Month: September 2008

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Elves & Espers Reboot

Tonight we started up the Elves & Espers campaign again, this time using Savage Worlds instead of my half-baked Classic D&D as SF homebrew.  I reworked the existing characters using the SW rules, but abandoning the back-story where they all came from a pre-Apocalyptic domed city (a la Fallout).  Instead they’re all beginning adventurers in one of the setting’s major futuristic cities:  New Ark City.

Unfortunately, little things in the very beginning often set the tone for the campaign, and this one got on the track to unimaginable horror… but from the GM’s point of view instead of the players… round about when the players started assigning names to their pregens.  In short order we had Bongo, Tank McSplatter of the Hobbit McSplatters, Josepi Antonio Vincente, Stanley McStan of Clan McStan, and Icca.  Oy.

update: Icca has been renamed Idariel 7

Continue reading “Elves & Espers Reboot”

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Who We Are

Just in case we get some new readers from joining the RPG Bloggers Network, I thought a short introduction would be in order:

Joshua – me, host and primary author of this blog.  More-often-than-not GM of our group.  Started gaming with the D&D White box back in mumblety-four and been playing, mostly as GM, ever since.  A soft touch as a GM, I rarely kill characters outright unless they’ve really asked for it or we’re playing something that demands a high body count.  I have a weakness for making up new settings or trying new systems.  My longest running setting is the Land of Neng, which I co-created with Russell.

Russell – one of my oldest friends (we went to college together), and guest GM when he’s in town; he lives in Southern California now, but his current circumstances place him near enough to visit about every other week for half the year.  For the past few years, mostly GMs D&D 3.5 because it’s easier to find experienced players in his area that way; 4e looks to be changing that…  Also likes to make up settings and systems.  His Neng characters are Carlys eil Theastorr and Salaomer ein Ringoral.

Elyssa – my wife, and a newbie to RPGs.  She mostly prefers SF and modern-day to fantasy, and mostly likes playing kick-ass combat types.  Never GMs, and would probably look at me as if I’d gone crazy if I suggested it.  Does not yet have a Neng character.

Wendy – hardcore.  She LARPs, and is the Baroness of the local SCA realm.  Won’t GM, after a disastrous incident that she refuses to speak of to this very day. (Ok, she will if you ask, but my way sounds cooler.) Most easily teased at the table, so she takes a lot of grief over various things her characters have done over the years, only 80% of which is deserved.  Has had some World of Darkness stuff published.  Her primary Neng character is Merath eil Yahar, Justiciar of the Rose Kingdom.

Doug – rules monkey.  His super-power is discovering and exploiting the weak points of any gaming system: RPG, board game, or video game.  He’s the Karnak of RPG rules, and my homebrew still hasn’t fully recovered from how hard his first character broke it.  For any complicated game, people in our group hand him their character sheets and say “here, crock this.”  Occasionally GMs, generally one-or-two shots like his Steampunk StarWars adventure; unfortunately these tend to be when I’m out of town.  Likes to put on funny accents for his characters.  His primary Neng character is Jacob ein Senekal, Champion of the Rose Kingdom.

Paul – role-player.  His characters usually have some obvious personality hook, which he plays to the hilt.  The most notable example is probably his sorcerous cat-man Bastriel from my Rose Tower campaign, who can be summed up as “Cat” from Red Dwarf, but his characters can always be relied upon to follow their drives rather than the tactical/strategic optimum for the players’ goals.  This is handy when you’re GMing him.  GMs himself very rarely, a couple sessions of Exalted here, an Ars Magica campaign that never got off the ground there, mostly from time constraints. His Neng character Bastriel is currently Castellan of the Rose Tower.

Mike – wargamer.  Happiest with miniatures, maps, counters, and fiddly military details.  Makes his own cardboard tank models and such. Has published some of his own mini historical wargames, and had an adventure for 12 to Midnight published.  Cannot make up a name on the fly to save his life (he brings a chart for that).  Generally plays Lawful Good characters, no matter what the system or setting is; if he ever has a character who sells out the party to the forces of evil, the other players’ heads would explode.  Then they would assume that Doug had somehow mind-controlled him.  Can only play every other week, so a lot of the campaigns are deliberately organized so as to be “with Mike” campaigns or “without Mike” campaigns.  His primary Neng character is a priest of Baal named Eliezer.

