a map in "Return to Undermountain", but I have always wondered what Ed Greenwood put in his.) All in all I think that "Halls of Undermountain" is one the best 4th edtion supplements I own, and I am eagerly awaiting the chance to try it out on some unsupecting victims er. I mean players ;)

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Doom of future past May 19, 2012 Well I was going going to post about Journe comparing the first edition to later ones and provide some links. Being one of the few people on the planet with a first edition Journe, I can do that. She-who-must-be-obeyed picked me up a copy for my birthday at Gencon when it first came out. Most of the awesome Miles Teves artwork (the best thing about Journe) has been reproduced in later editions. The less said about the awful Journe computer game the better. Then I thought I'd post about writing about my own roleplaying game (I am going to write one real soon.or not); how I thought that classes, feats, powers, and skills were a bit redundant; and how my game would have only skills and powers. She-who-must-be-obeyed suggest using a skill tree, so I hunted up an image of that weird sphere grid from Final Fantasy X (my favorite skill tree, you can be anything you want, its just going to cost you). I will post my dungeon based on the maps in the book "the Complete Valley of Kings" once I get them drawn. I was going to post She-must-be-obeyed notes on Arthurian campaign setting based what we know about dark age Britian, but she tells me her 30 pages of handwritten notes are not ready yet. I did dig out Dungeon Masters Guides for 1st, 2nd, and 3.5 editions so she could work on her random treasure table table based on stuff found in dark age hordes. Unfortunately the copy of Diablo III I picked up at the Gamestop yesterday is calling "play me, Play Me!, PLAY ME!!!" so none of this other stuff will get done for a while.... Boy did I call it. Past midnight in Ohio and I still haven't gotten past

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the setup bug. Guess I should have blogged instead.

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Diablo III so far May 23, 2012 Well finally exorcised the installer demon and got the game running last night (it took downloading the installer files from a third party site). Unfortunately it is playing like a dumbed down Diablo II. My favorite character class (Amazon) is missing, and rather than have a skill tree my Barbarian seems to have Hobson's choice for skills (at this level you get skill x take it or leave it). Not sure what Blizzard was thinking, but I think they may have jumped the shark on this one.

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Carcosa!? June 01, 2012 I have marked this review with the chess symbol for gambit (!?). I picked up Carcosa the new hardback edition up at my local game store. It falls to me being employed and relatively well payed to buy stuff at the store to ensure that our Thursday night table does not given to the Magic players, so I am always on the lookout for small press stuff, the owner knows this and stocks things other than mainstream. I found the writing very inspiring for those interested running weird Lovecraftian game. I am not enough of an affectionatio of the Cthulhu mythos to know how much information is new to this book and how much comes from the novels, but this book exudes eerie creepiness. However, the Thursday night crowd was disappointed that the book was marked with an adult content sticker due to human sacrifice themes rather than actual sex. It is nicely illustrated with pen and ink drawings and different sections of the book are tinted with grayish green and purplish pink. I can definitely use the monster list, and think the spacee alien weapons, and random robot tables may come in handy as well. I am less down with the Sorcerer class having to haul around a large quantity of different colored human sacrifices (there are 13 different colored human races including the new colors of jale and ulfire, as well as dolm which is a combination of ulfire and blue). There is also the problem that the Socorer has a significant risk of being eaten by whatever he conjurers and the monsters are going to bash his skull in long before he completes his 5 minute ritual. The random roll-up table for what sided dice to roll for your hit dice seemed overly chaotic, even though I did understand the authors statement that

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actually gives the party a shot against those 59 hit dice, because the monsters could be using 4 sided this time. I doubt I will be using the campaign map or the sample single hex sandbox, but some of the encounters from these may sneak their way in to other things I run. Luckily for me the author has given permission to use his book any way I see fit. In summary not a good pick for those on a limited budget, but filled with ideas to riff off of; "Old schoolly" in the way of the Ardiun Grimoire and the Book of Ebon bindings.

