Sterotyped

Woe betide, i have been given label! The guy with the big ass sword! I suppose i brought it on myself. First i played a human warrior with a big ass sword. Next i played a pixie-faerie with a "relitively big ass sword". Now the pixie-faerie was a fighter thief. I didnt get alot of time to sneak and be tricksie.
I do like two handed swords .. um alot but it is not the end all be all of the rpgs for me. I mean who doesnt like to see those big numbers fly when a honkin big sword connects! I know everyone does!
Its kind of cool to gain a reputation of sorts, even if it is not exactly the one you would label your self as.

No clue

Couple days ago i played in a G+ game. I dont know what the game was called. I dont know the setting. I have no idea how characters are rolled for it. Myself and a few others played D&D/FLAILSNAILS characters. Mine was actualy a Castles and Crusades fighter but i am sure you all could have guessed that.
It was a freaking blast. The world reminded me a bit of rifts, with the end of civilization and magic returning. There wasnt any hi-tech stuff that i saw but there were black powder weapons and magic. We infiltrated an office building via the sewers then fought our way back out. Wolf monsters, Gargoyles, road warrior biker types and a brief glimps of a dragon.
Remined me of my early days in the hobby before i knew any of the rules. Everything seemed possible and danger lurked at every turn.

I very much love ready RPGs memorizsing the rules and mastering various systems. There is something to be said being clueless in every reguard about a game. It makes everything surreal. you wander around dazzled by everything that happens. Instead of thinking in rules jargon you speak with creativity.

Thats a big part of why i have embraced the rules lite of the OSR. I collect everything D&D and AD&D i can get my hands on and read every rule set that comes down the pipes.

Next time you get a chance to play a new system. go in blind. have the GM give you a character or roll one with the GMS help. Try not to learn the rules and just experiance the game.

Ikka’Patang , god of nature

This is an nother conversion of a HackMaster dieity. My games have had alot of druids, so this dieity sees alot of use.

Ikka’Patang

God of nature

Symbol:  Elm leaf

Deity province; Nature

Ceremony, Every new moon druids and clerics must dance at a

Consecrated ring

Taboo willing destruction of habitats and animal lairs is forbidden. Worshipers also must never kill a mother with/or her dependant young.

Granted abilities, all worshipers receive, Those that remain steadfast to the faith gain +1 con and nature lore.

Ikka’Patang appears as middle aged man with neat hair and short beard. He wears neutral colored robes and carries a long spear. Where ever he is encountered he will be accompanied by two male animals of the local dominate species. There beasts will be of maximum hit points and size and unusually intelligent.

Ikka’Patang believes duty is of utmost importance and has no tolerance of shirkers and traitors. He is fond of punishing transgressors by changing them into prey species and releasing them into the wild alone.

Ikka’Patang’s Spear of throwing. Triple throwing range and returns when called. This +6 weapon can be borrowed for 1 year by any druid of 7^th or higher level.

Ikka’Patang’s scythe of reaping. This artifact doubles the harvest of any field it is used in.  Ikka’Patang will give this to any druid who asks for one harvest season. Most druids require very big sacrifices to grant this boon on a community.

Ikka’Patang ’s avatar, neutral druid 20^th HP 160 AC 22, Primes Dex 21 Wis 28 Chr 26. Fights with Spear+6 that he can throw any distance. The spear returns to his hand after striking its target. Ikka’Patang can summon the wild hunt per its standard summoning.

Luvia, god of justice.

Since my campaign originated in HackMaster 4th edition I have had to convert some monsters, spells, magic items and dieities. This is my conversion of Luvia. This dieity is the intelctual property of Kenzerco and presented here without permission in the hopes you might enjoy adding it your C&C game. If you like this dieity his original write up in Dieities and Demi-Gawds is highly recomended. 

Luvia

God of Justice, aka the blind god

Symbol, Balanced scale

Deity province; Justice, mercy, and endangered species.

Ceremony, Must wear a symbol of Luvia prominently. Must maintain a neat appearance. Clergy of Luvia act as judge for disputes every month.

Taboo, Never breaks a law. Never performs a dishonorable or evil act. Knights will not wear armor of lesser station then plate mail

Granted abilities, all worshipers receive +1 wisdom and charisma. Clerics and Paladins gain +2 to strike and damage against lawbreakers, criminals, convicts, and the dishonorable.

