A Return to the Tower (and the blog)

Holy cow, has it really been that long since I posted something? Yikes. Probably been that long since I was able to get my dice rollin’ on, too. Such painful times.

Tonight we see a return to our Swords & Wizardry group. We last we delved, our group had been split up by an awful halfling *cough*me*cough* and his curiosity. Our faithful thief and mapkeeper, Tibag, took a dive into some icy blue lava. We are done to four in this area now, and my poor Skwanky has been paralyzed by his “friend” Vinny (too prevent any more running away). The last session was pretty dark and gloomy, there’s no telling where this will end up for these guys. We’re supposed to finish up our little foray through this portal, either by returning to the surface or death. I’m sadly leaning toward the latter. Pretty sure they’ll never let me roll another halfling again if he ends up killing off more than half the group.

Time to dust off the dice and refill the lead. Can’t wait!

Talking Traveller

Up until last night’s S&W session, we were coming up to a good end point. Run in with the big bad. OoooooooOOOooooh. Well, I kinda fucked that up (loooook  a pretty purple portal!!), but that doesn’t change the fact that our ever-patient DM needs a break. The group is looking at running a few one-offs this summer to get him out from behind the screen. Corey is thinking of running Paranoia and DC Heroes. Clay is going to be running the Tesla League, a Savage Worlds game. I’ve never had much confidence in my DMing ability but there seems to be a fairly strong desire to play Traveller. As such, I think I may see how badly I can butcher the art of storytelling. For preparation, I’ve been putting together an Appendix N list for Traveller. Here’s what I have so far, please let me of anything else to include.

Poul Anderson – Ensign Flandry, Volume 1
Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama
Robert A. Heinlein – Starship Troopers, Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Larry Niven – Ringworld
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle – The Mote in God’s Eye
H. Beam Piper – Space Viking
Jack Vance – Planet of Adventure

 

Gaming goals for 2011

I’m surrounded by a good group of gaming folk and really need to abuse that fact. Therefore, I’ve put together some gaming goals for the year. Starting small, let’s see what happens.

Play Dominion
Play Tannhäuser
Play at least a session or two of Dragon Age RPG
Play another round of Ravenloft
Play some Munchkin

That covers new games. But what about the existing Swords & Wizardry game? What are Skwanky’s goals? Well, for starters, we just took over this old tower. An easy (and obvious) goal for me there is to get a nice kitchen built. With lots of food. And a chef. I’d never need to leave. I’d also like to see if we can keep all the party members alive this year. That would be awesome. I’d also like to explore his increasingly dangerous behavior. Little bastard’s got an invulnerability complex. How far do I want to take it? It’s been harmless for the most part, so far, but that won’t last forever. Consequences will have to be attended to. Might the cafefree little guy actually be harboring something dark and destructive?

I have great hope for this year.

RPGs are soooo retro

Wow, almost 3 months without a post. That’s just plain unacceptable. Sadly, that’s not too far from when my last gaming session was. Getting the jitters. Anyway, I was talking to a friend of mine regarding the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons as well as the retro clones and he was surprised by the sheer number. He always thought D&D was D&D. After briefing him on all the important keywords (OD&D, AD&D, Holmes, Moldvay/Cook, Mentzer) it occurred to me that I didn’t know where the game I was playing, Swords & Wizardry fit in on that timeline. Doing some research showed me I was also incorrect about what version Labyrinth Lord matched up to. So, mostly to give myself a quick reference of where things match up, I’ve created a little table. Maybe this will be useful to someone else.

OD&D (’74) = Swords and Wizardry

1st Ed. AD&D (’77) = OSRIC

Basic – Holmes (’77)

B/X – Moldvay/Cook (’81) = Labyrinth Lord, BFRPG

BECMI – Mentzer (’83)

Rules Cyclopedia (’91) = Dark Dungeons

Rules, what are they good for?

Most RPG blogs seem to have an opinion on which edition they like, be it OD&D, Pathfinder, Swords and Wizardry or “the edition that must not be named”. What’s the difference? Well, rules. But what good are rules? Personally, I think the fewer the better, but I can understand the appeal of more. Pick your set and run with it. Whatever gets the group together is a good thing. At the end of the day, though, I don’t find the rules to be the most important thing. What the hell is, then? A flexible DM. Dear god, they make a world of difference.

I don’t care what game you play, you will find things you don’t like. How could you not? You didn’t write it. But it’s a game, and it’s supposed to be fun. What do you do with these rules that you feel go against that? Nuke them! No, really. Let’s take S&W for example. It’s pretty damn rules-lite. We do a shitton more role-playing than we do roll-playing. For us, this is beautiful. But, if we played it by the book, our party wouldn’t exist. There are no halflings or amazons, no vikings or druids. Well, there goes half our party.

Our DM is pretty damn flexible. He really let’s us play. And boy do we. The scenes we come up with are pretty epic. Go read some of the recaps in his blog. (There, Paul, two links to you. I want some exp for that) We are allowed this type of game play not because of the ruleset we choose, but because of the DM and players we have. One of players, Corey, has mentioned bringing the Alchemist class from Pathfinder over. I’m pretty excited to see how this templates out.

Find a ruleset that has a half-elf, half-dwarf. I dare you. We have one in party. If we didn’t the following would have never happened. And that would have been a sad, sad thing. From Tibag’s journal:

10:15pm – “Last few” crotch goblins called their friends. These things must do nothing but breed. Thankfully we kill them faster than they can reproduce…just barely, though. It’s fun to watch hair guy and little guy kill three of them with one sweep. Nature guy skewered a couple at once. Twenty or thirty crotch goblins down. I worry sometimes that I’m enjoying this too much.