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Dungeon Crawl Classics the good, the bad, the funky June 09, 2012 Just picked up my copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics. Although I did not find it at a booth at Origins, as I had hoped for (Origins was pretty much OSR deprived, I only found one booth with much OSR stuff), my local game store got it in the next week. My reaction is a bit bittersweet. I think it is a perfectly playable game, many people will have a great hoot with one-offs using this system. However it incorporates a large dose of random lethality that will inhibit long term character development, and leave many characters, not retired but so gimped up as to be no fun to play. The good is that it is a large book at a reasonable price, it is published under the open gaming license (yay!!! that's a big plus in my book) and play could be a hoot. The bad limited character classes and few options to make them unique (although this is typical OSR), your character could explode, randomness instead of game balance (more on this below). The funky, using different size dice instead of changing target numbers, arcane check charts for casting spells. Both these ideas are definitely out-of-box thinking, but look like they'll work. Thing that worries me the most is the randomness. Randomness in itself is not bad. However random tables with small but finite catastrophic occurrences tend to tilt out of balance quickly (subject to both the long tail and black swan events for you economic statistic junkies). Those players who always role well will prosper under this system, folk like with often sub-average luck are screwed.

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I go down the well June 30, 2012 OK, OK so I finally weakened and signed up for the Rappan Athuk Kickstarter. You can climb down the well too, but you better hurry because the Kickstarter ends Monday July 2nd 4:59pm EDT. I always swing hot and cold about these things. Giving money to strangers for things they haven't produced yet is risky buisiness. I am so glad that She-who-must-be-obeyed talked me out of funding Greg Stafford's "Hero Wars" as that game came out nothing like I wanted. I did sign on with Wolfgang Bauer for Halls of the Mountain King, but found the waiting for him to get it done torture, and found the concept of having to pay extra to comment on the procces a bit absurd. Although I like Wolfgang's stuff, I am happier buying it when it comes out instead of signing up in advance, besides bragging rights for collectable .pdfs is a bit limited (it's not like your friend are going to spot them on the virtual bookshelf and ask). I also signed up for Bill Webb's Slumbering Tsar. That was close to two years of waiting agrivated by having the installments show up for sale on Drivethrough RPG slightly before I got the e-mail to pick up my prepaid copy. However, he did actually send out the hardbound copy last month. So why did I sign up for this one? 1. I like Bill's stuff (I have been using the old Necromancer modules in my home game for several years) 2. Bill has a proven track of delevering on his promises (see Slumbering Tsar comments above) 3. There's too much cool swag added to the kickstarter to pass up 4. She-who-must-be-obeyed is still asleep and will never know...

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So in my moment of weakness I have signed up to re-buy a dungeon I have purchased twice already. Am I signing up for your kickstarter? Not unless I have bought stuff from you before and liked it, you have a proven track record of finishing stuff and delivering it close to ontime, and 800 of my internet friends jump on first to drive the swag pile into a irristable heap. P.S. was severly temped by the hand drawn maps, but it was a litte too much chedder for me to swing

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Adventure Burner not so hot July 01, 2012 I really wanted to like "Adventure Burner" it being the final book to complete my set of "Burning Wheel" (at least for now). It has been a bit of a "Unicorn" having missed out on it two years ago at Gencon. I spotted Thursday and put on my list of things to pick up, but wanted to scan the whole hall before committing. When I came back Friday it was "sold out". Therefore when I spotted it Origins a few weeks back, I snapped it up. It being one of the few purchases I made at Origins I had high hopes (see prior post for the Old School bust at Origins, of course at its heart Origins is a boardgame convention). Unfortunately Adventure Burner did not meet the standards of the other Burning Wheel books. Most of the other books have been thought provoking with a lot of open endedness, and hooks for adding in (Magic Burner is my favorite). Not Adventure Burner, Three adventures, a bunch of NPC to specific to be of much use, and rules errata for the main book (which should have been its own internet download, but may account for the high sales rate at Gencon). And the introductory adventure, the worst of the worst, an ugliness know to my old school buddies as the "loot fight". *Spoiler* A scenario of four adventurers uncovering a magic sword a dwarf, an elf, a mage and a ratman, each with his own use for the item. Can it be solved via wicked roleplaying, to avoid mass interparty slaughter? No according to the scenario this is not possible. Even though they suggest a reasonable solution in their explanation, they also explain that all the NPCs will act like dicks to prevent it. Their soultion the so-called "test of wits"(more like nit-wits) a dice rolling

