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Post by capvideo on Sept 25, 2010 21:40:22 GMT -6
Where possible, I try to mark the optimum levels on the ones I’ve bookmarked for future use ( on my web site); but a lot of “old school” adventures don’t have optimum levels. You pretty much have to guess from your players’ level of skill (not character level, but player skill and interests) whether an adventure is something they’ll enjoy. And further, it’s often up to the players, based on the legends you provide, to gauge for themselves if they want to enter that dungeon or perhaps wait until later. I recently ran The Fell Pass (Dragon 32); the only “restriction” on level is that “the Dungeon Master should remind the players of the legend of the Pass if they should come upon it, so that they will have some idea of what they are getting themselves into.” There’s a possibility I’ll be running Caverns of Thracia soon—it’ll be up to the players if their characters go near it. What levels is it appropriate for? “The 1st and higher levels.” That narrows it down If I had to put a level range on it, I’d probably say “3rd to 8th”, but that’s still a wide range. I can say that first level characters will need some pretty smart players to survive it. That’s kind of the point of many of these older adventures that inspire Fight On!
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Post by capvideo on Sept 4, 2010 16:17:14 GMT -6
A little something they’re going to meet tonight. Butterfly WarriorsRare: | Mesh hives |
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Class: | Fantastic | Moral Code: | Ordered Evil | Activity Cycle: | Any | Diet: | identity | Number: | 1-10 | Level: | 7+1 | Intelligence: | Good | Charisma: | Good | Movement: | 20 (wings)/13 (tail) | Attacks: | weapon and sting | Damage: | weapon+2, d10 (or d8 or d12) | Defense: | +8 | Special Attacks: | stasis | Special Defenses: | immunity to sleep and telepathy, flicker | Magic Resistance: | 2 | Size: | Medium (or small or large) |
These warriors of the insect mesh appear as normal humanoids—humans, elves, halflings, saurians, orcs, etc.—from the waist up. From the waist down they have a twitching insect-like larval tail, spotted with dull orange, greenish-brown, sickly grayish purple, and a puke yellow. The colors slowly pulsate across their larval lower half. Their larval tail ends in a sharp stinger. They dart about like hummingbirds via beautiful diaphanous wings emerging from their humanoid half. They can also slither quickly via their larval-tail. The Butterfly Warriors are the messengers and guardians of the insect mesh. They are often sent out as spies, to retrieve items, and to perform assassinations. Their knowledge merges with the mesh hive as normal when they return, and they can merge their knowledge with other warriors by touching them or by flickering with them. They attack with weapons and by stinging. They often use jagged scimitars as their weapon attack; whatever weapon they use does normal damage, with +2 damage for strength. They can also use claws if their shape allows it, doing the same damage as the shape normally does, at +2 damage. They can attack with both the weapon and the sting in the same round. They can use their sting in a called shot to place a victim in stasis for a number of rounds equal to half the damage done (at least one round). A victim of stasis is invulnerable for the duration of stasis; they’re literally out of time, able to do nothing and be affected by nothing. They are visible to others, but have no recollection themselves of anything between going into and coming out of stasis. They will continue whatever action they had started before going into stasis. Victims can make an evasion roll to avoid stasis. Butterfly warriors can flicker to a new location within ten yards at the beginning of each round. An after-image remains at their original location for the remainder of the round. The after-image will act separately from the real warrior; it cannot affect the world or be affected by the world, however. It will continue in its ghostly way to perform whatever actions the warrior had been doing when it flickered away. Butterfly warriors can also exchange places with any other butterfly warrior within 100 yards. When such an exchange takes place, the two warriors also share all of their knowledge. The range of potential exchange is increased for each extra warrior in the area. If two warriors are within 100 yards, for example, they could each flicker places with another warrior in 200 yards. If there are three warriors within 200 yards of each other, they can each flicker places with a warrior in 300 yards, and so on. In either case, flickering is a free action; a warrior can flicker and attack normally in the same round. They take the form of whoever they are fighting, but with a multi-colored larvae-like tail that undulates and ripples. Thus, they can only impersonate someone from the waist up. Barring that limitation, they can impersonate vaguely human-like persons from small to large size. When they fight someone, they will start to resemble that person (from the waist up) after every successful hit with weapon or sting. After seven hits (or after successfully putting the target into stasis) they will completely resemble their target, and maintain that form until their next fight. If a butterfly warrior stops fighting before fully taking on the form of their target, they will maintain a “between” form until their next fight. If a butterfly warrior takes on a small form, their sting only does d8 damage; if they take on a large form, their sting does d12. When a butterfly warrior goes unconscious, their wings take over and fly them to the nearest mesh hive or, if they’ve set one up, base camp. When they die, their whole form morphs into a twitching multi-colored larval form that tastes like chicken. Unlike the beetle-like insect mesh, their form does not ripple away in a few seconds, but rather disintegrates somewhat naturally over one to three days. (Modified the morning after to apply differing sting damages for small, medium, and large versions.)