Luvia appears as normal man with a bandage covering his eyes. He dresses in simple robes. He is always accompanied by a pair of ravens; Mishap and Circumstance. The ravens act as his intermediaries. Carrying messages and commands, or watching over his followers.

Luvia teaches that any act of kindness, no matter how simple can pay great dividends. Luvia is fond of proverbial punishments. He likes polymorphing the judged into inanimate objects then destroying them in symbolic ways. (Turning a damned man to coal and putting him in a great furnace)

Luvia’s ring of alclairity. A ring that prevents its wearer from being influenced by out-side forces. This ring acts as protection from all mind effecting or altering effects. It only functions when the bearer sits in judgment in a lawful court.

Luvia’s Flask of mercy. This flask will pour forth whatever magical potion or concoction is needed to cure the patient whose lips it is brought to. The flask will function but once a day for any person.

In combat Luvia wields a special sword +7 holy reaver. When he departs the mortal plane it is always left behind. The sword will come to rest in a manner akin to the sword and stone. Luvia’s symbol will be etched into a ruby in the pommel if it was one of his blades.

Luvia’s avatar, Lawful good Paladin 20^th HP 160 AC 24, Primes Str 25 Wis 28 Chr 25. Fights with his holy reaver. Can polymorph anyone he has judged at will to any form desired. Can create or summon mundane items at will.

Ragea island nation, home of The Core.

Ragea, Free nation.  One of the first independant human kingdoms. Broke from the Elven empire some 30 years ago. Once renouned for its battle mages. When the Brethern of the Star vanished the study of magic was nearly lost. Many still wizards 'Starmen' as the Brethern of the Star were called.

The Core rises near the north western shores. Bards say it was formed when a demigod killed a powerful demon lord. The demon lord Pang'gras' body melted into a green ooze that burned trough the earth as acid burns through wood. Thus spawning the evil of The Core.

Near The Core about 2 miles west from the entrance called 'the maw' sits a rambling innhouse. The Last Chance Inn. It is three stories tall with 3 wings, stables, smithy and guard towers. It is nearly a small fort.

Many merchants venture here to purchase the goods brought out of the dungeon's depths.

For those with a desire of a more civilised base with better defences and cheaper prices the town of Huberg is five miles west of the Last Chance.

Huberg is booming village rapidly growing from the influx of travelers and merchants. Currently the town is constructing walls. to better deffend against raving bands of humanoids. Castle Wrengate sits near by guarding the road to ragea's capitol.

Rumors

Those who go mad inside the Core will over time transform into hideous creatures.

The Fragrant Helm of Rosalyn was lost somewhere on the third level.

There is a library part of the Brethern of the Stars former citadel that randomly appears through out the dungeon. Most call it the Wandering Library. Everyone who has gained access to it has found a wealth of arcane lore and many spells thought lost.





The Core , Another after action review

William Broom  Adventured in The Core tonight. 
Playing Thalia cleric of the Raven Queen.
two bold hirelings in tow,
Blagger and Ago both strong fighting men.

The small party explored a bit. Encountered the walking corpse known as McGee. Thalia promised to end his curse and lay the poor soul to rest. Her stawart band investgated a strange demon head of gigantic proportion. It was hewn from an unknown type of white rock.
They battled a clutch of kobolds and emerged victorious. A few of the little buggers fled down a tiny hole and after a bit of trickery Thalia managed to capture one and use him as a guide to treasure. Alas the poor kobold died opening a treasure chest after the party had cleared a group of undead guardians. Satisfied with their take the group retreated from the dungeon heading to the nearest town to sell their loot.

Great game, Hi to Tiffany Simmons who observed the game for a time. William managed to find one of the larger treasures on the first level. Well played!

Another explosive new time for The Core!

Last move for the forseeable future i promise!

The Core now running tuesday nights 8:30 pm CST (-5GMT)
FLAILSNAILS participants welcome level 3 or less for now.



I run useing Castles and Crusades. It is effectively 3.5 lite. No skills or feats universal mechanic for resolution of most things.

http://www.trolllord.com/cnc/ccqs.html  Link to the C&C quick start rules. Its free and explains things probably better then i can. (even if i am a fantastic writer) = p

Rumors of The Core...

Sleeping in the Core drives men mad.

There is a wandering zombie in the dungeon: he is sentiant, friendly and named McGee.

Beware the woman in the mirror!

Sarrafinn also called the broker, is a multi colored dragon that deals in information and secrets.

