Friday 22 June 2012

Unexpected Inspirations


No, it's not that I'm not writing because I don't have anything to write about. Actually I do have a bunch of ideas floating inside my head at almost every waking hour, and for this blog at the moment I want to write some more lizardman stuff: some more creatures, my take on their religion and culture. And maybe a lizardman class for S&W. But for now, I have quite a tight schedule (thankfully not without hobby related activities), and the useful things have to be postponed.

The unexpected inspirations that I have in mind are board games. There is a game, Small World. It comes in two variants. In both of them one gets to choose some fantasy races during the game and then tries to conquer as much land as he can and gain the profit (namely, gold). And during yesterday's game, two things stuck in my mind. Firstly, we had an actual situation in which a creature resembling Balrog stood on an ancient fortress, being the only occupant. With a little background and spicing it all up it can be a fine location for a game. Secondly, now theoretically, we thought of a race of trolls that fortify their lairs, and the remains of this now dying breed live in the highest mountains. Now, we have a whole set of possible locations, and with a little bit of creative thinking we can even link the Balrog creature to the trolls.

Other thing, one of my players said "Oh, I'd like to finally play a sandbox campaign". He wasn't the first to suggest that I should run such a game, but with a bit of talk and recalling the things I've read on the subject before, its quite possible that I'll finally manage to offer my players a sandbox campaign. My problem with this kind of gaming was the amount of prep needed beforehand. I mean, as a GM who improvises almost all the time, even the idea of compiling my own set of tables is quite overwhelming. And making a whole continent of hexes filled with everything seems even worse. But I can try doing it the other way around. Start the sandbox with only 6 or 8 hexes available, and slowly build upon them, depending on where the players went. This way, the world will actually be a living thing and I will be able to provide more and more details.

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Musings over the First Part of D&D Next Playtest


Honestly speaking, I have already written something on the subject on my blog in Polish (it's title could be translated as Scribblings of a Part-time Monster), but as some linguists try to prove, the character of a person changes while he or she speaks in another language, so I decided to give it try and see what my "English self" has to say about D&D Next, or rather this little part that we've gotten our hands at for now.

But before that, I have to state something: I am by any means not a grognard. I'm far too young to remember the Golden Age of RPG as some people call it. Or the beginnings of the hobby, for that matter. Hell, in 1974 my father was 9 years old! So all I know about D&D of that time I know from reading.

That being said, D&D Next seems to be a step backwards, but this time it's not a bad thing. I mean, I ran a couple games of 4ed. But I do tend to play by the book (I have something around 30 games on my shelf, not to mention all those available as legal, free pdfs), and before DMG 2 that was not a game for me (and when it came out, my group did not want another run of that game, as I could run loads of other things). Honestly, I'm not the type who likes to design multiple encounters in order to let the team advance.I like to improvise, and on my sessions people sometimes don't even unsheath their weapons. I do remember a game in which the PCs spent half of the time in a tavern.

I began my adventure with the hobby with D&D 3,0. And the current iteration of the playtest goes even further in terms of some aspects of the game, but onwards in others.

I do enjoy the idea of a more static AC, of simplified weapons etc. Right now I don't see any rules for BAB, and it's possible that there will be none. Getting rid of the majority of the skill system is a great thing (but I thing they will be included in the final version, as Backgrounds provide training in certain skills).

The new statblock for monsters is marvelous. It's simple, without things that you can't use. I do get the impresion that some of them have too many hit points, but that will be verified as soon as I give the game a try (damn you, Finals!). Oh, yes, the fact that the hit points for a given monsters are set is another thing that I don't like, but the format being neither as long as in 3,x nor as complicated as in 4 ed (yes, everything was written in the statblock, but the monster could have one attack normally, one if you rolled a 5, other when he's bloodied etc.) really suites my taste.

And the great novelty: Advantage/Disadvantage. I've read the article of the curve of probability with the additional kept die, but... Honestly, I see it as a great thing. Again, testing will verify my opinion, but I always preferred die over static bonuses.

