Late last year, while everyone was in town for the holidays, I got together my old role playing group and did a bit of a “reunion game.” This was a group in which we’d primarily played D&D 3.5 and 4th Edition D&D (that was the game I had GM’d). Our 4e game had ended when two of the members of the group moved away, but I wanted to revisit that world a little bit and everyone else seemed game.

This time we decided to switch things up and continue with the same characters and world, but we wanted to switch systems. I like a lot of things about 4th Edition both it can be very very slow, and I just wanted to try something different. We settled on Savage Worlds because several of us were pretty familiar with it and many of the other members of the group were at least passingly familiar.

We spent an hour or so making characters. It normally probably wouldn’t have taken so long except that we had a couple people who were only passingly familiar with the system, and it just took a little while for folks to really think about what was essential about their characters and how to translate that into the new system. We also spent a lot of time on side conversations and just generally catching up. This was the first time we’d all been together  at the same time in a long time after all.

I had decided early on that I wanted to run things a little more old school (regardless of the system I wanted to approach things a bit differently) and do something less “plot” driven than what I’d done in the past. I wanted to move more in the direction of just setting up a location and letting the story be created from what the characters did.

I had originally started to plan out a rather complicated urban sandbox adventure with a number of different factions and such, but quickly realized in the days before we played that there was just no way we’d get through all that much of it in the short time we had to play. So I searched around a bit and found a one-page dungeon (The Ancient Academy, if any of the players are reading this… don’t download that just yet!) that looked cool (and that I’d already downloaded before) modified it a bit to change it’s history, put some things in there that would interest the characters, and just generally fit it into the world I had set up. We were off!

I also decided it might be interesting to have the players do some mapping and one of them volunteered to do so. I gave him some graph paper and started describing things. It was a bit tedious at first, but I think we fell into a rhythm reasonably quickly. We were all happy when a set of corridors that looped back to where they started lined up correctly. So obviously we were doing something right. I’d still like to watch some actual play videos of folks playing this way to see how others do it though.

The game went pretty smoothly. I probably need to up the difficulty of the creatures a bit and maybe add in some more traps, maybe even add in some wandering monsters, but even if the monsters they encountered were dispatched fairly easily it was still fun. This was my first time GMing Savage Worlds and it was just as easy to GM as it is to play. I continue to be super-impressed with the system.

The players moved around the dungeon a bit, explored a few things, and found some clues here and there to where the thing they were looking for might be and some hints as to how it might work. We had to stop with the dungeon only partially explored, but it was fun and I hope to get together with everyone some time soon over a Google+ hangout and finish things up!

I’m sure plenty of things we were doing were “wrong” in terms of how “old-school” they were, but we had a good time and I’m sure most would agree that’s what matters. It was neat to run a game differently than the way I’d previously done it. I think I’d like to do some more of that.

One of these days I’ll run an Adventurer Conquerer King game, and hopefully those of us who have been wanting to play more Dungeon Crawl Classics will be able to do so some time soon. I want to see how the systems themselves might facilitate (or not) a more old school style of play. Either way though, Savage Worlds will continue to be an option I’ll consider very seriously for fantasy games in the future, regardless of what “school” I’m looking to play in, and I had a good time running a slightly different kind of game than I had previously.

Good gaming!

-The Duke of Brandonshire 🎲

If I’m going to keep to my resolution I’m going to have to get writing again!

In the past few months I’ve had my first few experiences with gaming online. Both using Google+ Hangouts and the app Roll20 (which integrates with Google+ Hangouts). Despite a few small technical issues (really, fewer than I would have expected for something like this) it’s gone very well and I hope to continue to do it periodically in the future!

I really wasn’t quite sure what to expect the first time. I had heard from many others that playing RPG’s via video-chat (and specifically Google+ Hangouts) worked well, especially with the addition of apps like +Roll20 (and +Tabletop Forge, which will soon be merged into Roll20), but I still didn’t quite know how well I’d actually like it, or how well it would work.

But a couple of friends of mine (used to be in my old role playing group, before they moved) wanted to give it a try and I thought it sounded like a fun thing to do. If nothing else I figured I’d get to spend some time talking to my buddies. Anyway, we decided to play in a campaign world that my friends had been playing in for a while since they’d moved (using a variety of systems from what I understand, including Pathfinder), but use Savage Worlds. (Savage Worlds continues to impress me with what it can do and how much it matches my interests) We quickly ran through character creation and a few technical details as we figured out exactly how all of this worked and then we were off!

And I have to say it was amazing how quickly we fell right back into our old rhythm as a group. I won’t say the interface ever quite “melted away” or anything like that, but after just a short time it didn’t feel all that strange to be sitting in front of a computer instead of around a table.

We just used the dice rolling features for most of the session but occasionally, like when we got into combat, the GM would draw a quick map and put some tokens out there for us to move around. It was a lot of fun and worked very well.

In fact, in some ways it feels like it might work better than sitting around a table. Perhaps it was just the novelty of the situation, or the particular mix of players, but I feel like in the two sessions that we’ve run once the game got going everyone paid more attention to the game and was more focused on the session. There was of course some table talk and jokes and the like (and I wouldn’t have it any other way!) but it felt like there was less than there usually is at the tables I tend to play at, and it tended to derail things less often.