I swear i met a talking displacer beast and it said its name was Casbah.

Dwarves like friends.

More rumors in the future.

The Core play summary

Dave Younce along with 2 hired men at arms entered The Core. They skipped a barred passage. Explored a side tunnel killing a lone skelliton. Delving deeper into the twisted tunnels they found a few unfortunate souls who had met their fate. Eventualing combating a mad wizard and an evil party of adventurers. Einhart Thors Hammer soundly defeated the villians killing half the group and cowing the rest after a single bloody round of combat. Of the survivers an evil cleric was brought to the light converting to Thor's church.

Dave played Einhart

Hired men , Jerome and Ian the fighters accompanied him along with his faithful linkboy Harold.

The villianous group had quite a spot of treasure over 200 gold and 500 silver was recovered from The Core's wretched halls. (Drinks on him at the Last Chance Inn.)

Short but prosperous adventure.

Moving the game to tuesday night starting next week. Hopefuly a better turn out as well.

WotC, 5E update from pax.

I previously said 5E aint for me and i wouldnt talk about it. I just want to point a few things out from the video floating around. Mike Merls main points are listed below.
What I dont like is they are acting like thier R&D figured this out. Any gamer who has played the older editions could have spelled all this out.

Campaign settings as modules that can alter core rules.
What a brainstorm on this one. This has only been happening since the first D&D supplaments. (Hello Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldrich Wizardry)

Grids and minis optional in the core.
They are throwing a bone to the old schoolers and the people who cant afford minis.

Will not let the wizard overpower martial classes.
This one boggles my mind. Why play a wizard? if martial classes can do the same damage why be a weak robe wearer when you can wear armor and have grobs of hit points?

About 20% done and on 4th iteration of DND Next.
This sounds like they are at least trying different things. Playing out some options and then deciding on what gos into the final draft.

focus on non-combat roles and abilities returning.
Nice that the next generation of the game might try to roleplay instead of rollplaying.

Giving more power back to the DM.
This one truely boggles my mind. Your the DM, its your world...how much power do you need? You have it all allready!

Bringing back step-by-step adventure creation instructions.
While i can appreciate helping new DMs craft adventures..... This sounds alot like roll on a random table. pick a monster roll on a table... pick a motive, roll on a table.  If you DM and can not make your own adventures... i dunno download or buy one! There are hundreds to choose from.

Focus on shorter games.
After the last 2 editions 2,3, or 4 hour long combats i can hardly wait to see how long it takes to fight in 5e.

Skill challenges not in core.
Aww no more "how many dice do i need to roll to solve this problem gaming?"

No info on public playtest date.
Give it time, shortly it will come then soon followed by 4 players hand books and 5 DM guides.

At-will spells have a pretty huge following.
Of course they do, munchkinism has always been popular. Why would handing the players more power be not popular?

WHats the saying about pleasing all the people all of the time?

The rule of cool?

Went back and forth last night with a person  G+. arguing over bard and how he thought the idea was stupid. I am paraphrasing him as he basicly said... if it isnt cool to paint it isnt cool.
Now i do realise we game to have fun. Cool mosnters and plots with bad ass heros are the goal of gaming.
Its a modern gaming trend the "rule of cool" Where everything must be cool and awesome all the time.

When you try to be cool all the time you tend to be not cool alot. Hollywood seems to be stuck in this make it so cool mode. Big budget action flicks that are so dull and predictable you can figure out the whole plot less then half way through.

News flash people it cant be cool all the time. If it could there would be nothing uncool. When you spend all your energy making it awesome you numb the audience and they want bigger and better more and more.

Make the cool parts cool and let the parts that arent be what they are.

Player involovement

It has been years since I have had a player that was truely involved with the game.  I touched on one such player in my last posting. Brian..Mark's little brother was involved with the world i presented. He took the game beyond mere rpg. His involvement with the world was such a fascinating thing. He breathed life back at the Game master. Usually its the GM trying to make it all seem alive for the players, but he helped make it alive for me too.

Excellent players like those are long cherished by GMs. I know i have very found memories of those players from over the years. Players who worked on their character out of the game. Players who drew up houses and made up family trees. I lament having players that involved. It seems now days they show up and expect me to just entertain them. Very little input of thier own. Oh they will fight with gusto and hate the villans. They will expect me to act like their characters have homes and families. Worse they expect me to draw those up.