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contest leaving one player the victor and every one else to go home crying, and not involving any actual thinking on anyone's part. All in all a sadistic adventure designed to give players a railroad ride down the mindfrack express. If this what your offering as an introduction, I'm giving your game a pass. I like my roleplaying about adventurers banding together to overcome the trials of a hostile world, not carving each other to bits. The other adventures? A small village were the guy who summons you to help actually wants to sacrifice you to his evil god (not one of my favorites), and a reasonably straight foward micro-dungeon which is far too short (Tony Dowling's map is however the highlight of this book). *end spoiler* No other adventure hooks, no broad campaign settings, no dialogue what makes a good adventure anyways, just these. After reading this I had to go back and reread the other Burning Wheel books and see if I had missed the inner darkness in these as well. Nope, they are solid offerings and expansive in nature. I think the Burning Wheel mechanics are a solid game system (although the baroque style makes them a little hard to understand), and I actually think having character motivations makes for roleplaying opportunaties. However, I think that substituting "roll playing" for roleplaying and letting the dice descide how you act on you beliefs is a bad idea (might as well play a real dice game like craps and park you brain at the door). It is for advocating this sin that I must give "Adventure Burner" the thumbs down. Burning Wheel can be played just fine without it (OK you might want to peek at the rules revisions, but skip the rest of it).

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Happy 4th of July July 04, 2012 Here's a little music to help celebrate Embedded File () and a little more music just because I like it Embedded File ()

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Classes, Skills,Feats and Powers an analysis July 21, 2012 Classes, Skills, Feats and Powers, Fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons has included all of these, and its beginning to look like fifth edition will also. Therefore, I thought it might be a good time for for discussion of their origins and purposes. Class is of course the oldest showing up in 0e D&D. It for the most part a simple and straight forward way of distinguishing roles within the party. Chose a class and you have chosen your role. I feel many people turn to OSR rules to retrieve this simplicity. However, to me it has always felt arbitrary (of course I was always notorious for my 2nd edition Fighter/Magic-user/Thief characters). 3rd edition byzantine labyrinth of classes, prestige classes and subclasses I did not enjoy. Skills are the next to show up, first as an augment to class in Empire of the Petal Throne, then as the only distinguisher in Runequest. I have always admired Runequest's skills only approach to character building, although starting skills and skill advancement proved challenging for me in actual play. The min-max'ers I played with made a total farce of Runequest, by trying to spot and dodge everything, and switching through a Swiss army array of weapons during combat to maximize their chances of advancement. Many online roleplaying games seem skill based as well (although tracking actual skill usage in computer games is much easier than than a table top game). I do like the Elder Scrolls Morrowwinds combing of class and skill by giving each particular grouping of skills

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a cool class name. Skills begin to creep into D&D with the late edition Advanced Dungeon and Dragons supplements Dungeoneers Survival Guide and Wilderness Survival Guide non-weapon proficiencies (people always have a bad reaction to these supplements, I always thought they plugged some holes which needed filling and were much better than the gamebreaking classes {*cough* cavalier} introduced in the prior Unearthed Arcana). 3rd edition of course has baroque plethora of skills with weird and arbitrary restrictions on which classes can take which skills (Pathfinder does not seem to fix this). 4th edition does a brilliant job of skill simplification reducing down to 17 skills, although they retain the arbitrary class restrictions. However in 4th edition I miss both the craft and profession skills for making stuff, and think the four social skills (bluff, diplomacy. intimidate, and streetwise) a bit redundant (especially since they are all charisma based). Feats, although foreshadowed in point buy systems such as the Fantasy Trip and Fantasy Hero, come into full bloom in 3rd edition. At first glance they just seem like a extra something that is reasonably harmless. However with hundreds of them, some are so poorly written that they are just the loophole required to turn a cleverly min-maxed character into to a total game wrecker, things like a sixth level bard with +30 diplomacy, or a druid capable of turning into a Stoper and ripping the arms off of Bluespawn Godslayers (O.K. it was an 18 level druid). 4th edition the feats are a little more controlled, but still remain the pry bar for total game wreckage. I also see everyone taking the exact same feats, so as something to act as a distinguisher between characters (I believe that was their original purpose) they are a total failure. If I was

