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Post by Scott Anderson on Oct 10, 2017 10:29:07 GMT -6
I wonder if something like this exists. The Marcher Lords of Norman England versus the Welsh seems like a ripe scenario for a wargame or board game. Anybody know?
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Post by Scott Anderson on Oct 9, 2017 13:49:51 GMT -6
Just imagine the treasure buried here! The price of the silver used in the sarcophagi alone would make you very rich. But someone will notice, and notice fairly quickly. This isn't an old dungeon. It sits under the center of a city and is still actively used! How to fence the booty...? Another Atlas Obscura clickbaity article that got my wheels turning: www.atlasobscura.com/places/hapsburg-imperial-crypt-vienna
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Post by Scott Anderson on Oct 4, 2017 16:37:44 GMT -6
Look at how much magic-users can carry. You can load 'em up and they still move faster than fighters. Thieves too. Not wearing armor is a class feature of the wizard, not a restriction. A typical group should be 4-7 PCs, with enough henchmen/women to bring the group to 9. I was about to chide you for being a hidebound old curmudgeon insisting on such an enormous group until I realized my table is six players, 7 PCs, and a henchman. We're almost there!!
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Post by Scott Anderson on Oct 3, 2017 18:11:57 GMT -6
Did you borrow an attack matrix or give a base attack bonus progression? Or what?
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Post by Scott Anderson on Oct 2, 2017 19:32:59 GMT -6
I just found an article about places people believed are entrances to the underworld, which I share with you here because some of them are really cool and creepy. It's a listicle, but I trust you will be able to get through it OK. The "related articles" are interesting too.
By the way, I find Atlas Obscura to be a great site for D&D inspiration and WTF articles, maybe you will too!
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Post by Scott Anderson on Oct 1, 2017 23:11:50 GMT -6
Those are good reasons Mike. I would add, and this is going to be long, I would add some more to that.
The basic BTB rules say the gold piece is the measure of XP.
This isn't a subtle message: the object of the game is to collect money. Money is how you win; monsters are how you die. This is a very good thing to keep in mind in the lower levels. So messaging is important. (Someone was talking about running a B4 campaign and awarding XP for water found - it is an equally strong message in that world. But back to the matter at hand.)
The gold piece is also the measure of encumbrance. Encumbrance slows you down. So every several hundred coins you pick up makes your exploration slower. It makes some fights more dangerous. Every several coins you want to carry out is one more piece of potentially life-saving gear you have to forgo or leave in the maze. That's why copper (and even silver in the long run) coins are a trap.
So the GP now links basic gear, XP, and movement speed.
The next thing the gold piece helps to measure is time. You move at a certain rate in the underworld. Your torches, spells, hit points and so forth dwindle. How much of the dungeon can you explore before you have to escape? If you move slower, then you explore less.
And then there are second-order trade offs. How many porters will you hire? How many swordsmen? Will they help you enough to justify their wages? If you buy that spell, will it help you earn more GP (and therefore XP) than hiring a few more medium horse for the garrison?
These trade-offs are some of the things which make treasure and delving interesting. It's why I think that the gold piece as it is in the rules is one of the things they really got right the first time.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Oct 1, 2017 21:28:15 GMT -6
It's 80/20 for bloodthirsty players and 100 XP per hit die and asterisk. I would say that a mature group would be more like 90/10.
Just tell your players you're fiddling with it and it might not work out right, and then go with the number that's a lowball. If it turns out it's going too slow, you can adjust it.
I suspect due to your experience, you can eyeball level ups just fine.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Oct 1, 2017 18:57:09 GMT -6
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 30, 2017 13:23:42 GMT -6
That's my thought exactly. RAW i think you should have a spellcastic class to use a scroll and it would have to be the right kindness of scroll - wiz or Cleric.
But it would be cool for a fighter to carry such a sword, and then he has a squire who holds extra shields and all these scrolls. He would hold out the scrolls so the sword could cast them. And he shields would be there to provide extra splinterings.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 30, 2017 11:52:45 GMT -6
Welcome back, Ways!
That's an interesting proposition: can a magic sword with speech and Read Magic cast a spell from a scroll?
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 28, 2017 22:40:49 GMT -6
Yes, do look at it. This is something special.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 27, 2017 18:40:53 GMT -6
That's really cool, thanks for bringing these forward. I remember a while ago someone linked a story about Romans playing with a d20. Dice are awesome.
