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something special the following three posts will deal with the contents of each of the three parts of the book part one the character chapter 1 expanding characters chapter 2 magic chapter 3 expanding equipment chapter 4 non player characters part two worlds of adventure chapter 5 worlds of adventure the world chapter 6 worlds of adventure the city chapter 7 worlds of adventure dungeons chapter 8 air and water adventure chapter 9 equipment wastage chapter 10 lands as treasure chapter 11 going to war chapter 12 monster ecology chapter 13 expanding the genre part three the siege engine chapter 14 advancing the game chapter 15 the siege engine chapter 16 treasure chapter 17 iron sulfer combat chapter 18 skill packages chapter 19 character death and fates reference from the tsr marvel superheros rpg posted by scott hadaller at 5 16 pm 1 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday march 19 2015 gambling your fifth edition character s life i was flipping a coin mixed in with my rpg dice and started thinking about a fun way to use a fifty fifty probability dynamic in a game it seemed like a basic gamble and reminded me of a simplified dice game gambling of coarse is always the most exciting when the stakes are high and a save or die situation came to mind as something exciting to try d d currently has the death saving throw a series of saving throws with a target number of 10 rolled on a d20 without modifiers its basically a race to see what outcome is rolled three times first 10 or over save or under ten fail including the ten in the target number adds five percent i started thinking that i could substitute the coin flip for the d20 roll as the target number is half way and essentially an over under situation but thinking about it further i realized that its not quite what it seems this probably isn t a revelation to anybody that thinks about how dice and probability work but a roll of ten or over isn t a fifty percent chance either way its a fifty five percent chance of making a successful save if each digit represents five percent then failure to make a death save occurs only forty five percent of the time as 1 9 represents the range of failure it sounds fifty fifty but that would actually be if success was a roll of over ten rolling a one counts as two failures so i guess if you wanted to use a coin flip to represent a death saving throw your odds would be less and that would be a real gamble posted by scott hadaller at 5 35 pm 1 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday february 18 2015 dragons chess in the eighties i remember being particularily attracted to the chess themed covers by artist dennis beauvais for dragon magazine i remember starring at these for hours while i was a kid and letting my imagination run wild clockwise from top left artwork for dragon magazine 83 118 89 86 recently a new cover was commissioned for gygax magazine and it looks like it was pulled out of the vault as it fits in so well with the previous work actually it s technically and compositionally superior but still very evocative of the earlier works queen captures queen a few evenings ago i discovered a video of a commercial that reminded me of the beauvais works created in 1991 for the u s marine corps by ad agency jtw i can t help but wonder if it was influenced by dragon posted by scott hadaller at 11 56 am 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday january 16 2015 blue dungeon tiles anyone reading this blog might have noticed that some old school looking grid maps were at my table during jimcon 4 these of coarse were the blue dungeon tiles from red kobold games that i received shortly before the convention they are a recent kickstarter project that i was drawn to due to their apparent versatility old school look and generic appearance start setup for dungeon crawl classics i didn t get as much use as i had hoped at the convention due to a low turnout at the table where i was going to use them the most i did get to use them to great effect in another game that for the most part was designed to work in the theatre of the imagination that of coarse was the future king as the adventure progressed i found it got more complex i started using one of the tiles to keep track of initiative and survival points hp then a complicated melee at a ford with a river monster had my players wanting to visualize where everyone was we didn t even use miniatures we just marked where everyone was with a dry erase marker and made adjustments when needed it worked out great used tactically for a complicated river melee and to track combat i found the tiles quite versatile you can make up small areas on the fly which is very convenient and if you re taking them to a convention you can pre plan on what specific tiles you need and just bring those ones they work with dry erase non permanent some people call these wet erase and permanent markers you need to draw over with dry erase markers if you use these in my set up for my dcc game i found i was drawing a lot of lines on the joint between the tiles don t do what i did which was to try to speed up my cleanup and use a dry erase cleaning fluid on the tiles to remove my permanent process blue marker the fluid ran over the laminate on the edge and wicked into the paper stock of the tile leaving a small blue stain stick with using a dry erase marker for removal of permanent markings as its less messy the tiles arrive one drawback i found with the tiles was that all the pre designed features are practically useless for replicating rpg maps in adventures at least the ones i seem to own and other old school designs that s because the walls are drawn in as a filled in grid width and walls just aren t drawn in that thick in most older adventure designs and in quite a few new ones as well they are great for creating structures on the fly like shops towers forts etc or for designing buildings and dungeons for custom scenarios that being said the backs of most of theses tiles are just a grid with no features so you can easily draw in what you need yourself making the tiles themselves far from useless that s a lot of tiles in terms of tiling these on the game table i found that they work best if you can assemble portions ahead of time with blue painters tape you can use the tape to create custom map features on the top or place it on the bottom to simply keep tiles together as with most tiling systems keeping the tiles from moving apart can be a bother but all the tiles are square uniform and flat which makes things as easy as you can get without having some sort of interlocking system like tact tiles a treasure in tiles overall i d say blue dungeon tiles are a 4 out of 5 i really like them and will likely be using them at the table for years to come i m also planning on using them to assist in the design of some of my forthcoming custom dungeons for 5e i can see these being super useful if you were to utilize appendix a random dungeons from the 5e dmg posted by scott hadaller at 2 43 am 1 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday january 1 2015 jimcon 4 jimcon 4 for some reason i m posting again about events that happened weeks in the past i could just let them be events in the past but this is another one that i would like to talk about here once again jimcon lived up to its promise of being winnipeg s table top