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writing 5th edition they would go away. Power are new with 4th edition, although they were certainly foreshadowed in computer games, and bear a strong kinship with spells which have been around since the beginning. It is perfect solution to the inequality power between the exponentially increasing power of 0e spellcasters, and the linear power increase of the 0e fighters. Now rather than waiting around while the spellcasters mow down the ravening hordes, the melee specialists have some explosive fireworks of their own. I do have some problems with 4th edition turning down the room clearing powers of prior edition spellcasters (this is usually downplayed by making the monsters come at the players in evenly paired groups, but does make the hundred orc rushes of 0e to 3e {usually manned by my warhammer fantasy army} a thing of the past). All in all powers (I like to think of them as fighter spells) were a decent addition to the game (I mean why should magic users have all the fun?). In summary: Classes good for their time but obsolete, Skills good in small quantities with strict controls, Feats no thank you!, Powers good but need to be balanced. So my ideal game is a game of skills and powers (with perhaps cool class names for different mixes). Since 5th edition seems unlikely to head in this direction I guess I'll have to write my own.

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The Rulenomicon August 10, 2012 So I finally broke down and bought an e-book reader (a nook). This has finally given me chance to download my internet .pdf collection an start reading through. Once I realized I have over 90 different files in my "other roleplaying games" directory and that the they overwhelmed the 1 GB of storage for things not purchased at Barnes&Nobles ($30 and a 32 GB expansion card fixed the storage problem) I thought I needed to try and organize and and least list them. I'll try add links and capsule review of the more interesting ones later, A Song of Ice and Fire Adventurer, Conqueror, King Adventures Dark and Deep Adventures Fantastiques Adventures in the New Kingdoms Age of Shadows Adventuring Party The Adventurers Tale Adventures Under the Laughing Moon Altus Adventum Arduin (revised) Ars Magika Artesia Azamar Bandits and Basilisks Burning Wheel

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Barbarians of Leumria Barbarians of the Aftermath Basic Fantasy Brickmasters Challenger Chaos and Barberie Circe The Cog Wars Crimson Blades of Ara Crypts and Things Dark Dungeons Dark Fantasy of Sundrah Dragon Warriors Dungeon Slayer Engines and Empire Elegia Errant Fate Fabled Lands 52 page Rulebook Fire and Sword FUBAR Geasa Gods and Monsters The Grey Book Grom Harnmaster Heros and Other Worlds

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HeroQuest (the G Stafford one) Humanspace Empires Impresa Express Ingenium Jorune Judges Guild Universal Labyrinth Lord Lady Blackbird Lamentations of the Flame Princess Legends Lost Roads of Lociam Maelstrom Mazes and Minotaurs Maze of Torment Microlite Mini six Myth and Magic Novus Northern Crown Old School Hack Orignal Edition Delta OSRIC Pars Fortuna Peril Pirates and Privateers Pitch Platemail Raven Crowking' Fantasy Game Redbox Fantasy

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Redbox Hack Renegade The Riddle of Steel Runequest Saga Savage Swords of Antor Shakhan Siege Perilous Spellcraft and Swordplay Sword and Shield Swords and Wizardry The System Tibet Torch and Sword Tranchons et Traquons Under the Moons of Zoon Untold Vikings and Valkyries Wizards and Warriors World of Urtusk Zenobia

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And now for something completely different August 17, 2012 Here's a brief high jacking of my blog for the latest viral video about my day job. Why? Because IT"S MY BLOG! Embedded File () Unfortunately I look more like the white haired guy than the guy with the 'hawk. Male pattern baldness makes the 'hawk a young man's hair cut.

