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Text of the page (random words):
ed the fact that the scenario in question was a miniature sandbox full of gunpowder lastly i only found out after the fact that i had run a game for an occasional online contact paul gorman hi paul dead planet mothership ok so oddly enough this one was originally scheduled for 8pm midnight that wasn t gonna happen for a guy who normally wakes up at 5 30am on weekdays so i got this slot moved to 2pm 6pm but that probably threw some people off and i didn t get the requested minimum of players rather than just dissolve it though i was fortunately able to add my players to bardaree s table in the contessa room thanks to her generosity likewise i joined some of my former players from the gnomes game at stacy dellorfano s table to playtest their city crawl project the incompetent watchmaker lotfp this was my final game and i m glad that stacy let me sit in at their table i will keep the appraisal very brief but i can tell you that this is shaping up to be a fantastic supplement stacy added a number of real world references from the city of bern switzerland which gave a good sense of grounding in reality meanwhile the final encounters actually creeped grossed me out in a way that no one else in rpgs has managed to do i also really liked the tick box customization of pregenerated characters e g choose three starting weapons from this list and so forth one of the smoother lotfp games i ve played in other stuff while i had a blast at the con while i wasn t at the gaming table i will say that one of the highlights was getting to re meet chris spivey author of harlem unbound at the bar we had met briefly at the ennies earlier this year this time we had a bit of a conversation about our u con experiences and we got to discuss a few aspects of running and writing rpg material 10 10 would chat with again and now i m back to my regular gaming routine once again with my usual dose of post convention gaming enthusiasm i think my goals for the near future will be to continue familiarization with all the various aspects of the ngr system and eventually writing an actual adventure for it i may start by writing system specific content on this blog so keep your eyes peeled posted by dan d at 11 46 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels lotfp mothership neoclassical geek revival ngr ucon 2018 zzarchov kowolski friday october 19 2018 neoclassical geek revival ngr a review today i would like to review the game system neoclassical geek revival henceforth ngr by zzarchov kowolski now i don t consider myself a reviewer like bryce at tenfootpole and in fact i ve only posted one rpg review prior to this one but i feel compelled to review the game system here for one primary reason you see ngr is the only game i m playing in now i m a player in one of zzarchov s weekly games and we use his system zzarchov is primarily known in rpg circles as the author of high value innovative adventures his work for lamentations of the flame princess includes thulian echoes which features a twist in that the players play both a historical party of adventurers as well as a party trying to retrace their steps also scenic dunnsmouth an investigative town adventure with a playing card based setup mechanism which makes it highly replayable dunnsmouth in particular is a perpetual fan favorite that i keep hearing mentioned in discussions of present day innovation in the old school gaming space zzarchov also has his own independent adventures available for purchase two of which i m running at an upcoming local convention a thousand dead babies and the gnomes of levnec his independent adventures feature not only interesting public domain artwork on the cover but also two sets of stat blocks one for generic osr games assuming some version of original d d and one for ngr although i purchased these adventures intending to adapt them to lotfp the ngr stat blocks referred to mechanics that sounded both intriguing and practical for example counts as consecrated temple on holy ground as a result of sheer curiosity i bought the rulebook and read through it briefly before diving in to zzarchov s weekly game i ve been playing regularly for a few months so the review will be from this perspective someone who s tried learning the game solo and then seen the system in practice we ll start with the negatives because you re going to have to deal with them up front this game can be difficult to wrap your head around especially if you re the only one coming to it in your gaming group and or you have a strong familiarity with various versions of d d according to zzarchov the whole ngr project started out of a series of house rules to tsr era ad d 1e 2e however there have been so many modifications that the basic structure of the game mechanics feels entirely different as a matter of fact the game was once known by the title piecemeal if the game can be classified in any way as osr then it is in flavor and sensibility alone and not in terms of game mechanics i will argue later that a lot of these modifications are actually for the better and consistent with my ideal gaming experience when it comes to fantasy genre roleplaying but it s a difficult adjustment particularly if you re like me and don t learn most effectively just by reading the rulebook if i could offer an analogy the coming of d d was the invention of the wheel or maybe a wheelbarrow but ngr is a complete mountain bike you get a much more sophisticated machine that has a lot more esoteric parts but once you learn how to use it you can do amazing and fun things with it in short a lot of the mechanics end up being simple once you know them but require a lot of explanation to fully illustrate secondly even after you get through the novelty of the mechanics and everything begins to click i find that it is definitely on the crunchy side of the spectrum as opposed to rules light crunchy alluding to number crunching this is not a game for those who have burned their 5th edition d d books in favor of forever playing games like the black hack and into the odd as an example often times i feels like ngr may be prone to modifier creep this is what i m calling the phenomenon of having to keep track of an increasing number of different situational modifiers e g i m facing a blunt attack 2 to my defense roll and i m blessed by my priest s god 1 but my opponent has the high ground 2 etc etc i don t believe it approaches anything close to pathfinder however which the worst offender in all the games i played i needed a laptop with herolab installed in order to play it effectively and keep track of all the different status effects some caveats 1 certain rules are marked as basic while others are more fiddly if you re new to the game or simply don t want to incorporate them you can ignore the fiddly rules such as armor tags to make the game more streamlined 2 i should mention that by calling the system crunchy i simply am referring to the amount of time spent resolving mechanics rather than what those mechanics relate to that is you shouldn t assume that you ll be wasting a lot of time on tedious combat if that s not what you want to focus on indeed many of our ngr game sessions involve little or no combat because the game actively promotes this play style more on this below the presence of crunch and the depth of the rules leads me to the first positive of the review which is also stated early in the