We had another session a little while later with a couple more players and that went equally as well (maybe even a bit better as for the most part we were slightly more familiar with the interface). It’s hard to schedule a good time for such things between a bunch of people in different parts of the world, but I hope to do a lot more of this in the future. I look forward to seeing what adventures the crew of the Lucky Cormorant get into, and maybe to even start GMing some sessions this way myself. (Possibly to finish up the adventure that I ran for my old group the last time we were all in town at the same time this past December. I’ll write a bit about that soon).

Have you tried online gaming? Have you liked it? Had any problems? Anything you’d like to know about it or about my experience with it? Let me know!

Good gaming!

-The Duke of Brandonshire 🎲

Earlier I wrote about our group’s journey through several different systems for our Sci-Fi game.

I’m happy to report that my prediction was correct and so far Savage Worlds is proving to be everything we want it to be for this game. I’m really falling even more in love with this system than I already was.

We’ve been getting a lot done per session, that includes combat, exploration, role-playing encounters and more. I think the switch to SW was absolutely the right decision for our game and our group. I’m having more fun than I have in a long time. I’m thinking less about the system itself and more about the game world and the characters. The crew of the Voidsong has really been making some interesting progress.

It’s been exciting! Last session we had a character come closer to dying, without actually dying, than I’ve ever seen happen before. It literally came down to the last possible roll to save his character and BOOM! a six was rolled and there was much cheering! We’ve had battles with 20 or more entities on the table, and everything has run smoothly and quickly.

Our characters are relatively simple and easy to understand, but they all have lots of interesting things to do and they all feel more than customized enough.

I really can’t say enough about how much fun we’ve been having. Some of that has of course simply been good storytelling and improvising by both the GM and all of the players, which could have happened in any system, but I think the system has helped us to focus on those things while also leaving us with some of the “system mastery” fun that can be had by engaging with the game system itself. From where I’m sitting it’s the best of both worlds there.

Anyway, almost all of my gaming lately has been in Savage Worlds and it’s worked quite well for both in person play and online gaming using Google+ and Roll20. I’ll write a little more about my foray into online gaming soon, but that’s been a lot of fun too.

Anyway, just wanted to give a quick update on how things have developed since we “settled” on Savage Worlds!

Good gaming!

-The Duke of Brandonshire 🎲

So despite what I said before, December did not in fact end up being less busy than November, and the first part of January wasn’t any better. There were of course the holidays and other such things, but things also got kind of crazy at work in ways that meant some days I didn’t really get much of a lunch break, and the days I did I just wanted to walk around outside or spend time decompressing a bit. I’ve become far more familiar with accounting and accounting software than I ever wanted to be.

What little free time I’ve had outside of work I spent actually gaming and doing other fun stuff instead of just writing about gaming.

But I’m back! Our end of year scramble to make sure everything is in order at work seems to finally be ending (knock on wood) and I think I should have a slightly more normal workload for the foreseeable future.

So I’m back to writing for the blog! I’ve set a modest New Year’s resolution to write at least two blog entries a month. That’s not very much but it seems doable and like a good place to start. I hope writing at least that often will get my creativity going and I’ll end up doing more than that! Anyway, I already have at least three entries floating around in my head so I hope to get at least one more up in the next few days before the close of January.

Also, if you’re reading this on the blog itself, rather than through RSS you’ve probably already noticed that I have a couple of new logos on the blog! I’ve wanted something a bit more interesting than a plain text banner for a while so I’m happy to have something unique to put up there! The logos were made by Von Glitschka of  5 Minute Logos. I bought the first one (on the left) and then a few weeks later decided I wanted a nice banner for the top too. He was nice enough to indulge me when I asked if he could do a more horizontal version of the first logo he made for me. $10 ($5 each), and almost no time later I had them! (Credit where credit is due I was introduced to 5 Minute Logos by Lyndsay Peters, the proprietor of Dragon Chow Dice Bags, who tweeted about 5 Minute Logos a while back).

Anyway, this is just an update to let you know I’m back and will be writing more soon. I’ve done a lot more gaming than I had expected recently, and I have thoughts I want to share on the games I’ve been playing lately and how I’ve been playing them!

Thanks for sticking with me readers! There’s a lot more to come!

Good gaming!

-The Duke of Brandonshire 🎲

A few weeks ago, when the regular group(s) couldn’t get together, I got together with a couple of friends and we played a round of Tomorrow’s War which is a pretty neat little squad based near-future sci-fi wargame, generally played with 15mm minis. It has a neat action-reaction mechanic to handle initiative and such, and generally seems like a really well thought out game. I had a good time and I’d like to play it again some time.

So why is this entry titled “I am not a wargamer?” Because I realized that night that while I enjoy the occasional miniatures wargame and certainly appreciate a lot of elements of them (I enjoy 4th Edition D&D combat for example) it’s not really my thing. I had a good time, but it was clear my two friends were a bit more into it than I was. They had a lot more experience with wargaming than I did and so were able to grok the rules to the game a lot quicker than I was. There was a little bit of terminology that they both were clearly comfortable with that I had to kind of stop and think about to follow. This wasn’t a huge problem mind you, I was able to figure out the rules and I think I did pretty well in my game. I certainly didn’t feel like I was being excluded or anything, but there was a little while before we started playing, when were going over the rules and my eyes kind of glazed over. I didn’t get the impression this happened for my friends.

There are certain aspects to some wargame rule systems that just don’t really interest me all that much, but they clearly get other people going. Tomorrow’s War is not a super complicated game, but there are other more complicated games I’ve played bits of before (or even just attempted to read) that have intricate rules for things like movement that just don’t really interest me much. It just doesn’t feel like the sort of hobby I’ll ever get really into.

