Month: March 2009

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Announcing Rollon!

I am pleased to announce that after countless hours in my secret underground labs, I am ready to release my creation on an unsuspecting world!

I give you…. Rollon!
Rollon Plugin – a plugin for rolling randomly on tables

The goal of Rollon is to make creating and rolling on tables as easy as editing a wiki, or cutting and pasting from a blog or web page.

Rollon is a TiddlyWiki plugin designed to let you roll randomly on tables, such as you might find in roleplaying games. When we talk about “tables” in Rollon, we don’t mean an HTML <table> , just a list of entries such as a Wandering Monster Table or Treasure Table might have. To Rollon, any tiddler containing a list is potentially a table, whether the list is an unordered list, an ordered list, a dictionary list, or even just text where each line starts with a number. This gives you a great deal of freedom in designing lists, or cutting and pasting them into your TiddlyWiki from other sources.

The basic idea of Rollon is that you create a very simple table of results, just a list really, and give it a name.  In TiddlyWiki terms, it’s just a tiddler.  Think of it as a page in a wiki, or a 3×5 card, if you will.  Most of the time creating a table is as simple as cutting and pasting from a blog post, web page, or other document, or just typing in a bunch of numbered lines.

You can then create a button in another tiddler (wiki page/card) just by typing <<rollon “The Table Name”>>.  When you save that, it will create a button in that tiddler.  When you press that button it creates a new tiddler, with a random element of the list.  Every time you press it, you get a new tiddler of the result.

But that’s not all!  If the line of the table you created itself contains a rollon macro, <<rollon “Some Other Table Name”>> then if that line is chosen, a random result from that table will be returned.  That means that you can have tables that refer to sub-tables… but more than that, you can have tables that contain text, where part of the text is a look-up into another table.  This lets you do things like :

<<rollon “Character Names”>> has <<rollon “3d6 * 10”> GP, and  <<rollon “Magic Items” 1d2>>

and so forth.

There are various parameters you can pass to roll multiple times, to roll different dice, to prompt the user for input, to change the separator character, and so forth.

Rollon requires TiddlyWiki, which I’ve mentioned before, but all that means is that you have to download an HTML file containing TiddlyWiki and the Rollon plugin to your local disk.  If you already have TiddlyWiki, perhaps because you’ve been using Uncle Bear’s TenFootWiki or World Building 101, then you can just import the Rollon plugin and go.

The version I’ve hosted at TiddlySpot includes instructions, and example tables such as the Powers and Perils Special Events table from Jeff’s Gameblog, the Grim’s Swords & Wizardry Random NPC chart, and A Rust Monster Ate My Sword’s Captcha-inspired Character Names. Rollon itself is licensed under a the Artistic 2.0 license.  That means it is free.   Free!  You are free to copy it, use it, distribute it, alter it and distribute that (with certain provisos about credit and naming), whatever.  (The example tables are copyright their respective authors, and are linked and credited in the examples.)

So what are you waiting for?  Check it out!  The link is to a live version that you can play around with (though you can’t save it back to the web, you can save it to your hard-drive).  Let me know what you think, and whether you find any bugs or can think of enhancements that you’d like.  Planned enhancements include some helpers for capitalization, pluralization, number and gender agreement, saved variables and things to make text read more consistently (e.g. you could make is so that it would correctly say “1 Orc” or “2 Orcs”), as well as a more lenient format for tables that contain ranges (something like 1-2 Nothing, 3-6 A monster, 7-9 A monster and a treasure, 10 treasure currently has to be formatted as a dictionary list; it would be convenient for it to also just accept that if the start of a line looked like number-number it was a range and the rest of the line was the entry).

I’ve set up a Google Group for discussion, help, and to share tables you create.

Google Groups
Rollon Plugin
Visit this group

Randomness Rules!  Get Rollon today!

update: note that I changed the license from the CC 3.0 NC-SA to the Artistic 2.0 license…entirely because in order to use Google hosting for the bug-tracker I had to use one of their approved licenses.  The major difference between them is that while you can now charge for distributing Rollon (good luck with that), if you want to distribute modifications you have to fork or send me the changes to include in the core.

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Open Game Table Anthology

Since I am one of the contributors, you’ll naturally want to buy six or seven copies. And six or seven copies for all of your friends. It’s your patriotic duty, after all, to stimulate demand and lift the economy.