games convention held again at the bronx park community centre which is for the most part a great place to play with plenty of room and is a fairly new building here are my personal highlights of jimcon4 friday november 14 this turned out to be more of a low than a highpoint but such is the way of volunteering to run games at cons i was running the level 1 dcc rpg adventure rat king s maze of death from the back of the chained coffin module adventure prepped check weird dice check maps and minis check players nope looks like no one signed up to play any dcc this year though its been relatively popular in the past and i ve run it at the previous year s jimcon and the last two keycons turns out that there was interest after all as i found out later but players were too enticed by 5e d d or were involved with pathfinder so maybe not enough interest perhaps friday isn t the best time i m thinking of running some dcc next year but only if i notice some genuine interest over the coming year in any case i eventually ended up playing star wars age of rebellion and generally socializing weird dice check players nope saturday november 15 so i slept in and missed playing the star wars x wing miniatures game tournament but alls well that ends well because i got to finally run something i ve been wanting to play for some time tom moldvay s the future king the following was my write up for the adventure from the author of the 1981 d d basic rulebook and adventures such as isle of dread castle amber and the lost city comes tom moldvay s 1985 rpg adventure the future king play one of six historical heroes doc holiday nostradamus bruce lee harald hardraada owen glendower and cyrano de bergerac who have been gathered together out of the mists of time their mission is to find and wake king arthur for it is time that he again don the mantle of kingship all the rules to play are included in the adventure itself rules light and simple to learn and play it took about 5 hours to play but it was one of the craziest adventures i d ever seen somewhat more of a railroad in format than i am used to but still full of wonder the players and myself enjoyed two players ran all six characters to great effect many surprises and an ending that satisfied beyond expectation clearly moldvay is a master of the craft nostradamus and bruce lee quest to resurrect king arthur sunday november 16 another short day friday is in the evening only and sunday in the morning and afternoon and this one was spent playing doctor who adventures in time and space we played the recently released cat s eye scenario about an alien hive mind that takes over a group of feral cats that are sharing an abandoned building with a community of squatters i recruited a couple of guys that were planning on playing dungeon world that appeared interested in playing doctor who one played amy pond and the other was craig owens the eleventh doctor s roommate everyone seemed rather excited see how a game without the doctor would turn out it was brilliant after the main investigation and initial conflict another person was interested in giving the game a try and they jumped in as the doctor just in time for the climax it was a really good ending and the surprise appearance by the doctor really helped add the finishing touch this game is always a crowd pleaser when i run it and i always have players that have never played it before so i m actually surprised i haven t seen it being played in public anywhere this game also made me observant of the fact that i ts fun to be able to sit down at a table of strangers play a game and get up from a table of friends overall a great time once again at jimcon in fact this year there were more interesting games to play than i could fit in to the three days next year i m sure will be just as good posted by scott hadaller at 11 56 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday december 7 2014 d d 5e addresses pathfinder s strange core assumption the following is a previously unpublished commentary from several years ago on aspects of game design and the design principles inherited by the designers that carry on with the 3e tradition balance a reinforcement of individualism rather than group play based on the false idea that players have to have the same advantages built into their characters as other opposing players in a game with no winners or losers why build fairness into a game where fairness has no advantage instead this creates a disadvantage requiring a way to customize the character in order for them to not be essentially similar to one another the current myth is that the traditional class system of older editions with its advantages strengths and disadvantages weaknesses between classes creates cookie cutter characters i hold to the idea that in some way your character is how you play it thus a roleplaying game not a stat driven character game in truth this balancing approach leads to the need for specific customization and la rger than life heroics to differentiate one class from one another superpowers aka feats and imagination discouragement 3e and its descendants like pathfinder assume balance and discourages the creation of magical items and spells that replicate the abilities of other classes at the same time the feats grant those same abilities to the other classes here the dm is discouraged from creating unbalanced items and pruning his imagination in order to preserve balance and the status of the games super powers seriously there is no reason why you wouldn t be able to wear ten magical rings wtf in the post tsr era the fantasy roleplaying game has become a game that uses the rules to make it a players game and bully the dm into creating his campaign to conform to the rules rather than the dictates of the imagination conclusion ridiculous how things have changed in the world of rpgs since then it s great to see that the creative team behind the new d d has shifted the balance of power back into the gms court there is no need for bizarre game mechanic based magic item limits because you can t simply go purchase magic you need to find it earn it character customization is achieved through a choice of class and background class features are prominent again because skills are limited to proficiency that ranges from 2 to 6 in addition to bonuses provided by class features and feats are optional limited and designed to represent expert training over time and not manifest as an almost superhuman ability beyond the abilities of the most highly trained human being once again level 1 characters are not heroes they re adventurers and their status as a hero can and should be determined by their adventures and how successful and heroic they perform posted by scott hadaller at 5 29 pm 0 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest older posts home subscribe to posts atom moldvay basic what inspired me links to wisdom osr house rules wiki search inspired mythos osr manitoba manitoba classic rpg group play generated map document archive play generated cultural artifacts blog archive 2025 1 02 02 02 09 1 design notes adventures in fantasy for arnecon 2 2015 4 03 22 03 29 1 03 15 03 22 1 02 15 02 22 1 01 11 01 18 1 2014 8 12 28 01 04 1 12 07 12 14 1 11 30 12 07 1 11 02 11 09 1 07 06 07 13 1 02 09 02 16 2 02 02 02 09 1 2013 6 11 17 11 24 1 08 11 08 18 1 06 16 06 23 1 05 12 05 19 1 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