And all of that’s alright. Wargaming is something I enjoy well enough in small doses, and something I hope to do more of in the future, but I don’t think it’s ever going to become a major hobby of mine. I have bought a lot of mini’s to use in my rpg’s, and just because I think they’re neat, but I don’t imagine I’ll be one to spend too much time and money on a big complicated wargame. (Luckily I have other friends who will spend more time and money than me so I can just play with them when the urge strikes me).

Anyway, nothing earth shattering here but I just thought I’d talk about a realization I’ve recently had about my interests as a gamer.

Good gaming!
-The Duke of Brandonshire

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First of all, sorry for the long stretch between posts. November ended up being very busy for me in a number of different ways that made writing blog entries, even during my lunch breaks at work, a lower priority. December is also looking busy but in different ways, so I’m hoping it’ll leave more time for writing. Anyway on to the content!

So in my main gaming group we’ve been trying a number of different systems for the Sci-Fi game we’ve been playing for the past few months. It’s been an interesting way to compare systems and an even better way to to figure out what kind of games work best for our group.

This was an entry I was thinking about writing years ago when I first played the most recent version of Gamma World with some friends during a few off-nights in our 4e D&D campaign.

We had had one session which involved character creation and a short part of the intro adventure the comes with the boxed set. We had a lot of fun as all the players looked at what traits they had received and tried to make some sense of them. I had a lot of fun and I think everyone else did but I didn’t think too terribly much on why.

This was also the session that spawned the infamous inside joke wherein every time you say “Gamma World” you need to follow it up with “Lisa Needs Braces.” This mostly doesn’t make any sense, but it references the classic Simpsons episode Last Exit to Springfield in which the phrase “Dental plan! Lisa needs braces!” is repeated over and over (sorry about the repetitive clip, there doesn’t seem to be a simple clip of the actual sequence from the episode available). For some reason at some point one of us started saying “Gamma World! Lisa needs braces!” and it just sort of stuck because we’re all Simpsons nerds like that.

A few weeks later we had another session and had an out of town friend in as a guest player. We quickly rolled up a character for him and threw in a few options from a (then) upcoming expansion. I don’t quite recall exactly what he rolled up but he did get the “time traveler” origin as one of his two. We figured this was perfect for dropping him into an ongoing scene. He had some sort of time traveling accident and just dropped right into the scene. Someone asked about his time machine and we placed a small beer bottle (I think it was an empty Red Stripe) and said that that was about where it was. Then it struck me that that’s actually what it should be. So we decided that his time machine was actually a huge bottle that had just dropped out of the sky suddenly. We talked a bit more and decided that it was not just a giant bottle but it was a giant bottle with a ship inside of it, which just seemed like a fun weird sort of thing to be a time machine. The session went on from there and it was generally a situation where everyone’s creative juices were flowing. It was a lot of fun.

Thinking and talking about it afterward my friend and I were commenting on how much we enjoyed the way the game encourages you to make up so much about your characters and the world and how much fun that is. He even commented on how much he enjoyed Gamma World even though he’s generally kind of luke-warm on 4E D&D.

On my way home I was thinking about all of the different ways that Gamma World encourages you as a GM and the group to get really creative. First you get a couple of origins, that may not seem to have much of anything to do with one another and you have to try to come up with how this makes a coherent character. Then there’s the way weapons are handled. You get broad categories, with general stats for damage and accuracy and such, but you fill in the blanks on what they actually are. So a heavy melee weapon might be a parking meter, or chair, or a war hammer you found in a museum or that your tribe created. I think once you get into that mode of thinking everyone starts to come up with a lot of ideas they might not otherwise, and people start thinking very creatively. Most of the “treasure” in the game is just random junk pulled from a chart (I like to use the Junk-u-lator), but once everyone is thinking creatively it’s easy to start to come up with innovative ways to use these things.

On my way home that night it also struck me that the fiction of the game (at least as presented in the boxed set, you’re obviously free to alter as you will) also encourages this sort of collaborative creativity and thinking. In the most recent version of the game it’s not a nuclear war that creates the insane world you play in it’s a mistake at the Large Hadron Collider that causes a bunch of different realities to collapse in on one another and create a “consensus” reality that alters and changes frequently. Not only does this explain the random mutations that happen in the game (via a card mechanic that I actually rather like) but it also implies that reality in this world is basically whatever everyone agrees it is.

This feels like a nod to the way you’re likely to end up playing the game too: The game world is whatever everyone at the table agrees it is. There may be a number of competing ideas thrown out by the group, but the group (and the GM of course) decides which to use, and how to combine them.

Both mechanically and in terms of the implied fiction of the game it feels like Gamma World really encourages group story telling and creativity. Does that make it a sort of story game? I’m not sure, but I think that’s a big part of why I like it so much.

Well, that and the mutant bugs and killer robots.

Thanks for reading!

-The Duke of Brandonshire

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Ok! More on my crazy mash-up setting inspired by a metal album! (The first entry about this is here, the second here). This time I’ll give some information from the perspective of the night side!

- Though visible from space, the day side of the planet is not a good place to land. Even in an emergency. No one can remember anyone who landed there ever returning.

- They say that the entire day side of the planet is heavily warded from teleportation and scrying from the outside. Some say even the Raven Queen cannot bypass these wards!

- The night side of the planet, especially Gloomwrought is a common stoping off point for Spelljammers piloted by pirates and other unsavory characters.

- They say if you look hard enough you can find almost anything in Gloomwrought’s markets, but it may cost you more than gold.