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Post by capvideo on Aug 17, 2010 19:00:53 GMT -6
In our current game, we had one player who often couldn't make it; the players have been visiting different realities off of the world tree, so I decided to have that player's character exist when he shows up, and not exist when he doesn't. The in-game reason being that (a) the big villain caused him to get caught and executed after a bit of arson, but ensured that the execution occurred in a pocket reality. The PC's reality was wavering back and forth between the two.
Later, that player's entire family started gaming with us; this meant three PCs instead of just the one. Now we just say that the six PCs often don't stay together. This is easy enough to believe in the wilderness, and we assume that nothing interesting happens to the PCs of players who aren't there; when the players show up, the groups merge again.
We'll probably do the same thing in the dungeon. It happens often enough in Scooby-Doo. In that case, though, I'll probably have them be in an adjacent room when the players show up, just for the antics it will provide.
Jerry
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Post by capvideo on Aug 2, 2010 18:57:52 GMT -6
Rare: | Deserts | Class: | Divine | Moral Code: | Chaotic Evil | Activity Cycle: | Nocturnal | Diet: | Carnivorous | Number: | 2d10 | Level: | 5+1 | Intelligence: | Average | Charisma: | Average | Movement: | 15 | Attacks: | claws or by weapon | Damage: | 2d4 or +1 | Defense: | +5 | Special Attacks: | wail | Special Defenses: | iron or +1 weapon required to hit | Size: | Medium (6-8 feet) |
The servants of Anubis still skulk the alleys of the ancient desert city and patrol the night outside the city walls. These jackal-headed scavengers of the abyss are thin and lean, with a soft covering of brown fur over their lanky human-like bodies. They carry bronze swords or spears, and can only be hit by iron weapons or +1 weapons. The mananubi look like the traditional Egyptian paintings of Anubis. They act as much like dogs and jackals as humans. They are cunning scavengers and quick to take advantage of weakness. The wail of the mananubi is a plaintive, echoing cry that calls up memories of the dead. Victims who are not yet hostile or aware of the mananubi can be numbed by this cry, as they remember lost loved ones and fear the future. On a failed Willpower roll, victims will be unresponsive for 2d10 minutes—unaware of anything happening around them. Any damage will bring them out of the trance for the next immediate round. Extremely loud screaming or noise will give them one Perception roll to come out of the trance early; because of this, mananubi rarely kill entranced victims who are part of a group. Mananubi have an acute sense of smell and hearing. They can smell things happening just as we can hear them happening. Their senses are so acute that they can negative up to 4 penalties due to darkness or blindness, as long as they can smell or hear their surroundings. In the ancient desert city, mananubi are servants of the city’s people, but these servants rule their weak and decadent masters with whispers, threats, and lies.
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Page 23
May 28, 2010 18:08:59 GMT -6
Post by capvideo on May 28, 2010 18:08:59 GMT -6
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Post by capvideo on May 12, 2010 18:48:25 GMT -6
We made up some backstory together - not a lot, just found a couple people in the town who the PCs had supposedly known when younger and tied them in with some vague memories of things that had happened in this campaign world back in the early eighties real world time. Things that (some of) those players had experienced with different characters, back in the eighties?
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Post by capvideo on May 12, 2010 0:15:38 GMT -6
Kelvin, I think Death Frost Doom with any game is old school. I’d love to hear about it even if it doesn’t become an article.
Chagmat Chagmat has been one of my favorite adventures since I first saw it in Dragon in 1982. It’s got everything: spiders, underground temples, mysteries, and even a dinosaur. So when the PCs in our latest game decided to travel six hundred miles through very rural Highland to meet the Elves, I immediately thought of the spider temple.
The first thing I changed was to put Little Boy Mountain into the northwest of the forest of The Wandering Trees. I replaced encounter 10, Mission on the Downs, with Little Boy Mountain. This put the “high road” through the north of Highland running right through the west edge of the Wandering Trees, with the temple of the Chagmat completely inaccessible unless the trees open up.
Then I started renaming things. The High Road runs at the edge of the Celtic lands, and their culture reflects that. Little Boy Mountain became Dowanthal Peak. The “small, pleasant farming town of Byr” became Weaving, “a small way station on the High Road known for its rich farmland. Among connoisseurs of northweed, Weaving is known for Weaving weed. Though smokers assume the plant is grown throughout the north, the tobacco is grown in Erventon, and traded through Celtic traders and other travelers who go through Erventon. Though few know it, there is much trade between the Celts and Weaving through Bailabann up the Dowanthal river.”
“Cosmo”, the captured Druid, became one of the captured teenage girls: Riana Carlyle. She lived outside of Weaving with her father, both of them Celts who immigrated to the area. Riana’s father was the source of the magic rope, which I moved from the dinosaur lair to the ogre lair: he had died at the hands of the ogre while trying to rescue his daughter.