book the known rule this is two explicit statements in one a if a rule isn t known just make a ruling rather than look it up b if you must look up a rule during play you get 1 awesomeness if you re a player or all players get 1 awesomeness if it s the gm looking up the rule yes awesomeness is a game mechanic which i ll cover below in the same spirit of this certain rules are marked as basic while others are more fiddly if you re new to the game you can ignore the fiddly rules such as armor tags to make the game more streamlined furthermore a lot of the modifier creep can be mitigated ahead of time with a well organized character sheet i can bundle common modifiers together and simply make note of the totals a lot easier than i ever could in pathfinder speaking of dealing damage that works entirely differently in ngr than in d d in ngr physical damage is only one type of accrued point along with stress disease poison fear suspicion think of giving yourself away while sneaking and even influence trying to win an argument yes ngr has mechanics for social conflict and they work seamlessly with the rest of the system anyway your barrier to taking all of these potential damage points is known as your luck points it s helpful to think of them as hp although again it covers all bases and not just physical damage whether you avoid a sword stab or just manage to avoid detection while having a torch lit it s all luck this leads to another great plus about ngr as a system in general by spreading the focus across both combat and various other non combat aspects ngr tends toward hi jinx and shenanigans for example if you enter into a social conflict i e argument and burn your luck points you will not be so lucky if a fight breaks out later or if you get thrown in jail and have to sneak your way out furthermore that awesomeness i mentioned you cash those points in at the end of sessions in the hopes of getting fate points fate points will let you re roll bad dice or get some luck back in a pinch correspondingly you gain awesomeness a number of different ways one method is to purposefully make poor decisions for example getting drunk instead of taking your assigned watch at night another suggested method is to have 80 s hair you can really get more awesomeness and fate points by being elected the mvp of that night s session by the other players furthermore the xp system is a key somewhat hidden aspect to incentivizing certain play styles there are distinct differences in the characteristics of a d d game that gives experience points i e character progression for treasure when compared to a later edition that rewards monster slaying every facet of ngr awards xp in a slightly different way and i feel it s done in a way that de emphasizes combat while still promoting risk taking a great example is the fact that you get increasing xp values for each new room in a dungeon you explore as you deplete your resources that next room could be worth 450 xp now or zero xp once you come back to the dungeon a second time that s because that room will then be your first new room whereas it s the tenth new room this time around that sort of press your luck enticement is embedded in ngr and zzarchov s gm style for the record it puts a heavy risk versus reward ball in the players court at all times and it s when they are faced with real meaningful choices that players get invested in the game multiclassing is also easy in ngr imagine a pie chart broken into three pieces and this is your character class you can have all three pie pieces in warrior or you could choose two parts warrior one part wizard and so forth i ll spare you the details which could get crunchy and count toward that first negative of esoteric confusion but obviously the former example would be a more effective warrior than the latter but the latter could at least cast a few spells if needed lastly the review would not be complete without a mention of zzarchov s writing style he s a witty guy he enjoys more than his fair share of puns and he s held back none of his sense of humor when writing the ngr rules this is one of the few books that i ve found legitimately enjoyable to read as it does not read like a dry technical manual it s still easy to consult as a rulebook even though there s no index and the pdf isn t bookmarked but you could also easily read it from cover to cover i ll wrap up with my one final negative that we might encounter moving forward name recognition unless you re familiar with zzarchov or backed the recent kickstarter you probably don t even know about ngr it s even less likely that your gaming group will know about it so it may be difficult to drum up support for using it as a game system but if you do i know from experience that it has the potential to be a fantastically fun game posted by dan d at 11 25 am 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels neoclassical geek revival ngr review rpgs rules wednesday october 17 2018 the best d d book ever written what do you know about dungeons dragons about where it came from and specifically what inspired it not the rules but the fictional content of the game if you follow the osr movement or are simply an ad d player since the first edition of the game you might have a pretty good idea the original dungeon masters guide 1979 featured a slew of appendices from the verbose gary gygax but one in particular appendix n has consistently received the most attention basically said appendix is a list of fiction literature that inspired the game s content originally to quote gygax from such sources as well as any other imaginative writing or screenplay you will be able to pluck kernels from which will grow the fruits of exciting campaigns it s a useful list to reference when you re trying to convince someone that d d is not purely some hardcore tolkien deification as is common perception there are a ton of authors presented there and some of the biggest fictional characters from that list include conan created by robert e howard elric by michael moorcock and fafhrd the gray mouser by fritz leiber a whole bunch of sword and sorcery novels populate the list as well as some science fiction authors such as leigh brackett and andre norton i would argue that none of them capture the spirit of what d d can and should be better than the dying earth by jack vance this is the copy i have now you may be somewhat familiar with vance if you ve even played d d at all the paradigm of memorizing a set number of spells which will be forgotten upon their casting that is a concept taken directly from this book furthermore one can easily see the parallels between naming conventions felojun s second hypnotic spell vance versus mordenkainen s faithful hound gygax for example the ties are so strong that this fire and forget spell system is known as vancian in discussions on various magic systems for rpgs perhaps you are even aware of one of the greatest villains of d d lore vecna a legendary lich his disembodied eye and hand are legendary artifacts of the d d world in case you haven t worked it out yet his name was simply a rearranged form of vance the point is this author had some serious influence on the foundation of d d and yet i see so little of this book manifest in modern day d d games unlike the mighty conan the tormented elric or the plucky fafhrd and gray mouser i dare say vance s work has been cast aside from the consciousness of most modern gamers originally published in 195...