- Gloomwrought is a strange place. It constantly changes and shuffles itself around. No one seems to know why.

- The Raven Queen who rules the nightside of the planet is rumored to have uncovered some secret long ago that gives her power over death and a fondness for the cold.

- The Raven Queen has a friendly rivalry with the Fey Winter Court, and has been known to ally herself with them from time to time.

- Whatever the truth of the Raven Queen’s history, she seems to have ruled this half of the planet for as long as anyone can remember.

- Though she refuses to discuss the day side in public, rumors say that the Raven Queen is desperate for any information on what’s happening there. However, those who give her false information are said to be tortured in unimaginable ways, with no hope of death.

- The region of elemental chaos that exists between the two halves of the planet is extremely dangerous, and easy to become lost in. Some say it connects directly to the elemental planes. Very few of the expeditions that have occasionally been launched to try to reach the other side of the planet (and gather information to sell to the Raven Queen) through this rout have returned. Those few that have returned refuse to go back.

Ok, I think that’s enough for today, I may come back to this more from time to time, but it may be time to move on to other topics for a while.

Hope you’re enjoying these!

-The Duke of Brandonshire 🎲

So last time I gave a quick overview of the idea for a campaign based on the album Warp Riders by The Sword. Today I’m going to go into a few more specifics I’ve thought of when I think about this setting. There may be several different entries in this series, so none of these get too long and I can hit this in manageable chunks.

I tried writing this a couple of different times and it kept both getting too long and getting tedious, both to write, and almost certainly to read. Initially I was trying to write this in a really detailed an authoritative manner, simply giving the history of the setting and setting in stone (or nearly so, I think in many places I used phrases like “perhaps” and “maybe” but the general effect was the same) how things went down. As I said it was getting tedious and, to be honest I had trouble really deciding how I wanted things to work and what that history was. I’d of course come up with a lot of this before actually running a game in this setting, at least as much as that history was likely to actually effect what the players were doing and such, but for this series I think I’m going to take a different tack, and hopefully it’ll work a bit better.

Last week over at Grognardia James wrote up some examples of the sort of write ups that he’s working on for the area around Dwimmermount in his upcoming published mega-dungeon. I had literally just spent an lunch break trying (and failing) to write up stuff about this setting when I read that. I think that’s the way I’m going to go. Write things up mostly from the perspective of someone who might actually inhabit the setting, and leave things vague and possibly even not totally true. I’ll leave it up to future DM’s (including perhaps some day myself) to give these places and facts more detail and life through play. This may end up coming out something like an old rumor table.

Let’s get started with a few in this post, and then there’ll be more in later posts to come. We’ll focus on the day side of the planet for now.

1) The Sorcerer Kings and Queens have been around as long as anyone can remember. Most believe they have always been around, though some say that they were once mortals like everyone else. Some even say that some of the Sorcerer Kings and Queens are much younger than the others and suggest that anyone who’s dedicated enough to sorcery and psionics, and lucky enough to live a long time, could rise to their level.

2) Some whisper that there were once other beings in the world that were even more powerful than the Sorcerer Kings and Queens. They say that some of the strange and dangerous ruins that people sometimes claim to find in the deserts or deep underground are dedicated to these beings. Most people dismiss this a hogwash.

3) People complain about the Sorcerer Kings and Queens rule, but they rarely complain too much. Mostly out of concern for their personal safety, but also because some, especially priests of cults dedicated to them, say that the Sorcerer Kings and Queens long ago came together to banish a great darkness from the world, so that everyone could always live in light.

4) There are persistent rumors that there was once a Sorcerer King even more powerful than the rest. They say that he could control time itself. The story usually goes that the rest came together to defeat him. Some even suggest that they were unable to slay him, and had to imprison him.

5) Some traders and explorers claim that if you go far enough to the north you’ll find a mountain ridge filled with green plants as far as the eye can see. They say that this place is guarded by small people who are rarely seen, but kill outsiders quickly and often.

6) The elves claim that if you travel far enough to the east or west you will find the edge of the world. At the edge of the world, they say, you will find a violent and chaotic place of storms of fire, ice, sand, and stone. Some have even said that occasionally strange creatures infused with the elements will come out of this chaos and wreak havoc before retreating back into the maelstrom.

Ok I think that’s enough for today. I’ll get more out in a day or two! What do you think? Which of these work for you? Which don’t? Are any of the interesting? How could I improve them for next time?

Thanks for reading!

-The Duke of Brandonshire

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When I said in my last post that the idea I had for a campaign was metal, I meant it. It was actually inspired by The Sword’s album Warp Riders. I had been listening to the album a bit and listening to the lyrics and reading up on the concept of the album. It struck me that the basic concept of the album would make a pretty neat game setting.
Thinking further on this I came up with the idea of combining several different existing campaign settings and ideas into one over the top mega-setting.

The planet around which the album is based has become tidally locked, meaning that one side of the planet is always facing the sun, and the other is always in night. My first thought was that a slightly adjusted Dark Sun would probably work pretty well for the day-side of the planet. Harsh, and hot, with the sun as much of an antagonist as anything else. Thinking about the night side of the planet it occured to me that the Shadowfell from the D&D Fourth Edition default cosmology could stand in pretty well for a half of a planet that’s eternally enshrouded in darkness and cold. There’s a song called Night City which describes a city on the Night Side of the planet full of scoundrels and space pirates (the Warp Riders of the title for example). Thinking about that I liked the idea of adding in some elements of Spelljammer into the setting. Perhaps Gloomwrought (a city in the Shadowfell) is also a space-port filled with pirates and other lowlifes from all around the universe. I like the Dark Sun idea that the Gods are absent, (though may have existed at some time in the past) so I turned the Raven Queen into a particularly successful Sorcerer Queen who rules the nightside of the planet, presumably much to the dismay of the other Sorcerer Kings and Queens who have to share the Day Side.