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Menzo"bore"nzan August 18, 2012 Nice art work, nice artwork, not much else. The new Menzoberranzan book was very disappointing to me. As one of the few 4e releases I had hopes. Splat books used to come with new monsters, new magic items, and least a feat or two, this does even have a theme. I skimmed the whole thing and didn't even spot a stat block. This book has: pages and pages of Drow households detailing the usual Drow depravities; Little thumbnail capsules of the districts without any adventure hooks; a Michelin guide to the shops and taverns of Menzoberranzan in case you are playing "silver and shopping"; a thumbnail guide to the underdark (this is almost interesting, but again no adventure hooks); and how to play a Drow (as you if wanted to play a boot licking, snivelling, conniving bastard, under the thumb of the murderous bitches of Loth and didn't know how [they've even got a card deck, sold separately of course, in case your not chaotic and treacherous enough on you own]).The old Menzoberranzan boxed set was reasonably good, if you want to know about Menzoberranzan get that one, or just read the Drizzt Do'Urden novels. DON'T GET THIS ONE

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GET THIS ONE

P.S. Note to WoTC: If you want to sell stuff from your website don't bury the new releases four clicks down. Putting a link to the Menzoberranzan boo■k on your Rise of the Underdark "Everything Drow" page might be smart also.

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Summer of Kickstarters August 25, 2012 O.K. so the kickstarter bug has bit me again. I am in on Dungeon a Day. Still 32 hours to go so you can be in on it too! I am not in on Bones although I still have 9 hours to change my mind. As such I thought this was an apropos time for some good old groginardian angst on the subject. As a rocket scientist I am sufficiently well paid (although not lawyer/doctor rich) that dropping $50 to $100 a month is not going to put a dent in either the grocery or rent money. However, my frugal upbringing (and she-who-must-be-obeyed) does not allow me to tie up large quantities of cash on projects with no quick return on investment. So,as I stated on my previous kickstarter post I am looking for kickstarters from people with a proven track record, whose stuff I have bought and liked before. I also seem to be tending to jump in on projects already funded with lots of swag. That being said, both these kickstarters meet all of the stated criteria. I am signed up Dungeon a Day in hopes of picking up a complete .pdf of the Mega-Dungeon Monty Cook put together. I already have through level 8 saved on my hard drive from the years subscription I purchased when it first came out. However since I found downloading a dungeon one itty, bitty piece at a time damn annoying, so I let my subscription lapse (WoTC the same is true of Dungeon and Dragon Magazine as well, I mean how much would it cost to hire some intern to spend a half hour a month combining all the little .pdfs into one big .pdf?). Unfortunately the lack of closure in owning half a dungeon gnaws at my soul (it does not apparently

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bother Monty, since he jumped ship and past the completion to lesser mortals sometime after I left the project [probably more on bait-and-switch authoring in a future blog]). Given the above conditions, the chance to pick up the complete edition for $50 was irresistible. I mean the original subscription was $87 a year! So I am in. On the surface Bones looks like something I would jump at as well. I mean I like Reaper Miniatures, they have some totally fantastic sculpts. As others on the web have pointed out the $100 pledge gets you an insane amount of miniatures. I also think that the Reaper plan to raise the capital needed to convert their production over to a new process is a perfect fit for Kickstarter. However I am not fond of hard resin models, having had troubles with them in the past (difficult to glue, break easily [many of my miniatures have been subject to the nose-dive from the table], and bubbles in all the wrong places). I cannot tell from the information on the Reaper web site exactly what kind of resin they are using (it might even be something soft like thermoplastic, although fine detail seems to rule this out), but am leery of it (the fact that they are using superglue to reposition is a tip-off its not my favorite plastic polystyrene, the stated objective of cheap is not promising either). I am also concerned that although it is a vast quantity miniatures, many are genres I would not use in my game and would end up siting around unpainted taking up storage space in a house already bursting at the seams with miniatures. March 2013 is also way too long for my impatient soul to wait for something. Getting everything out to the currently 14,869 backers will be a logistics nightmare (as they say in new product development, the second worst thing that happens to

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you product is that it succeeds). I wish Reaper luck, I certainly will buy the specific models I want at the gamestore (although with 14,869 orders to fill new Reaper stuff may not ship to the game stores for a while). Besides this looks like direct competition for my evil plan involving 3D printers, polystyrene, and a print-on-demand website. Go ahead and check it out for yourself (my resolve weakens every time I peek at the kickstarter website), but I am out.

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