Open Game Table — Released March 23rd

Open Game Table, The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs will be released for intergalactic sale on March 23rd, 2009. It will be available directly from Lulu Marketplace, Indie Press Revolution, and Amazon.com for the retail price of only $22.95. Look for it on March 23rd, trust me… you’ll love it.

Actually, I don’t get anything from this except the satisfaction of seeing my name in print, and an author’s copy.  But from what I’ve seen, it looks pretty nice.

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Tunnels & Trolls: Magic

Magic in Tunnels & Trolls is a fairly standard (though innovative back in ’76) system of individual spells that cost spell-points to cast.  In earlier editions, your spell-points were your STR, now they’re your WIZ, which seems to me widen the range of possible character types quite a bit.  The names of the spells are whimsical, like “Take That You Fiend!” (the basic magic blast spell),  “Dis-Spell”, “Oh, Go Away!”, which some people find a bit off-putting, but the spell effects are generally straightforward: do damage, turn invisible, heal wounds, and so forth.  Not always: “Troll God’s Blessing” causes a big club to appear over the head of the target and bash it, but if that kind of thing is a problem for your players you can easily substitute more “serious” flavor text.  Spells range in level from 1 to 13 (or more, I suppose, but that’s as far as the books go). Wizards begin with all the standard 1st level spells, and learn new spells from the Wizard’s Guild, by paying 1000 GP per level of spell.  Spells can only be taught by direct instruction (presumably by casting the first level Teacher spell until the Wizard succeeds at the SR to impress it in his mind).  Casting a spell requires a Saving Roll against the level of the spell, which should mostly be a “gimme” except for very low level casters or when trying to cast a spell at a higher level than you’ve reached.

That brings up an unusual feature of T&T magic. While spells have a minimum DEX and INT to cast, they aren’t restricted by the level of the caster.  A 1st level Wizard can attempt to cast a higher level spell, it just requires a harder Saving Roll and higher stat minimums.  A 1st level spell requires 10 INT and DEX, a 2nd level 12, all the way up to 100 for a 13th level spell. Many spells can also be cast at higher level than their minimum in order to ramp up their effects, e.g. Take That You Fiend! costs 6 WIZ and does damage equal to the caster’s INT at 1st level.  If a Wizard with INT 15 casts it as a 2nd level spell, it costs 12 WIZ but does 30 points of damage, as a 3rd level spell it costs 18 WIZ but does 60 points of damage, etc.  Whether a spell can be “Powered Up” and the effects of doing so vary depending on the spell.

Spell costs can be reduced in a variety of ways.  If you’re higher level than the spell you’re casting you get a discount, with a bigger discount the higher level you are compared to the spell level, though there’s a minimum cost of 1.  You also get a discount for using a “focus” such as a wand or ring.  In fact, the primary purpose of wands and staves in T&T is as spell foci rather than bearers of independent spell effects.  Specialist Wizards get to cast all the spells in their specialty at half cost, but can’t cast spells outside their specialty at all. WIZ recovers fairly quickly, 1 point per ten minutes of non-strenuous activity (no combat or running, but you don’t need a lie-down), but high-level spell can still take hours to recover from casting since they can cost 30, 40, 50, even 200 points to cast (for the 13th level “Born Again” spell).

An even more unusual feature, and one that’s apparently new and somewhat controversial, is that spells cannot be directly cast on any target with a current WIZ higher than the caster’s.  That means that not only are Wizards unable to affect more powerful wizards (at least until their targets have expended enough WIZ to make them weaker), but Wizards may find themselves unable to bespell Warriors and monsters if they have built up their WIZ.  Monsters typically have WIZ equal to 1/10 of their monster rating, so a dragon with MR 500 has quite a substantial barrier against direct-effect spells.  Wizards who attempt to cast against a target with higher WIZ get a “bad feeling” that lets them stop before they actually waste any of their own WIZ.

I’m not entirely sure what I think of this.  On the one hand, I certainly see roleplaying possibilities, particularly since spells that indirectly affect the target (e.g. its clothes, or by affecting the ground under it, or drop something on it) are possible regardless of differences in WIZ.  It also gives magic a very otherworldly feel, not at all equivalent to simply having a laser pistol or even crossbow.  On the other hand, since WIZ amounts vary round by round in combat based on the spells the magic users are casting, it might become something of a pain to track, and even if it didn’t you could potentially lose a lot of actions to “bad feelings” when your estimates of the current WIZ of your opponent miss the mark.  On the third hand, it adds another tactical dimension when unleashing a huge spell at the beginning of combat can render you vulnerable to lesser magicians for the rest of the combat, and I’m in favor of increasing the number of tactical decisions, at least in moderation.  As with other things T&T, I really have to see how it plays out in practice.