The game could start on the Day Side, which is cut off from the Night Side both by the magical machinations of the Raven Queen and the Sorcerer Kings and Queens, and by a zone of intense elemental storms that exists along the border between the two sides. (Apparently on actual tidally locked planets it’s theorized that there would be intense storms and such where the heat and cold met one another, so I figure we can just add some magic to the mix and turn it into a sort of ring of Elemental Chaos). The players would either be natives to that side of the planet (who may not even know there is a Night Side, or even what night is!), or perhaps as characters from elsewhere in the universe who had the misfortune to crash land on this planet. Eventually, if their wanderings brought them to it they would find a way to the other side of the planet, where they might have further adventures or might be able to hitch a ride off the planet.

So that’s the basic idea, an insane mashup of Dark Sun, The Shadowfell, and Spelljammer, all with twists from a metal album.

I’ll go into more detail in another entry soon on some of my thoughts on how all of these things might fit together and what sort of history a world like this might have, some twists and changes, and other details I’ve been thinking about. Hopefully it’ll be interesting you readers, and it’ll give me a chance to solidify some of them into writing.

So what do you think? Does this sound like a fun setting? Does it inspire any ideas in you? Let me know!

Good gaming!
-The Duke of Brandonshire

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Just a quick note that I finally imported some gaming related posts from some older blogs here. They’re a bit rough when I read through them now, but they were written a while back and mostly for an audience of friends I know in real life. Anyway I figured this was a good home for them. I may go back and see if I have any others from elsewhere I can grab but I think these are probably it.

As for new content I’m working on a write up of an idea I had a little while back for a really “metal” gonzo D&D campaign. I should hopefully have that posted in the next couple days.

Good gaming!

-The Duke of Brandonshire

Until fairly recently I’ve at least sort of looked down on random encounters and charts and such. Not entirely mind you, but I had this feeling that they felt like a relic from an older time that were usually just not necessary in a “serious” campaign. It sort of felt to me that any “good GM” shouldn’t need such things as she should be able to either improvise something or have already come up with with “serious” story implications. Lately I’ve come around to randomness more though.

In my last post I mentioned the series of articles on random encounters that Steve Winter wrote about. But even before those articles I was starting to change my mind on randomness. First I had a few good experiences running some games of the recent incarnation of Gamma World and looking at all the fun the players had making sense of the randomly picked options they were presented with. I also read up on the concept of “gygaxian naturalism” after seeing the term a few times.

I actually think it was reading that article that gave me a bit of an “ah ha!” moment, where I realized that random encounters and percentage chances of this and that weren’t just there to allow for “lazy” GMing, but were there instead to simulate a natural world where things happen at varying frequencies. That the same factors that make the dice work to make combat exciting and interesting could be put to work in other aspects of the game too. It was then that I started to realize creating or choosing a random chart could actually be a very good method of preparation, just as valid or “deep” as any other method. It’s also a great way to avoid railroading things too much.

Randomness is one of the things that’s helped me understand the idea of “old school” gaming a lot more than I used to. For a long time I thought old school games were just simple hack and slash affairs with nothing really “important” happening in them and no good story. Now I see that they’re about the characters encountering a place or world and making their own stories through their actions in that world. In many ways it’s more collaborative storytelling than the way I’ve played some other games with that goal in mind. It’s also a good way to keep yourself on your toes as a GM and force you to do some improvising and even possibly some out of the box thinking to make sense of what the dice are telling you.

All of this is to say that I’ve come to appreciate the way that a bit of planned randomness can inject some life into a world and help to create a more “realistic” world for the players to interact with. It’s not all just up to the whims of the GM, some of it is simply the world asserting itself through the dice. It’s also fun when you’re GMing to be surprised by things!

This is not to say I don’t also see value in the sorts of games I have generally been playing and in other ways of doing things. I still like, and see value in story-driven games, or GM’s who improvise a lot of what the players encounter. The “Quantum Ogre” doesn’t really bother me all that much, though I see why it is a concern for some or how it could become a problem. But I think through my reading of some old school blogs and thinking about randomness and how it is used in older kinds of games I’ve come to appreciate something I never really did before.

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Finally! On to some real content!

I had an idea a little while back while I was thinking about randomness, specifically while I was thinking about a series of articles by Steve Winter over at his blog (The excellent Howling Tower) and at Kobold Quarterly. Specifically these entries on using random encounters in games.

While I was thinking about those ideas I was also thinking about treasure distribution and how I’d like to do it in a future game. I don’t hate the way 4th Edition does it (by default at least) but I’ve thought or a while now that if/when I run another 4e game I’ll use inherent bonuses (still don’t really understand why this wasn’t the default in 4e…) and distribute treasure much more randomly.

Anyway, while I was thinking about these two things an idea popped into my head about auctioning off magic items and letting the PC’s participate in those auctions. It suddenly occurred to me that this could be a good way to employ randomness!