Opps back to what i was really meaning to say...

Some of those special players have left me momentos of their effort. Most people kept their D&D characters. I know i dont have any old D&D characters from my friends. I do have EVERY SINGLE character ever created for my Gamma World games. The same holds true for my senior year super hero game of Villians and Vigilantes. I have all my players old sheets.

One player Chad made a list of supers and his opinions of them.. including nicknames and things to do when he encountered them. I still boggle at what he thought were tough villians and what he was afraid of.
He has foes listed as wimps that he should trash and forget...those were some of my toughest villians.
yet some of the weaker ones he had listed as run from.  I still laugh when i read this list so here it is.

Players like this make a GMing fun.

So my challenge to those who read this... make the game fun for the GM and you will be rewarded a hundered fold.

Gamma World goodness

Yanked out the old Gamma World stuff and reread the rule book. (I know the pic is from 3rd ed but its one of the best GW pics ever) I like the old 1/2ed stuff the most so I am falling back to that rules set. For years i used the 4th ed version. But of all the edditions 2nd is/was my longest running campaigns.

Flash back to the halceon days of 1983/84 my junior year in high school. I ran GW games at lunch in school, and on sat morning in my kitchen. (the only time in my childhood my mother supported/allowed gaming in her house.) Later in the spring/summer of 84 a local sci fi con started running weeking gaming as a fund raiser for theier yearly convention. They had open gaming in a rec center sat evenings and sunday morning. So i started running GW there also.

They called it Society of Omaha Roleplaying Enthusists. or S.O.R.E. for short. They charged 75 cents to get in 50 cents a soda. If you GMed admission was free. So i GMed alot. That Gamma World campaign took place in the area around the ruins of Mobil Alabama.

I think i had roughly 30ish players roating in and out of game that summer. Some very memerable moments and characters rose from those days.

There were 2 brothers, Mark and his little brother plus their friend Steve. The three of them were hillarious.
Steve had a character that was semi inept. Seemed the dice never liked him and some of his fumbles were beyond belief. At some point in the game Marks little brother started a list of books his character was going to write about Steve's character ...Herb P Gunpoke.

He listed these books on the back of his sheet ...

I always get a smile looking back at this piece of personal gaming history.

Where was i going with all this....  Oh yeah working on my Gamma World stuff. Planning a G+ offering for friday nights.  Watch Constantcon and or here for the formal announcement of when it will start.

Explosive new time for "The Core!"

Moving my G+ game time to 9pm CST (-6 GMT) wed night.
I Changed jobs a bit ago and the old time was not doable any more.

The Core has been my Mega-Dungeon project for about 3 years now. Offering it up to G+ Constantcon is an interesting experiance. Kind of like sending your child to school alone.

I originaly concieved the The Core as a 20+ level mega dungeon. With the idea one level was pretty much equal in level of challenge as its depth. I got the first 5 levels mostly complete when i decided i hated using mainly one level of monsters for such large areas.
So i restarted, redrew all the maps and started keying based on what had come before but using this formula.
1 Monster weaker then level
2-4 Monster same HD as level
5 Monster 1 to 2 HD greater then level
6 Monster 1d6 HD more then level

I also decided to make each level encompass 2 HD. So The Core's first level is mostly 1 HD monsters near the entrance and gradualy changing to mostly 2 HD beasties as you get further from the entrances.
Thusly the second level has roughly 3 and 4 HD monsters
With the third having 5 and 6 HD ...etc...

This prompted me to alter the number of levels to a more reasonale 12 plus sub-levels.
I have remapped back down to the fourth level. With the first two levels filled and waiting for adventurers to plunder.

The Core is literaly a monster magnet. Because a Demon Lord died on this spot his essence calls out to all the evil of the world. Its architecture is an amalgom of 9 or 10 ruined sites the dormant volcano has absorbed. Add in monsters that build their own tunnels and lairs. Plus the dungeons seems to rearrange it self sometimes makes for a varried conglomeration of halls and tunnels to explore.

To date 4 different groups have entered The Core.
 My old home group, we had a Mega-Dungeon campaign in the original instance of the dungeon.
Special occasion one shots have happened twice.
A short run series of delves that ended abruptly.

This much i can say for sure. Every group to enter the dungeon thus far have explored the same area first.
Using restocking tables has been interesting. A couple of times the restock was a no brainer and i just went with what i figured should be there.

Hopefully the new time will encourage more players.