Brian – story guy.  The only one likely to write a back-story for one of his characters, and the only one likely to write a post or recap here besides me.  GMs once-in-a-while, generally Star Frontiers or a WWII era pulp adventure using my homebrew system.  Unfortunately scheduling makes him even less likely to be able to show up than Mike.  His primary Neng character is Nathan of Port Autumn, a storyteller.

Dan – another hardcore RPG, LARPer, SCAer.  Moved here from Connecticut just to game with us.  Oh, sure, he’ll say it was because of his job, but we know the truth… Currently I alternate GMing with him. He runs a Warhammer 40K Inquisition setting using modified Star Frontiers rules (at least, I think that’s what they are), while I run… whatever.  His (brand new) Neng character is Kirak, a member of The Pack, a race of wolfmen.

Emeritus Members

Rob – former primary GM, famous for starting campaigns that never got beyond the first session.  His character in Neng was Esau, the Andorran archer. update: Rob points out that he did so run campaigns that went on for more than one session, and that’s certainly true.  That’s just not what his former players tease him about.  I have a lot of sympathy, because I get the same guff from them if I try a setting and it just doesn’t gel; that’s why I’ve deliberately moved towards running more one-shot or single adventure games, and only promoting them to campaigns if everything goes smoothly and the players are enthusiastic about having more of it.

Rachel – bequeathed with the Peripatetic Pants of Pity for the number of times her character lost his/her clothes in various adventures none of which were my fault at all, I swear. Anyway, I eventually had it that whenever her character (and later, other characters) lost their clothes, the Peripatetic Pants of Pity would magically appear so they could cover themselves.  Rachel was probably the funniest gamer I’ve ever played with, and the only one that I can recall where I literally fell off my chair laughing; I may relate that story some time if it’s not already covered in the recaps.  I have to check.  She moved to Canada, curse her.  She’s probably primarily responsible for the game group’s habit of adopting horrible accents.

Scott – generally had the strangest characters.  Probably the most memorable is Zobar the Zobarian, who is the one who inadvertently poisoned the children of the idyllic valley with poisoned apples in his feud with the Dire Pig and who eventually gained Cosmic Knowledge and became a babbling, cringing idiot.  He moved to Canada with his wife, Rachel.

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Am I A Lawful Good Dungeon Master?

Basically, I think I am, according to the classification scheme devised by "Patriarch917" of the RPG blog lolforinitiative:

  • lol for initiative: The Lawful Good Dungeon Master

    If you’re a Lawful Good Dungeon Master, you respect the authority of the rules of the game, and you believe that those rules are the best way of achieving your goals. You know that fair application of the rules promotes a sense of objectivity, and you want your players to know that you are objective. Your players know that if you tell them the Owlbear made a critical hit, the Owlbear made a critical hit. They know it because of the 20 staring up at them.

See also the Good Dungeon Master.
Important points are that I don’t view DMing as a contest between me and the players, and that I actually do try to apply the rules openly and fairly.  World Builder and Facilitator are both roles that I am comfortable with and pretty much the goals of my DMing.

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Star Trek: “Enemy Mine”

Cast

Kirk (Wendy)

Sulu (Elyssa)

Chekov (Paul)

Scott (Doug)

Act I

While travelling through an ion storm to take readings, the Enterprise picks up a distress signal.  The signal is from a colony ship crewed by a race the Federation has had only the briefest of prior contact with: the Cornuvians.  The Cornuvians are red-skinned, with small vestigial horns, giving them a devilish appearance. Their ship, the Paluk-Ta, suffered a direct hit from an asteroid, destroying its warp nacelle and killing the bridge crew; they have impulse engines, but the chief engineer was badly wounded and the colonists don’t know how to run the ship.