So the basic idea is this: You have a chart that determines what the various NPC’s the PC’s are bidding against do in a given round of bidding. Each NPC has their own set of modifiers to that chart that effect how they bid in any given round of bidding at the auction, whether they sit that round out, whether they try to outbid the most recent bid and by how much, or if they stop bidding entirely. I liked this basic idea a lot. It lets you as the GM determine some things about what sort of people these NPC’s are and then let the dice decide how they reacted to the PC’s. The players then only need to know what the results are for the NPC’s and bid or not bid accordingly. If they know how an auction works they can do this without any other knowledge.

This lets you make an auction exciting for everyone, and avoids the problem of it feeling like the GM is just using auctions as a way to decide how much the PC’s are going to have to pay for an item while wasting their time with a phony bidding process (since she presumably knows ahead of time at what point an NPC’s will stop bidding).

My initial thought was of a simple, but custom chart for each NPC, or a few standard charts that would be used depending on how rich they were. But I realized that just a simple chart you roll on might be too static and won’t really provide much in the way of reactions to what the PC’s are doing,. I also realized making up a new chart for every NPC would get pretty tedious.

So after some thought I think a better and simpler way is to create a standard chart and then add some modifiers to the NPC’s to add or subtract from their rolls. You can then set some thresholds to subtract from these modifiers to represent the bidders being less and less likely to keep bidding as the price goes up.

For example lets say we have a chart with 10 entries on it.You’d roll a d10 and then look up the result on the chart. It might look something like this (this is by no means a final chart, hasn’t been play tested or anything just an example):

1. Bidder stops bidding entirely
2. Bidder sits out for the next two rounds
3. Bidder sits out this round
4. Bidder sits out this round
5. Bidder bids the price up one increment
6. Bidder bids the price up one increment
7. Bidder bids the price up one increment
8. Bidder bids the price up two increments
9. Bidder bids the price up two increments
10. Natural 10: Bidder bids the price up three increments (otherwise only go up 2)

However, since, at least in the first few rounds of bidding we probably don’t want our PC’s competitors dropping out of the auction immediately, (or at least not have exactly an equal chance of dropping out or bidding an absurdly high sum), we add in the modifiers depending on both how much the character wants the item and how rich they are.

My thinking here is to make these simple three step increments. The NPC is either interested (+1), very interested (+2), or desperate (+3). Likewise their wealth follows a similar set: average wealth (+1), wealthy (+2), very rich (+3). These bonuses (one from each category) would then be added up and that would effect how the NPC rolled on the chart (at least initially). So pity the PC’s who want the same item as a very rich, and desperate competitor who would be starting out with +6 to her rolls!

Now I say “starting out” because my thinking is that as the auction goes on and the price goes up you would subtract one from their modifier every round of the auction. So the modifiers would go down, and perhaps even eventually go negative making it increasingly likely that the NPC will drop out of the auction (or at least stop bidding long enough for someone else to win).

Now remember, I’ve done no playtesting of this at all at this point, and these numbers may be way too big (maybe we just need 2 for each category?). I’m also envisioning an NPC that starts with the maximum bonus being a very rare occurrence indeed. Most of the time rivals should probably be starting with only a +2 or 3 at most.

 There are certainly some potentially big problems with the system. The first being that this may simply be a lot of work and take too much time for something that most players and GM’s won’t really enjoy. I personally find auctions to be fun and exciting but it’s possible others don’t (or wouldn’t at the table. Heck, I might not either once this is tested out!).

After running this by a few friends some other possible issues have also been brought up. For example: players sitting at a table may be a lot more detached and rational than they might be in a real auction, so they may stop bidding really early rather than getting caught up in the excitement of the auction, and continuing to bid for a while.

Some ideas friends have suggested that I’m certainly thinking about, both to modify or even replace this system:

-Simplify and abstract things further so that the PC’s only end up bidding against the “top” competitor for the item.
-Use some sort of character skill to the process and maybe abstract it into a few die rolls using that skill.
-Add in some sort of “compel” mechanic so that the PC’s actually have to make a will save or something in order to avoid making a bid if they want to try to stop. This would represent their character getting caught up in the frenzy of the auction.

For the moment I still kind of like the simple and straightforward system where the players don’t need to know how to do anything other than bid in an auction, but this hasn’t been play tested at all and the system as is may turn out to be too cumbersome or tedious.

A friend also suggested maybe this could be turned into a way for the PC’s to sell their items, perhaps even a way to fence ill-gotten goods. I’m still thinking on that one a bit, but it might be an interesting (though perhaps a bit too complicated as is) way to determine what sort of price they can get for items they bring back from adventures.


So what do you think? Does this sound like something worth pursuing? Do you have an suggestions for improving things? Is this a terrible idea and I should just scrap it? Is there another game I don’t know about that’s already covered this territory? Let me know! 🎲

Note: This was one of the early posts on my old gaming blog duke.brandonshire.org. I’ve moved all my blogging now with a more general focus than just gaming.

Original Post: I realized a few days ago that I never really articulated what I wanted to do with this blog. That’s mostly because I’m not totally sure myself! For the moment my only focus is on tabletop gaming. That probably seems pretty specific to some people I know, but for anyone into the hobby, it’s actually pretty broad.

I hope to talk about my thoughts on various games, my thoughts on gaming in general, maybe do some reviews here and there, provide a little bit of useful content for other gamers, and maybe even do some play reports here and there, and any number of other kinds of entries I haven’t even thought of yet.

I’m not (at least to start) going to focus on any particular type of game (like old school games, or story games or whatever), or take any particular angle to how I approach my topics. At least that’s how I’m starting out. It’s entirely possible that if I manage to stick with this (and I think I will, at least for a while, I’m enjoying the process, and having somewhere to work out my thoughts and ideas) that a bit of a more specific focus will develop. That’s totally fine by me, and maybe the best way for something like that to happen, at least for me.