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Now That’s Comedy!

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Review | gamegrene.com

Well, it’s finally out. This is the review you’ve been waiting for, the one you expected as well as the one you secretly hoped you’d never read. They’ve finally released D&D 5th Edition! Of course, a lot’s changed about the publishing industry and the way we read books since 4e came out, so it’s probably no surprise to see 5e now. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if we started getting new editions every few years, since it’s all just a download away, on your computer, Kindle, console or iPhone.

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A Personality Mechanic

Here’s an orphaned Personality Mechanic that I developed for Elves & Espers, before we started using Savage Worlds. It was a pure descriptive mechanics, intended to give the player some ideas for a personality for the character, but having no mechanical affect during play.

Drive: Roll 1d10 to determine your strongest drive:

    1. Sex
    2. Money
    3. Fame
    4. Power
    5. Religion
    6. Knowledge
    7. Thrills
    8. Comfort
    9. Love
    10. Food

    Note that the way you choose to live your life may be in opposition to that drive–it is just what tempts you, not necessarily what you do.

    Aversion. Roll 1d10 on the Aversion chart to see what drive you are averse or indifferent to. If it’s the same as the positive drive, you can choose to either regard yourself as neutral in that regard, or as powerfully conflicted.

      1. Commitment
      2. Work
      3. Attention (you’re shy)
      4. Responsibility
      5. Rules
      6. New Ideas
      7. Danger
      8. Boredom
      9. Rejection
      10. Being Unattractive
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      Return to the Stinking Sludge

      Session Summary for 3/8/09, Elves & Espers

      The Party for this session consisted of Idariel 7, Twonkey, Josepi, Bon Go, and Traumiel. It has presumably been some short time (less than an hour) since the last session, and some of the party members have wandered in and out on errands of their own. The early part of the session was spent bringing Bongo and Traumiel’s players up to speed. As the result of a particularly clever Knowledge (Arcana) roll, the party now suspected that the mysterious Figure in Red from the previous session fit the description of a Super-Model, a race of technologically and magically enhanced creatures, gorgeous in appearance, near-perfect in every way, and endowed with what can only be considered “superpowers.” No one else could have held up the zombie mammoth by main strength, or moved quickly enough to be unseen while causing a sonic boom. The Super-Models had evidently taken over the city some decades back, ruled it with an iron (but immaculately manicured) fist for about a year and a half, and then abruptly vanished without trace, after which the current Lords of Infrastructure took power.

      Idariel came to the conclusion that finding the Super-Model might somehow lead to the return of her investigator’s license, and she was determined to track down the figure. After the parade ended, the party trooped down to the street to examine the site of the amazing rescue. Unfortunately, investigation of the area proved fruitless; there was no way to track a figure who seemed to have vanished completely. Many bystanders had seen the event, but they had all been deafened and knocked down by the sonic boom, and were unable to provide any leads as to where the figure might have gone. The party decided to change tack and question the G-Nome family. Fortunately, some of the bystanders recognized the girl as the younger daughter of the Gruff family, so the party had somewhere to start. Visiting a G-Nome family isn’t easy, as they all live in the Web. Fortunately, getting G-Nomes to come to you is easier–you simply hire them. Idariel and Josepi made their way to the nearest G-Nome booth, where they were able to request a contract with the Gruff family. Almost immediately, a teenage boy G-Nome by the name of Bob Gruff appeared, offering to take a message. Idariel asked him about the incident, but as he had been busy working, and not attending the parade, he hadn’t heard about it yet. He agreed to carry a message to his mother Phoebe, however…for a fee, of course. Josepi grudgingly paid up, and Bob zoomed off into the Web. Not long thereafter, Phoebe showed up. After expressing their concern, and hoping her daughter was all right (she was), Idariel asked if Phoebe knew anything about the red-cloaked figure. She didn’t.

      The party batted around several more ideas and quizzed the GM about Super-Models for a while, but eventually gave up the search as a dead-end. At a loss for anything better to do, Josepi and Traumiel suggested that perhaps earning some money was an acceptable alternative, so they decamped back to Barbis Boltbiter’s establishment to ask for another contract.