The Broken Web and Akron Oheeyo became the Weaving Well and its owner, John Cover, an ex-pat from Pirate’s Cove. “A wiry old man, with a neatly-trimmed beard and a gold earring in his left ear, greets you as you walk in. He has just stepped out from the kitchen on your right and sits at a table with some other people. He would be out of place here even without the earring, but the townsfolk take little notice of him.”
The PCs were introduced to the adventure when some of the parents in the Weaving Well panicked because one of their daughters was missing.
There weren’t many other changes. This is a great adventure. One minor problem came because I’d changed it so that the bonesnapper came from the depths of the earth, and the PCs initially tried to follow the dinosaur’s route back into the mountain. This wouldn’t have been a problem if they had: the passage replaced the secret tunnel beyond the altar at the Mission on the Downs, so they would have ended up in an adventure of some kind regardless, but it could have delayed them long enough for the Chagmat to complete their rituals, killing the girls and summoning the spider horde. The biggest “problem” is that it can be hard to open the door to the temple. But PCs who find a magic bell and don’t ring it incessantly deserve lesser treasure.
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Post by capvideo on May 7, 2010 19:13:57 GMT -6
Well, the simple questions are: (1) why did you choose that particular adventure (whichever one you're choosing to answer the question for), and (2) what did you change (nothing is of course a valid answer).
I think a collection of those answers from different people would make for great reading.
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Post by capvideo on May 7, 2010 0:04:00 GMT -6
ADMIN EDIT: comments moved to "module use" thread
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Post by capvideo on Mar 12, 2010 20:54:46 GMT -6
It's weird that 6 uses different paper. I wonder if the paper for saddle stitch is better than the paper for perfect for some reason. If so one more reason to hew hard to the 88 page saddle stitch limit! Looks like it. I just looked over all the issues, and all of the saddle stitch is on a glossier paper than the perfect-bound. The difference in readability mostly obvious when looking at background shading on tables. (I'm not going to say one is better than the other--I prefer non-glossy paper generally; but in this case it does seem as though the glossy is more readable when background shading is used.)
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Post by capvideo on Mar 12, 2010 9:37:16 GMT -6
From my perspective, it's a good old-school style, and you're using modern tools to make it more readable. You're making good use of headlines and paragraph headings; you've got big (and useful) graphics breaking the text up; and the spacing between paragraphs is nice. Maybe when a paragraph exceeds a column of text consider breaking it up, but I don't see too much of that as I'm glancing through issue 6. The only thing that's really jumping out is that dark background colors on tables sometimes make the tables less readable, but looking at issue 7 I suspect that it's mainly a problem caused by the different kind of paper used in issue 6; the same use of background colors on the glossy paper in 7 looks fine.
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Post by capvideo on Feb 14, 2010 23:49:08 GMT -6
For some of us, I don't think a definitive D&D exists in print. I started playing on Halloween of 1981 under a DM who used the Blue Book Basic set; but in retrospect he clearly was also using rules gleaned from Original D&D, possibly under a previous DM. As soon as we were hooked, my brother went out and bought the AD&D Players Handbook. So we made new characters using the PH, while our DM continued to use the Blue Book for running the game.
Then I got the Magenta Basic for Christmas and devoured it, and started sketching out my own adventures using it, but meant for characters created for AD&D and based on my experiences under a DM who used Blue Book/Original.
I didn't get into a "single system" D&D until I went to college, and the group I joined there used the AD&D books exclusively.
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Post by capvideo on Jan 21, 2010 20:34:12 GMT -6
The other option is to just get permission from the winner(s) as you do from any other author. Authors can always grant different permissions to different venues.
The advantage of CC BY SA (and other such licenses) is that you can use the adventure without permission, as long as you follow the rules of the license.
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Post by capvideo on Jan 7, 2010 18:48:48 GMT -6
Definitely the holidays for me--it's still the holidays, I have relatives in town until next week!
But also, to spread the shipping around, I also ordered Majestic Wilderlands and Stonehell Dungeon; Stonehell arrived before Christmas, and the rest arrived just after the New Year.
Agreement on the artwork, it's great.
More things with maps, that’s what I say.
One of the article types I used to enjoy "back in the day" were articles about things, like coinage, or ships, or medieval communication systems, even pole-arms, to name a few memorable ones. Nowadays a lot of that can come from Wikipedia, but it's still not written with adventure in mind.
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Post by capvideo on Dec 16, 2009 0:35:45 GMT -6
XLibris probably isn't an option: unless they've changed things (and a quick perusal of their site indicates they haven't) you have to buy a package for each book you publish. They seem to have hidden the fees, but last I checked they were in the hundreds of dollars range. Again, unless things have changed, that would be *per issue*, because each issue is a new book.
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