Because the ion storm requires them to keep the shields up, preventing them from using the transporters, Kirk decides to take the shuttle Galileo over to the Paluk-Ta with an away team consisting of Sulu, to helm the colony ship, Scotty, to repair the impulse engines, and Chekov, to speak in a funny accent.  As they approach the Paluk-Ta, a near miss from a fast asteroid causes the shuttle to crash in the Paluk-Ta’s landing bay.  Nobody is injured, but the Galileo can’t take off again, nor can another shuttle from the Enterprise land; for better or worse their fates are now entwined with the colonists aboard the Paluk-Ta.

They contact Spock, and are informed that the Enterprise’s sensors are detecting multiple energy sources in the asteroid belt, and there was a flare of energy not caused by the ion storm shortly before the near collision of the rogue asteroid with the Galileo.

Kirk meets the head of the colonists, a striking Cornuvian woman named Aman-Te.  The Enterprise crew notice that all the officers they meet are women, though there seem to be male crewmembers and file away the information under “suspicious.”  Aman Te attempts to negotiate the price of their rescue with Kirk, but he waves it away, citing Star Fleet policy helping ships in distress.  Aman-Te is at first upset, but then aquiesces.

Meanwhile Scotty has figured out the controls in the auxiliary bridge of the Paluk-Ta, and brought the impulse engines online.  At this point Chekov, manning the scanners, notices increased activity in the asteroid belt, and several asteroids start accelerating towards the Paluk-Ta!

(break for commercial)

Act II

Several asteroids begin accelerating towards the Paluk-Ta.  Kirk orders evasive maneuvers, and Sulu wrestles with the controls.  The bridge crew are flung about, but they manage to avoid any hits.  Kirk orders the Enterprise to approach, to fend off the asteroids with photon torpedoes, but the Enterprise finds itself the target of several new asteroids, too large to be deflected by torpedoes and Kirk orders them to withdraw to a safe distance.

Chekov reports more energy signatures in the asteroid belt, and scans indicate that there are mechanical devices active, but no life forms.  With further scans and some leaps of intuition, the crew deduce that the mechanical signatures belong to robot factories, probably abandoned mining installations and they are producing more and more robots in response to the new activity in the system.  Scotty realizes that the mining robots are configuring into magnetic accelerators and using them to toss nickel-iron asteroids at the intruders…essentially cobbling together huge rail guns, and as the factories expand they’ll be producing more and more of them.

Kirk orders Sulu to take the Paluk-Ta into the shadow of the one inhabitable planet of the system and hold it in orbit there, where it will provide cover from the enemy rail guns.  Sulu manages to get the great ship in position, but it wasn’t built with that sort of manuevering in mind, and the impulse engines are insufficient to hold it in a geostationary orbit close enough to the planet to provide cover.  In a few minutes they are either going to once again be exposed, or the ship will spiral out of control and crash into the planet below!

(commercial break)

Act III

Faced with the choice of either being raked by fire from the self-assembling rail guns or crashing, Kirk decides that they will have to land the Paluk-Ta on the planet’s surface, even though once it does so it will never be able to take off again.  The colonists will have to live in this system instead of their intended destination.  Informing Aman-Te of his decision, he is surprised when she and her crew offer no objection despite being visibly unhappy with the idea.

Sulu manages to bring the Paluk-Ta down safely, and they are safe from the robots for the time being.  Kirk is in the process of seducing Aman-Te to learn more about their situation when Spock communicates from the Enterprise that the ion storm is abating and they can bring the Enterprise into orbit and beam the away team back.

After returning to the Enterprise, they conceive the notion of beaming aboard one of the robot mining droids for examination.  They prove to be quite primitive modular systems, with each module having very limited programming; in absense of instructions from their creators, they’re following programs to maintain themselves and defend the mining claim from intruders.  Scotty manages to reprogram the droid to go into a maintenance-only, non-guard mode, and seek out other droids reprogram them to go into the same mode then seek out and reprogram other droids.  They re-release the droid and in a few hours the rail guns have disassembled themselves and the mining factories gone quiet.

Kirk contacts Aman-Te and the colonists, and promises them that he will bring their situation to the attention of Star Fleet and their home world as soon as possible, to see if anything can be done.  In the mean time, at least they are safe, and have a habitable planet to colonize…and an entire set of asteroid mining installations ready to serve them!