      Barbis wasn’t in the best of moods when the party arrived — he had been expecting them right back after the parade, and had been wondering where they’d been the past few hours. Setting that aside, though, he informed the party that he’d been negotiating with Lord Shadrach, owner of the Sludge Works, over the rights to the Thaumivorous Ghost Moths. Lord Shadrach had agreed to pay the party a generous percentage of all proceeds arising from use of the Moths (of which Barbis took a cut as well). The party was naturally surprised that things had worked out well for them, through no action of their own…until Barbis mentioned the catch.

      It seemed that Lord Shadrach needed a job done. Carvin Spiker, who the party had met previously, manager of the Sludge Works, and therefore employee of Shadrach, had been murdered, his office burned with him in it, and Shadrach wanted the party to investigate. (The GM explained that the police wouldn’t get involved unless they were paid to do so, and that the Lords generally handled crimes on their own properties.) Barbis made clear that the deal about the Moths was contingent on the party taking care of this, so of course they agreed immediately.

      The party retraced the steps of their previous expedition, and made their way down to Poisonville. Josepi suffered from the same allergic reaction to the fumes that he had before, this time joined by nature-boy Traumiel. Eventually, the group made its way to Carvin’s office, and found it quite thoroughly torched. Carvin’s corpse sat unmoved, but deeply roasted, behind his desk. Figuring he should put his medical skills to some use, Traumiel examined the body, not entirely certain what more he could learn. He was able to definitively determine that the body was Carvin, that Carvin was quite dead…and that he’d been killed with a garrote before he had been burned. While Traumiel was playing medical examiner, the others searched the office, and noticed that Carvin’s papers had been carefully spread around before they were burned, so that nothing readable would survive. The fireproof safe had also been carefully opened and the contents burned. The party made knowing “Hmmm” noises at each other–clearly, they were dealing with professionals here. But why garrote Carvin before burning the office? Bon Go also noted a spot of flooring that appeared different…she recalled that there had been a locked drawer in that spot before, but it was gone now. Twonkey volunteered that Carvin had never let anyone see what was in that drawer before, and had locked it hastily the one time that Twonkey came into the office while it was open. Idariel attempted to Detect Arcana on the room, and was able to determine that the firebugs, whoever they were, had left behind a spell designed to mask any clues from prospective forensic investigators…and that the spell was working quite well. Idariel had been fortunate to detect it at all.

      Giving up on the office, Josepi decided to canvass the neighborhood. He’d noticed a diner nearby that was not only a greasy spoon, but also a greasy knife and fork, and probably a greasy soup ladle and whatever that fork is with the three tines that no one can remember what it’s for. He introduced himself to the owner, M3j (a Droll…a cross between a dwarf and a troll, 4 feet tall and 7 feet wide -jm), and asked if anyone had seen any strange air-cars in the area. M3l was only interested in talking to paying customers, of course, so Josepi and Bon Go each bought a cup of coffee, which turned out to be surprisingly excellent. M3l still wasn’t terribly forthcoming, so Twonkey, an acquaintance of M3l, spilled the beans that Carvin had been murdered.

      Meanwhile, Traumiel wasn’t about to go anywhere near a place that ostensibly served food in Poisonville, so he stayed behind. He reasoned that if the arsonists had blocked spells and technology, they might have failed to account for purely physical methods of investigation. With nothing to go on except for memories of cop shows from his youth, he cast around outside the office, and was lucky enough to locate the scorch-marks left by a landing air-car on the street just outside the office. He decided to wait until Josepi came back to see what he made of it.

      Back at M3l’s, the cook was visibly upset about Carvin’s murder. After all, Carvin did considerable coffee-and-danish business with the diner. After recovering his composure, M3l opened up a bit more. He hadn’t known Carvin particularly well (people in Poisonville don’t ask too many personal questions), but it was obvious that Carvin had a little something going on the side beyond running the Sludge Works. He was known to flash some cash around, and was frequently seen with some “honeys” on his arms. Given Carvin’s rather expansive physique, it seemed likely these companions were paid. M3L recalled that they’d probably come from the Pussycat Club, and gave Josepi directions as to where to find that establishment. With a couple of new leads and a probably course of action, the players decided to call it a night.

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      Get Awesome!

      Awesome! The Storytelling Game is now available as a PDF or Open Office file.  There’s also character sheets.

      Download it and give it a whirl!

      Mucho thanks to Mike DeSanto, who took the original blog post and turned it into a nifty brochure.  Truly Awesome indeed!