Anyway, nothing groundbreaking here, but I just thought I’d add a bit of a note about what this blog is about. I’ve still got a couple of entries in draft form that I’m working on polishing up, but they’re not quite there yet, and a few things have cut into my blogging time recently, but they are still in process and I hope to post them soon!

What would you like to see from a new gaming blog? Anything you want me (or someone!) to talk about?

Thanks again for reading!

Good gaming!

-The Duke of Brandonshire 🎲

So in my first entry I detailed a general outline of my RPG history. That entry was getting pretty long so I thought I’d talk about where some of my interests are right now for a follow up entry.
Here it is!

I’ve certainly developed a bit of a “wandering eye” for games in the last few years. Whereas for a long time I’d only played a few games in the last five or six years I’ve played lots and lots of different games, and I’ve been introduced to even more that I haven’t had a chance to play yet!

I’m pretty open to different kinds of gaming. I love every version of D&D I’ve played (for different reasons, but I honestly enjoy all of them). I’ve enjoyed playing a lot of smaller “indie” games and story games, and bigger more complicated tactical games. I’m open to all sorts of genre’s and settings. I’ve enjoyed games that were high fantasy, games set in Manhattan in 1890, games set in space, post-apocalyptic games, super hero games, and all sorts of other games. I’m interested in just about anything else you can think of that might lead to Adventure!; if someone wants to run a game I’m probably interested in trying it out!

That being said a number of games have been particularly grabbing my eye lately and I hope to have a chance to try them out soon.
A lot of my interest has been in more “old-school” style gaming lately. I haven’t actually been playing anything terribly old school, other than a short session of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, but I’ve been reading about such games for a while and have picked up a few to read through.

I think part of it is the history major in me, just wanting to learn a bit more about the roots of the hobby, and the other part is just wanting to try out some styles of gaming I haven’t really had much experience with.

I started with 2nd Edition and while that is I think a reasonably old school system (or can be played that way) I don’t think we really played it in what most would call an old school style. The game was basically us following a (mostly improvised if I remember correctly) story that our DM was telling. There’s nothing wrong with this way of playing at all of course! I had a great time! But it wasn’t exactly a sand-box sort of game where the story emerged from our actions more than from the story our DM wanted to tell.

I’ve been reading through Adventurer Conqueror King, and reading reviews of the system and I have to say I’d love to give it a try some time. I also backed the Dwimmermount Kickstarter and I’m eagerly awaiting the final product (I’ve been enjoying the previews so far!). I grabbed the 1st Edition reprints when they came out and I’ve been enjoying reading through them as well. I also have the previously mentioned Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and I’m very excited to keep trying that out. I like the simpler more rules lite approach most old school games have, it’s a bit of a breath of fresh air after playing a lot of 3rd and 4th Edition D&D (not that I don’t still enjoy both of those games!).

I think what I’m most intrigued by is the idea of adventures and games that are simply locations or situations, rather than a part of an ongoing pre-scripted story. I like the idea of stories that emerge from what the players do. A world that simply exists and reacts to the player characters rather than the other way around. I’ve really come to appreciate what old school gaming was and is about, and I’d like to give it more of a try.
This isn’t to say that I’m not also interested in plenty of other games or other kinds of games! I’m loving our Apocalypse World / Traveller hack, and there are plenty of very different kinds of games I hope to try out soon as well!

What has grabbed your interest lately? Any particular games you’re itching to try? Any new games you’re playing now? Let me know!

- Good gaming!
The Duke of Brandonshire

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Note: This post was originally the first post on my old Gaming blog duke.brandonshire.org. It’s been moved here now that I’ve moved my blogging to this site.

Hello there! Welcome to my first real entry in my newly formed gaming blog.
I’ve been doing some form of blogging for a while now but other than a period in college when I was using Livejournal a lot never very regularly. I’ve been kind of hoping to try to get myself to do it somewhat often though and I think maybe having a focus would help. As my friends can tell you most of recreational headspace has been devoted to tabletop role playing games for a while now so that seems like a good focus to use. Hopefully this’ll be interesting to other people, but even if it’s not it’ll help me to focus down my thoughts on a number of gaming related topics, and improve my writing at the same time.
Anyway, I thought a good way to start might be to recount my history as a gamer. What sorts of games I’ve played and enjoyed and the like. Let’s get to it.

My Thief’s Handbook went missing sometime over the years!

So last night we were down a player, and had another player uncertain of his availability up to the last minute.  So we decided to put our regular D&D game on hold and give Gamma World a try.

Unfortunately we didn’t really get much actual play time in, due in large part to traffic and such meaning most of us were late getting there.  But we did have a pretty good time with character generation, and deciding on all the details for the characters.  I may suggest we play our next session as a Gamma World game too.  We’ll just roll up a new character for the player missing last session.

So who did we meet last night?

First up was Toucan Sam, a very down to earth mutant vulture (Hawkoid/Gravity Controller).  He wears a very thick Canadian Tuxedo (with jorts) and wields a parking meter as his main weapon.  He loves his pickup truck and his riding horse (who generally spends time in the back of the pickup).