(closing credits)

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Known, but Forgotten

It had completely slipped my mind that Shane Hensley, the guy who designed Savage Worlds (and Deadlands before that) spent a couple years as one of the City of Villains designers.

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Challenge Ratings in SW

Since Russell was asking about a rule of thumb for how tough to make encounters:

From the Savagepedia (Creative Commons Share-Alike license):

6.1 Challenge Ratings

For all of you who need some “math” to backup your encounter choices – Clint has proposed a “Damage Rating” system for checking out the lethality of your encounters:

Try getting a Damage Rating for your PC’s. Take half their Strength plus the bonus from their “standard” weapon. You can average this to figure out a Damage Rating for the group as a whole. Then compare the Damage Rating t their opponents Toughness.

  • If it’s equal, then the PC’s have an edge over an equal number of opponents (where 2 Extras equal 1 Wild Card).
  • If the Toughness is a point higher, then the fight should be about “even.”
  • If the Toughness is 2 points higher, then it will be a (pardon the pun) tough fight (1 opponent for every 2 PC’s).
  • If it’s 3 points higher, the PC’s are in trouble (1 Opponent for every 4 PC’s). And generally the progression continues to double.

So if your group has an average Damage Rating of 5 and you throw a 10 Toughness npc at them, then you should have about 16 PC’s or understand that it may take 4 PC’s four times as long to take him down. From Clint Black

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Improvised Magic in Savage Worlds

Clint Black (Pinnacle Games forum admin and rules guru) posted an improvised magic system for SW a while back:

Improvised Magic Rules for Savage Worlds
By Clint Black

These rules were designed to simulate Arcane abilities where the user is only limited by their power and creativity. They could also function for characters whose powers are limited only by a theme or trappings or simply as a basis for creating new Powers.

All Powers start with a Primary Effect with a base Power Point cost. From there the cost can be increased or decreased based of choices of Modifications, Range, Duration, and Casting Time. Reductions in PP cost can never decrease the cost of a Power to less than 1 PP. Unless otherwise stated, the base Duration for all Powers is Instant, the base Range is Touch, and the base Casting Time is 1 Action.

Primary Effect: (OPP: Opposed Roll applies if target wishes) (Base cost: 1PP)

3d6 Damage: OPP for any Duration beyond Instant

Increase or decrease a single Trait one die type (two with a raise): OPP

Decrease a Derived Stat by 2 (Shaken with a Raise): OPP

Increase a Derived Stat by 2 (Target gains a related Edge with a Raise). Replace Edge with Monstrous Ability (+1 PP)

Summon a character or creature with 3 points in Attributes and 8 points for Skills

Negate one Wound or Fatigue Level applied within the last hour (two with a Raise)
-This Effect starts with a Duration of 3 (1/rnd). For +2 PP, the Duration is Permanent.

Negate or impose a –4 Situational modifier (-6 with a Raise) for a target or against a target (+1PP): OPP
-This Effect can have a multitude of functions. Examples: Negating a modifier for a target (Darkvision that negates Lighting penalties). Imposing a modifier for a target (Blindness that causes Lighting penalties). Negating a modifier against a target (Glittering dust that counters a target’s Invisibility). Imposing a modifier against a target (Basic invisibility).

Modifications

Reduce damage to 2d6 Damage (-1)

Uses Small Burst Template (+1)
Uses Medium Burst Template (+2)
Uses Large Burst Template (+4)
Caster chooses who in Template is affected (+1)

Per each +2 points to increase a summoned creatures Attributes (+1)
Per each +4 points to increase a summoned creatures Skills (+1)
Per 2 net Monstrous Abilities or Edges of summoned creature (+1)
Per Weakness or 2 points of Hindrances of summoned creature (-1)

Negate Wounds or Fatigue over an hour old (x3)
Negate non-permanent Crippling Injury (x6)

Multiply Power (+1)
-Allows one Power to be activated multiple times in one action. The character pays the base cost for each use. He rolls one Power Skill die for each activation separately, but only gets one Wild Die on the roll.