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      Tunnels & Trolls: Monsters

      Here’s a stat-block for a monster from Tunnels & Trolls:

      Basilisk MR 78

      Here’s the same monster, with the initial Combat Adds prefigured:

      Basilisk MR 78  Adds 8d6+39

      Here’s a Basilisk with special damage:

      Basilisk MR 78 Adds 8d6+39
      4/Medusa

      4/Medusa means that any turn when it rolls four 6’s in its damage it also uses its gaze to turn someone to stone (as if it had cast the 9th level spell Medusa, though costing no WIZ to invoke).  As far as I can tell, there’s no save…the only thing protecting adventurers from the gaze is the monster needs to roll well in order to use it.

      And with some more special abilities:

      Basilisk MR 78 Adds 8d6+39
      4/Medusa
      Healing Feeling (self only), immunity to poisons

      Partially Statted:

      Basilisk MR 78 Adds 8d6+39
      4/Medusa
      Healing Feeling (self only), immunity to poisons
      INT 27  WIZ 19

      Fully Statted:

      Gidorah the Basilisk

      Basilisk MR 78 Adds 8d6+39
      4/Medusa
      Healing Feeling (self only), immunity to poisons
      STR 18  DEX 32 CON 78  SPD 14  LK 20 INT 27  WIZ 30 CHR 14

      I think you get the picture.  Monsters can be described in a single number, or be as elaborate as a player character (not that PCs are all that elaborate), or anything in between as is convenient for the GM and suitable for the adventure.

      Run of the mill monsters generally have only one attribute: Monster Rating.   From their Monster Rating you derive their CON (HP) (same as MR), their Combat Adds (MR/10 d6 + MR/2), and their WIZ (MR/10 round up).  As they take damage, their MR drops as do the pluses they get to their Attack, though not the dice rolled.  Unlike adventurers, that means that monsters do have a “death-spiral”–the more you damage them, the weaker their attack becomes.

      They can also have additional special abilities to spice things up, like armor, spells, gaze weapons, and so forth. Armor is usually constant, but other special abilities generally trigger when a certain amount of spite has been generated (e.g. the basilisk being able to use its petrifying gaze whenever it rolled 4 or more 6’s on its 8d6 attack).

      T&T has a simple rule of thumb for balancing combats… a fair fight is one where the monsters have about the same number of dice of damage as the adventurers.  That might be one monster, or ten.

      T&T gets another A from me for the way it handles monsters.  Who needs to “shemp” when you can describe a monster in as little as a single number, or give it a bunch of special abilities, name and personality in one or two lines of text?  For that matter, who needs rules for ganging up, swarms, or over-bearing when a hundred MR 10 goblins are mechanically almost as dangerous as an MR 1000 Titan?

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      It’s Raining RPG Soup!

      So what are you waiting for? Grab your bowl!

      Stargazer’s World » Dungeonslayers: The deed is done!

      This marvellous tome is based on the 3rd Edition of the original German Dungeonslayers rulebook and already includes the latest errata. The PDF document which can be downloaded for free contains all the rules you need to play Dungeonslayers including the introductory adventure “Lord of the rats”!

      I haven’t had a chance to do more than glance at it yet, but it looks interesting. Seriously, the care and professionalism of the free RPGs available continues to ramp up. This is the stuff that makes me excited to be part of this hobby, not news about Hasbro’s latest quarterly reports and lawyerly parsing of either licenses or rules.

      So many games, so little time!

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      Hot Off the Presses

      And just in time to run a memorial game on the anniversary of Gary Gygax’s death one year ago:

      RetroRoleplaying: The Blog: Microlite74 Version 2.0 Now Available

      Microlite Version 2.0 is now available for free download. Over 2000 copies of Microlite74 version 1.1 have been downloaded since its release on October 6th last year. Microlite74 is dedicated to the memory of E. Gary Gygax and Version 2.0, which is even closer to that the very first edition of the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game he co-authored over 30 years ago, is being released on the first anniversary of his passing.

      Plus, if you look on the very last page, you’ll see I got an acknowledgement (under my nom de comment jamused) for help in proofreading. And if that’s not a reason to download it, I don’t know what is!

      Seriously, though, Microlite74 is a solid rule-light approach to Old School RPGs in the spirit of the old D&D boxed set (0e) for those who think even retro-clones like Swords & Wizardry are too crunchy.  It’s intended more as a guide for those are familiar with D&D3 and d20 and want to try a simplified rule set that has more of the feel of the original D&D  than a complete introduction to role-playing for the novice.  Check it out!