Next we met a good friend of Toucan Sam’s, Aero Gordon.  Mr. Gordon is an android who’s developed a symbiotic relationship with a plant creature of some sort that allows him to run on photosynthesis, and provides some armor (under his business suit of course).  He wields a piece of rebar with some concrete on the end.  Aero Gordon also owns a pickup truck (their shared enthusiasm for trucks is what sparked the friendship between Mr. Gordon and Mr. Sam), a wagon, and has replaced his original eyes with night vision eyes.

Next up the group was introduced Teriyaki Jackson, the most charming and charismatic man any of these people have ever met.  He’s a telepath, and a pyromancer who occasionally bursts into flames.  As a result, even though Aero Gordon likes Teriyaki a lot, he always keeps his physical distance, (the plant part of Aero is very afraid of fire).  Teriyaki Jackson wears a suit of Samurai Armor he managed to loot from the Smithsonian, as well as a messenger bag containing his laptop.  He’s armed with a potato gun that fires radioactive potatoes. He’s also got a hairless kitten that often spends time on his shoulder.  Jackson often carries around five gallons of gasoline, despite his tendency to burst into flames, and the fact that he’s extremely clumsy.

Finally we met BenJarvus Maximillian, a very fast Yeti.  BenJarvus wears football pads, and home insulation strapped to his body with a whole lot of chains.  In addition he wears a soup pot with a space cut out for his face as a helmet and keeps a pair of nightvision goggles on his forehead ready for action at all times.  He likes to hit things with the axel from a car (which still has a tire on one end).  He’s both quite strong and fast, though not particularly smart. But he speaks with a British accent, so many people don’t notice that he’s not that bright.  He also owns a generator, which he occasionally lets Teriyaki Jackson use to power his laptop.

I’m looking forward to seeing what adventures this motley crew gets up to, and who they might meet along the way. 🎲

I've been thinking a lot about Dungeons and Dragons lately.  My last post which was a general life update I mentioned that I'm still playing fairly regularly in a Dungeons and Dragons game which I've been enjoying a lot.  We're playing 3.5, and it's been a lot of fun for the past several years, even if in the past few months we've slowed a bit due to scheduling problems, still we're playing on Sunday and I'm pretty excited about it.  We stopped the last session mid-battle and we're soon going to begin infiltrating the frozen fortress of an undead evil dragon in order to keep a powerful artifact out of the hands of an evil cult.  What could be more D&D?

Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition

Wizards RPG Team

But! What's gotten me extra excited about "D's" lately though is the impending release of 4th Edition, which comes out tomorrow.  I was originally planning to pick up the Players Handbook tomorrow night, but now I may wait until Saturday as I'm probably heading over to Falls Church anyway to mow my Mom's lawn while she's out of town, so I figure I'll head

Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition

Wizards RPG Team

to my old nerd store.  Which I still feel nostalgic about, even if none of the people I used to see regularly still work there (come back Timus!), and others have had some rather negative experiences there lately.  They still have one of the best bookshelves of role playing game books in the area (and they aren't shrink-wrapped for no reason so you can flip through them before you buy 'em).  Hopefully demand won't be so great that they'll be sold out by Saturday.
Some people have been worried about 4th Edition, and there is certainly some worry with any new release like this.  But most of what I've seen so far about the game makes me very hopeful that it'll be even more streamlined and fun than 3/3.5 was.  There are some pretty big changes and I know some of my friends would probably prefer it to be even more simplified and more like True 20, but as even my friend Ben (who really likes the True 20 idea) pointed out, for Dungeons and Dragons you should keep a certain level of defined classes and other iconic elements, otherwise it's just not quite D&D.
Some people are also worried it'll be too much like an MMO, because they seem to have taken a few ideas from things like WoW.  I think that's a pretty silly concern for a couple of reasons.  First of all if an idea is good and it makes things more fun, I don't really care where it comes from, and second, a table top role playing game with good friends and a good game master will never really be much like an MMO, unless that's the way the group wants it.
I have no idea when I'll get to play a bit with 4th Edition, as my current game is 3.5 and I don't see us translating this game into 4th Edition (it'd be a lot of work, and my character would be nearly impossible to translate without some serious house-ruling, since he has two levels of Psion, and Psionics aren't out for 4th edition yet, hopefully it won't be a multi-year wait for that).  Though I'd love to try out a short one or two session adventure with some people, just to see how the game works.
I've also been thinking about what sort of character I want to play next.  I've generally always played rogues, and I still love them as characters (I still don't know how other character classes handle having so few skill points), but I think in my next game I'm ready to try out something different (It's been fun adding a few levels of Psion to my current character, has given me a taste of more spellcasting-type classes).  I'm sort of tempted to play a pure Psion next, and I think that'd be pretty interesting, Sorcerers also seem pretty fun to me.  But I think I'd really like to try out a martial class of some sort.  I've always thought that playing a Monk would be an interesting role-playing opportunity, and I like the simplicity of fighters, and the idea of having lots and lots of feats, I also like psionics a lot so a psychic warrior might be fun too, but I think ultimately I might want to try out a Barbarian or something like it for my next game (but who knows what I'll want to try by the time that happens).  I love the idea of playing a "noble savage" sort of archetype, especially one modeled after some of my favorite parts of Conan.  That is, someone who's main strength is brute-force martial combat, but who isn't afraid to use some sneaking and rogue-like tactics to accomplish his goals when the need arises.
Anyway,  I've got a lot of other thoughts on  D&D and role playing in general but I'll end this now, and end with a few questions for you dear readers.
So are you excited about 4th Edition?  Have you been playing any interesting games lately?  Been looking at anything interesting?  Any other nerd-gaming thoughts?

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