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1979
Sept 26, 2017 18:46:46 GMT -6
via mobile
Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 26, 2017 18:46:46 GMT -6
Sunless citadel was terrible! Speaker in Dreams was better but they already had to house rule at least one encounter because the summon rules they allegedly playtested sucked.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 26, 2017 10:27:43 GMT -6
Not very Crypto in my opinion! They were Christian. Look at the spell list. Pretty much every spell is something either Moses or Jesus did as a miracle.
Let me piggyback Geoffrey on this though: there was mechanical difference between a sword and a mace, for instance, for wargamers. You didn't need it written down. You didn't need a rule for it, per se. What about crosses of wood versus crosses of silver?
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1979
Sept 24, 2017 19:42:11 GMT -6
Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 24, 2017 19:42:11 GMT -6
I started in 1983. I don't think I ever considered the differences between the several rule sets until about 1987 or 1988. We just used everything. And we did use modules, but we also made up our own stories. I would say 60/40. There were a lot of modules available by the second half of the 80s.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 21, 2017 9:24:55 GMT -6
How did spell casting work in blackmoor? I remember reading somewhere that there was no spontaneous casting or Vancian casting, but rather all magic came from items and potions. But what is the real story?
If I wanted to play an analog of a D&D Magic-User, what would that be like? How would he cast spells? Did such a class even exist?
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 20, 2017 14:30:57 GMT -6
I received a complimentary review copy from the author by mail for the purposes of writing this review. I was not otherwise compensated for my opinion. This is solely my opinion.
The Jungles of K'Naanothoa (Carcosa Module 7) by Geoffrey McKinney
The Jungles of K'Naanothoa is a Carcosa sandbox module, one in a series of eight (so far) that detail the realm of of Carcosa and provide some great locations and story hooks so you can set your campaign in that world. It is written to be compatible with AD&D first edition, and it assumes that you own the three core hardcovers from that rule set - but you don't have to own them to benefit from the module. There is no suggested party size or level range. A lot of the challenges are thinkers rather than dice-rolling exercises, but you are out in the middle of a vast jungle or inhospitable sea so it makes sense to have some meat on you. I would recommend no fewer than 20 total levels among the principle PCs.
Presentation: The module itself is twenty pages saddle-stitched of high quality white paper with a glossy cardstock color cover. The great area map is on the back which includes five-mile numbered hexes that correspond to the keyed encounter areas.
Adventure Hooks: There are 39 keyed hex locations detailed in about 2,800 square miles of land and another 6,500 in a beautifully rendered color hex map. One of the great joys of this setting is that each of eight modules has a hex map that borders another's, to create a huge continental map suitable for hundreds of sessions of play.
The Carcosa setting is colorful, both literally and culturally. The primitive tribes of men, just now throwing off the yolk of millennia of domination by the extinct Snake-Men, have reached the technology level we presume in vanilla D&D. But there are several "races" of Men, denoted by skin colors spanning the Crayola box, who trade, war, and struggle for survival. Although there is no mechanical difference between these men types, their stark visual differences make for an easy touchstone for players to see they are dealing with different tribes and factions.
The pantheon, which figures prominently both in the lore and the monster selection, is the Cthulu mythos, with all the mind-bending weirdness which that tradition is known for.
The particular setting for the Jungles of K'naanothoa (Can Ann Oh Though Ahh I guess?) is quite obviously reminiscent of the Isle of Dread, even though it is technically a sub-continent connected to the mainland by an isthmus with a few attendant outlying islands - some uninhabited and one in particular inhabited by a deity-level entity.
Usefulness: This is not a plug-and-play adventure module. In fact, it's not really an adventure module at all. It's more of a sourcebook with keyed hex map so you can make Carcosa your own. The locations provided are above average and the only quibble I really have is that I want MORE of what McKinney provides!
Things I don't love:
No page numbers. - No interior art.
- Frankly, the realm is sparse. Far too big for its contents. Way too much "Another hex of jungles. Nothing here." Yes, the Ref is supposed to fill in the blanks, but there are a LOT of blanks.
- No dungeon is detailed or mapped for you. I'd like to see at least one centerpiece adventure site fleshed out. (There are conceivably 12 more pages to write to make this a full-length adventure.)
- The names of the names NPCs are colorful but most of them I can't pronounce. This is probably a "me" thing and not a fault of the module/world, but it still bugged me.
Things I love:
- Good quality production. Good art. Well proofread and laid out adequately.