Duration
3 rounds (1/round) (+1)
1 minute (1/minute) (+2)
1 hour (1/hour) (+3)

Range
Smarts (Damage Powers have a Medium Range of 2x Smarts and a Long Range of 4x Smarts) (+1)
2x Smarts (Damage Powers have a Medium Range of 4x Smarts and a Long Range of 8x Smarts) (+2)
Line of Sight (Damage Powers suffer no penalties to hit for Range) (+3)

Casting Time
Full Action (No other actions at all, including Free Actions or movement) (-1)
1 minute (-2)
1 hour (-4)

All that stuff is obviously copyright Cliff Black, etc. but I reproduce it here for discussion.  Something along these lines might be suitable for the Ritual Magic that Russell wanted to have in his (ex)D&D setting.

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Test Driving Savage Worlds

Russell and I spent a bit of time playing around with Savage Worlds this weekend, both to entertain ourselves and to see how it would work as a replacement system for the D&D 3.5 campaign he ran last time he was in town (now that he’s seen it he has no desire to move to 4e, but 3.5 has a bunch of flaws that annoy him but he doesn’t feel like trying to fix now that it’s orphaned).

So we rolled up some characters (in a couple cases literally, using the SW:Fantasy Character Generator, the rest we just made up using the usual point-buy) and I ran him and Elyssa through most of a level of Under Xylarthen’s Tower.  Overall it went fairly well.  A couple of observations:

  • Chargen is not as fast as OD&D, naturally, but probably faster than 3e…and was getting faster as we got more used to it.  Most of the same sorts of decisions are there, but there are fewer options and modifiers.
  • For a dungeon crawl, monsters should be treated as Wild Cards unless they significantly outnumber the PCs.  I was running them as Extras (so one wound disposed of them and they didn’t get the Wild Die), and the party of 5 PCs was just running rough-shod over them.  As an experiment afterwards we went back and Russell and I reran the encounter with the two Giant Weasels, making the Weasels Wild Cards, and while the PCs still won handily, it took more than a round and they had to expend some effort; with better rolls, or if I had used more GM bennies the weasels might even have inflicted one or two wounds.
  • Even with the monsters as WCs, Novice Savage Worlds characters are more robust than OD&D 1st level; that’s probably a feature, not a bug.

There are a couple of rules I got wrong as we went, though nothing that really changed the outcome.  Still, it’s worth recording some of the stuff that I looked up in the FAQ afterward so I can use this post as a reminder:

  • When casting multiple Bolts, each Bolt gets 1 skill die, which counts as both the spellcasting and the to-hit die.  A Wild Card also gets a wild die, but only one for the set, and it can only substitute for one of the skill dice.
  • When firing into melee, a 1 on the skill die only counts as hitting an ally if the shot would miss; if you can turn the shot into a hit using the wild die, the fact you rolled a 1 doesn’t matter.
  • You only suffer a free attack against you for exiting melee if you were actually in melee (you’d made a Fighting roll against an adjacent opponent or vice-versa), not just for passing through a square that is “threatened.”  It really is different from Attacks of Opportunity.
  • You can move both before and after attacking, as long as you don’t exceed your Pace (or are willing to take the -2 penalty for performing an action on a turn when you ran).  That might trigger a free attack for withdrawing from melee, but again it’s different from Move then Attack in D&D.  This didn’t come up, but it makes popping out from cover, firing, and popping back a good strategy.

Since the dungeon crawl went reasonably well, we spent some time on Tuesday converting everybody’s characters from D&D 3.5 to Savage Worlds.  Mostly this was to see if we could do them justice without a lot of house rules; it’s no guarantee that Russell will actually elect to use Savage Worlds if we continue the campaign past the end of the current adventure.  Still, it was pretty easy to convert them using a couple of mechanical rules of thumb we came up with, paying no attention to the costs or prerequisites.  We took another pass, this time just making them up from scratch using the point-buy system, and actually was more satifactory, IMO.  Making decisions about what the character should have based on what seemed essential and useful to the concept, even if it wasn’t a one-for-one “he spent ranks in skill x, so he should have this die-size” just produced better, more distinctive and coherent, characters.

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They Ramble Again!

In honor of Brian showing up for the first time in ages, and Dan forgetting his notebooks, the Rambling Bumblers rambled again!  And they didn’t even bumble!