10:16pm – Not worried any more. Crotch goblin jumped on my face and started tearing at my head with his claws. I bit his junk off. Nobody teabags Tibag. Did NOT enjoy that. Crotch goblin blood tastes like evil and decay. Hope someone has some mead.

10:30pm – Other crotch goblins stunned, easy to dispatch. Victory! Still feel kind of sick. We decide to take a break.

Pure gold.

So, the tl;dr version: don’t sweat the rules. Do what it takes to have fun. After all, that’s why you’re playing.

Cheap Essentials vs. Essentially Cheap

At our most reason Swords & Wizardry session, Corey brought a copy of the new Red Box. This had me quite excited. Red Box was my first D&D purchase and first introduction to the world of Pen and Paper. It colors a lot of who I am as a gamer….for better or worse. Even though I don’t play 4e (though I harbor no ill will towards it), I was very much looking forward to seeing what this box contained. The price point was perfect, $20 ($14 on Amazon) for a complete intro with maps and tokens. Sign me up!

Well, upon getting the first feel of the books, I confess I was disappointed. They just feel….cheap. I applaud Wizards for their new direction with the Essentials line. Cheap bundles to get you going. No need to drop 100s of dollars anymore (though I’m sure they’ll come up with something). I loved 3.5, but it was quite expensive to get a good chunk of fun (and more if you played a particular setting). 4e started down that same path. Eight books for the big three titles (PH,DMG, MM). Essentials seems to be a divergent idea. While it’s early in this cheap 4e phase, I’d hope they continue down this path.

But at what cost? Quality of books has always been a big appeal in the RPG world (for me at least). Wizards normally puts out solid, high quality products. The Red Box doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels like a cheap reproduction of something better. And for a product I was soooo looking forward to, I know have a bad taste in my mouth. Without getting into edition wars, of all the product I’ve purchased the past year (Pathfinder, S&W, Labyrinth Lord, Rifts, 4e), this feels like the cheapest attempt. Now, in defense of the Red Box, I am solely basing this on the books, not the tokens or anything else (as I didn’t get to play with them, looked solid though).

Will I warm up to this product? Who knows. I hope so. I have very good memories attached to that box. This is merely a first impression, but it does make me want to look more closely at what follows that before. We’ll see.

The real pain of imaginary death

I swear, this gaming group will give me stuff to write about until the end of time (or at least until we stop playing). Just like all the sessions prior, this one provided more memorable action…with a twist.

Our group is no stranger to death. Early on in our adventure our cleric went down to a group of pirates. The player brought in a druid later to replace him. I’m pretty sure our mage managed to kill himself at least once (he likes fire) and we paid a hefty toll to get him back to us. No big fuss, life moved on in both cases. It’s just a game after all, right?

Well, that’s not what happened in our latest session. Having completed a big task (which was probably a first…we have explorer ADHD) we decide to head back out. Well, we run into what is problem the last dweller in the dungeon and he bitch slaps the party. I go down to zero in one smack (of fiery lava), the NPC priest follows next. Zero, not bad, easily revivable. We just like to up the difficulty of the encounter. Then, the rock of our group, the dwarf Geedlesmote goes down. Permanently. Burnt to a crisp. We drag his charred corpse back to the cart so we can take him to town.

Well, the player had another character idea ready and we quickly encountered this new (ageish) cleric. It was amazing how fast he became a pariah. There was an uncomfortableness about his addition to the group.

The next day, emails went back and forth between the group. How can we get Geedlee back? This new age cleric is a hack! Well, that’s not really the problem, is it? No. The problem was Geedleesmote was RP’d to damn near perfection. Our party (and our players) had formed emotional bonds with the fool. To have him stripped from us was unthinkable! This right here is why I love pen and paper rpgs. You take for granted what’s going on behind the scene when all is going well. You realize just how emotionally invested you are in the game when something like this happens. To me, that’s the big reward.

While we will probably get Geedlee back, and nothing will be truly learned from this (we forgot to heal before venturing out), this will not doubt remain one of the more memorable events from this campaign. Kudos, Clay (the man behind the dwarf). This is why I play. (Hey, that rhymed…go me)

a brief intro

I’ve been a gamers as long as I can remember.  From the early days of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and the lovely (so lovely) Red Box I knew I was a lifer. I remember Jr. High jaunts to the FLGS (Things for Thinkers, may you rest in peace) to grab the latest clamshell Steve Jackson game or playing TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes at lunch. This was the good life. Sadly, it didn’t last. Early in the high school years those RPG days fell by the wayside. I remember a rare board game here and there (include some EPIC Axis and Allies ones) but they were few and far between. For more than a decade I would collect books and games only to see them sit unused. A crime.

Fast forward through the 90s and past the turn of the century. Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 is out and I’m talking to a friend in San Francisco longing for the days of when I could play. As it turns out, she knows someone here in Tucson who does just that! Too good to be true, right? Nope. I chat with the guy and he has room for another. I am experiencing gaming bliss. All good things must end though and after a year or so the DM moves and the group dissipates into the wind. Woe is I.

Well, you can’t keep a good gamer down. Last year I found another group, again through a serendipitous conversation. I find out from a fellow Master’s student that a coworker in the department down the hall just started running a Swords & Wizardry campaign. You’re thinking, “get out of town!” I know! So I corner this guy and press him for information. Sure enough he’s running a bi-weekly group. Group is a bit full at the moment though, but he welcomes me in just the same. What a guy! This coming Monday is approaching the 20th session of the campaign and I have to say, I couldn’t be happier. There is a GREAT group of guys and the most patient DM one could wish for. Feel free to pop over to his blog, The Warlock’s Home Brew, to follow the madness. I’m the troublesome halfling, Skwanky.

Well, I plan on using this space to talk about my re-immersing into the lovely lovely RPG world. It’ll be sporadic at best, but I promise to try to at least make it interesting.