- The hex map is great in itself but even better because it fits together with seven other maps.
- Each of the 39 keyed encounter areas is richly detailed enough for a referee to run a game session or more out of it.
- The factions are obvious and plentiful (but it's up to the Ref in most cases to determine their relative dispositions.) The product suggests far more than meets the eyes.
Don't Use This If: You need something quick; you need something generic; you don't like doing prep work; you are a new referee; your players are tourist types who do not relish self-directed play,
Use this If: You want a unique campaign far flung from standard fantasy-medieval fare; you have lots of ideas about cool hex locations; you are good at taking a location and turning it into an adventure hook
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 19, 2017 9:43:03 GMT -6
There is another fellow who uses these boards who you probably don't know, who had the last 50 posts archived in his RSS. He went through painstakingly and dug them out and forwardwed them to me.
I don't know whether he want to be named. But I am in his debt.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 18, 2017 21:49:06 GMT -6
Hi Grodog! Thank you for your suggestions.
The quick answer is that I have tried all the things you suggest except for placing a call to Blogger. I will try that in the morning. While I am pessimistic, it can't hurt!
A board member here has my blog on RSS and he was able to through his trash folder and pull up some 20 posts (and counting).
Archive services have recorded some 20 as well. That's a lot!
I will be able to reconstruct about 90% of my blogroll from the cached pages as well. I think that's the most valuable single thing on the site.
It's the oldest stuff, from 2015 and 2016, that will be missing. Not a lot of post volume but some posts where I lay down some evergreen themes that I like to refer back to.
Maybe what I have is what I can hope for? But I hear all the time nothing on the internet is ever really gone, so it all must be somewhere.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 18, 2017 18:10:01 GMT -6
I accidentally deleted my blog! I had two websites and I was using my phone and I deleted the wrong one.
It's gone.
My first attempt to retrieve it was to go through my hosting company - google. It's free, and you get what you pay for. Someone who doesn't speak English told me they don't do it.
My second attempt was to go through several chache storing websites lke the WayBack Machine. I was able to get a few posts back and a partial blogroll. But the vast majority of posts got eaten up by the Internet monster.
I don't know what to do next. Can anyone help me please? It's something I'm real proud of and it's heart breaking to see it go.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 17, 2017 20:23:40 GMT -6
If you have pals into D&D, which I assume you do, then this can be pretty simple.
"This is like D&D but in a vastly different setting and culture. The classes are basically the same and you level up in a similar way. But the activities focus more on relationships and politics and less on monsters (but there are monsters to fight as well!)"
Then you can do 400 or so words on the setting and culture, and a short section on naming conventions.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 16, 2017 23:58:37 GMT -6
This is good. I have no idea about the specifics of the setting, only an overall vibe. This handout gives me, the noob, some concrete ideas about how to make up a EPT guy character and how to play him.
Are there character classes too?
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 16, 2017 18:12:47 GMT -6
At least it does in this man's home. He knocked down a wall and found a whole cavern complex and ancient underground city waiting to be explored! This is one of those clickbait listicle things, but it's got a lot of great photos to use in your games. Worth the clicks.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 13, 2017 3:42:29 GMT -6
The sample sheet looks great, I think I'll try these out
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 12, 2017 11:48:32 GMT -6
Drowning & Falling
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 10, 2017 21:19:29 GMT -6
Everyone should take some time to think up their own one-page or two-page RPG. It's fun! Mine is called Whip It Out
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 10, 2017 10:28:03 GMT -6
Excellent work.
I was looking back at your pen and ink work from a couple of years ago. Don't sell yourself short as an artist.
I think it's a really good idea to put the Blueholme campaign city on an island in a river. It gives it a sense of self-containment but the PCs can fairly easily travel to the wider world. It's a psychological barrier, but one that's easy to overcome when the time is right.
I thought of doing the same thing with Castle Triskelion, but a better setting came along... Collabris!
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 9, 2017 19:14:37 GMT -6
Candles & Crowbars
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 9, 2017 6:17:43 GMT -6
A Rust Monster Ate My Iron Rations
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Post by Scott Anderson on Sept 8, 2017 17:32:29 GMT -6
SF author Jerry Pournelle died today from complications due to his previous stroke. He was at his home in Studio City, CA. He was in good spirits and had a good time at DragonCon this year. His family reports that he did not suffer when he passed earlier today. Here was his last post from yesterday. He was always thinking. www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/category/view/
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