That's all for now, if I have any more musings regarding D&D Next, I'll definitely post them.

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Lizardmen Tribal Hero


Lizardmen, Tribal Hero
Armor Class:  4[15]
Hit Dice:        3+1
Attack:          claws or weapon (1k6), depending on tribe
Special:          Underwater
Move:            6 (12 when swimming)
HDE/XP:        3/60

Tribal Heros are the veterans of the tribe. They survived many battles and ritual duels. Their hide is usally marked by many scars. Unlike their lesser kin, they tend to wear light armour made of cured hides of many hideous beasts that populate the marshes.They usually lead hunting packs of other lizardmen. Like all lizardmen they can swim very well and hold their breath for long durations or even breathe underwater.
It's not unusal for a Tribal Hero to accompany priests during their journeys.

Sunday 10 June 2012

Random Lizardmen Tribe Generator

There is a little project that I want to accomplish, but it'll be better if I do it in little pieces. This way, if in the middle of it I decide to stop, some material will already be online and ready to use. To be honest, yersterday the project itself was a locale in a swampy wilderness, but now I'll probably try to make it into a module or something similar. So, to add some background and denizens to the area I've come up with an idea of another random generator, this time for lizarmen tribes.

Generating a tribe consists of a number of steps:
  1. Determine size of the tribe
  2. Generate the first part of the name
  3. Generate the second part of the name
  4. Determine scale colour
  5. Determine preferred weapons

Roll 2d6 to detmine size of the tribe:
2. dying out (1-10, a leader, k3 children, k4 women)
3-4. small (2-20, a leader, a tribal hero, 1-3 priests, 100% noncombatants)
5-9. medium (4-40, a leader, 1 tribal hero for every ten warriors, 1-6 priests, 150% non-combatants )
10-11. big (8-80, a leader, 1 great tribal hero for every ten warriors, 1 tribal hero for every 5 warriors, 4-24 priests, 150% noncombatants)
12.great (16-160, a leader, 1 great tribal hero for every ten warriors, 1 tribal hero for every 5 warriors, 1 chosen of the gods, 4-24 priests, 175% noncombatants)

If you roll a number of tribe members corresponding to a lower value in the table, use numbers for that value.

Roll d20 to determine the first part of the tribe's name:
01. Poisonous
02. Venomous
03. Great
04. Black
05. Green
06. Blue
07. White
08. Yellow
09. Brave
10. Cunning
11. Silent
12. Bone
13. Marsh
14. Ivory
15. Amber
16. Cobalt
17. Emerald
18. Blessed
19. Hunting
20. Wild

Roll d20 to generate the second part of the tribe's name:
01. Snakes
02. Shadows
03. Spiders
04. Fangs
05. Claws
06. Talons
07. Tails
08. Crocodiles
09. Whispers
10. Lizard
11. Serpents
12. Ghosts
13. Monsters
14. Beasts
15. Scales
16. Children
17. Brood
18. Spawn
19. Teeth
20. Jaws

Roll a d8 to determine scale colour:
1. Black
2. Green
3. Orange
4. Red
5. Red-green
6. Black-orange
7. Navy
8. Green-brown


Roll 2d8 to determine preferred hand weapon:
2. sword
3. sword and shield
4. spear
5. spear and shield
6. axe
7. axe and shied
8. two-handed axe
9. none (claws)
10. club
11. great club
12. none (claws)
13. hammer
14. hammer and shield
15. two-handed hammer
16. long knife


Roll to determine preferred ranged weapon:
1. short bow
2. darts
3-4. javelin
5. none
6. sling

Saturday 9 June 2012

The Rules Behind the Stuff

I'm a person that thrives on spurs of creativity. In other words, I find it difficult to sit down and get things done, but I do like have a single idea that I can quickly convert into something more... substantial. Probably it's because of the fact that I'm very prone to procrastination, or maybe it's the sanguine element of my character. Whatever the reason, I'm quite aware of that fact.