When last we left our intrepid adventurers, they were exploring the Ice Caverns of the Moth-People (TM).  They had accidentally destroyed the crystal array that produced the shaft of blue light that powered the whole underground Moth-people city when Jacob (Doug) had killed the guardian dragon, which then crashed into the crystal array at the bottom of the shaft the city was poised above.  Seeking to ameliorate the damage, they were exploring the lower reaches of the shaft, right above the broken crystal array, where they had found a room with three mysterious empty crystal sarcophagi, four doors (behind one of which they could sense unspeakable evil), and a swirly mesmerizing pattern on the floor.  The party was trying to find out how to open the door into the unspeakable evil. That’s where we broke off, three (?) or so years ago.

The intervening years having granted them wisdom, they were now puzzled as to why it seemed so important back then to open the evil doors, and why they had been so reluctant to mess with the blue crystals themselves, other than Merath/Wendy’s paranoia about the blue light being incompatible with her own Pink Light Power(TM).  After messing around with the sarcophagi, including both Merath and Bastriel (Paul) attempting to analyze the magic of them, they concluded that

  • the crystals were controlled by the sarcophagi
  • they sarcophagi were being interfered with by evil spells emanating from behind the evil doors and warding off the two other doors

So they set out to break the bonds between the spells from the Evil Door (an arched double-door composed of greenish marble and swirling iron tracery) and the sarcophagi, and then power up the crystal array.  Since this involved actually climbing into the goo in the crystal sarcophagi and allowing it to bond with them, there was a decent amount of bravery involved.  This they succeeded in doing, though the damage to the crystal array caused it to short-circuit and spew destructive energy around, melting one of the overhead bridges and crispy-frying the dragon’s corpse before they could shut it down.  This prompted a further bout of analysis and brainstorming, during which they ascertained

  • they couldn’t repair the blue crystals, but they might be able to replace them with Pink Light Power (TM)
  • it would be insanely dangerous to the Rose Kingdom to do so unless they completely eliminated the evil influence from beyond the Evil Door

So now that they had an actual reason to explore beyond the Evil Door, they warded Jacob against any form of compulsion (see!  Wisdom!) and he hacked the doors open.  A nauseous miasma of evil puffed out of the room beyond, starting to fill the sarcophagus chamber.  Merath threw up a Pink Light Power(TM) bubble around herself and found it warded off the miasma, so she expanded it to encompass the rest of the party.

Just then, a huge shadowy figure shambled out of the Evil Room.  Despite heavy flavor text from the GM, they held off attacking it until it was revealed that this was, as the players expected, Dan’s new PC…a giant-sized member of The Pack (the wolfman race).  Dan’s character (forget the name at the moment) had been exploring a ruin in a far off area near the Wildlands, and accidentally stepped across a Nephari spiral that took him into the Evil Room, where he was nearly overwhelmed by the evil miasma.

Proceeding into the Evil Room, warding of the miasma with Pink Light Power, they found a network of spell lines coming through the Nephari spiral in the center of the room.  They succeeded mightily in the attempt to break the curse lines and the evil influence was banished.  There was some talk about whether they could destroy the spiral completely, but they were reluctant to mess with it too much (more Wisdom!).

They returned to the other room, and then to the outer bridge over the shaft, where Merath used the Pink Light Power to eliminate the corpse of the dragon…which she managed to do without vaporizing the entirety of the bottom of the shaft, exhibiting more control over the destructive aspects of the Pink Light Power than she had been able to previously.  They still had no way to regrow the blue crystals, so they decided to attempt to replace them with pink…something…to share the power of the Rose Kingdom with the Moth kingdom.  Against all odds, this succeeded without apparent complications, and now the bottom of the shaft is covered with the stylized rose symbol of the Rose Kingdom, worked out in crystal, and a shaft of Pink Light Power springs forth, illuminating the cavern, powering the devices of the Moth city and, incidentally, annexing the Moth Kingdom to the Rose Kingdom.  The new political realities of the situation have yet to be conveyed either to Queen Moth-Ra or to the Rose Princess, but the RB congratulate themselves on a job well done!  And you know, for them it totally was.  They saved the people they intended to save, thwarted evil, and there was no collateral damage this session at all.