Yet still, I do want to produce content for this blog, something that might be of use for some people other than myself (well, maybe right now not many people read what I write, but this blog is two days old and hopefully it'll gain some popularity over time). If I were publishing things related to my retroclone in progress, nobody would have had the possibility to use it. That is why I decided to choose one game and write the stat-blocks and orther rules-related stuff acording to that particular ruleset. My game of choice is Swords & Wizardry: White Box.

Why? The reasons are two-fold. First of all, the rules are simple without being simplistic. S&W:WB possesses all that I need and leaves plenty of space to provide house-rules etc. Secondly, it's a proxy for my own system. It's quite possible that if I manage to finish my game, I'll rewrite the content of this blog to be used with it (leaving the S&W stats, of course).

But if I have something finished for my game I'll also post it here, because feedback is a thing that encourages me to work. So things like basics of the game, Abilities, Classes/Races etc. That will go to the main rulebook will probably appear here as a "work-in-progress" status thing.

Oh, yes. And hopefully my writing will improve along the way. Writing in English only for the purpose of my Academic Writing class made me use a lot of hedging, and the neccessity to keep the deadlines and meet wordcount limits quite delimited the vocabulary that I use in my writing (but I believe it did not touch my inner lexicon as I seem to passively know a lot more words than I'm actively using).

D30 Table of Random NPC Quirks

The Finals are drawing nearer with every passing hour, but one cannot study all the time. And what can be more relaxing than compiling some random tables? Recently I've read about the Order of the d30, and shot a look at the stuff involving this particular, a bit peculiar, die shape. As I am a proud owner of a d30, I've decided to come up with a d30 generator of my own design.

d30 Table of Random NPC Quirks

The NPC:
01. is alergic to dust (sneezes loudly and whines a lot about it)
02. proclaims himself the Prophet of End Times
03. is possessed by an entity that is stuck inside his body (it wants to get out but it can't)
04. is a bastard of a local noble/aristocrat
05. has better claims to the throne than the actual ruler
06. is addicted to having his blood sucked by vampires
07. believes himself to be a werewolf
08. is schizofrenic
09. believes that dark eyes indicate that evil can look through them
10. has only one, unblinking eye in the middle of his face
11. thinks he's a minor character in a tale of some kind
12. has a slave mark
13. cannot use verbs
14. is a sentient version of one of the mindless undead
15. is a sentient weapon that somehow got reincarnated
16. dresses in flayed humanoid skin
17. has one arm made of stone
18. falls into rage when he sees figurines depicting horses
19. is on a noble quest to retrieve a holy relic
20. looks exactly like one of the characters
21. claims to be a descendant of one of the characters that came from the future with a warning
22. rides an exotic animal (zebra, polar bear, great wolf etc.)
23. can speak only through the parrot sitting on his shoulder
24. never looks the heroes straight in the eye
25. claims to be a giant trapped in the body of a halfling
26. is a wanted criminal
27. tries to sell the characters a red cloak that "gives the ability to fly"
28. has complete amnesia
29. took the vow of peace
30. roll twice

Friday 8 June 2012

The Dragon Roars!


The idea of starting a blog about RPG was in my mind for about a year now. Well, not. That would not be true. I already have one blog about this particular hobby, but it's in my native tongue. Honestly speaking, I still don't know about what I'll write here. There are various topics I'd like to cover, but only time will tell if I have enough will to do it.

The main reason behind this blog is to train writing. And I can't imagine a better training than writing about one's hobby. What can be expected? Reviews of the OSR stuff that is available for free (probably I'll translate the reviews of Swords & Wizardry and White Box that I've published on my Polish blog), the designer's log on my own work-in-progress retroclone (writing about it here can be a motivation to get the thing rolling and playtested), which I plan releasing for free both in Polish and English. I also plan to dwell upon what we can port to our games from novels and video-games.

I think that this will suffice for the first post. Game on!