Rippin' on Vampire: the Masquerade

It's about damned time.

Vampire

-Rognar-

Cthonian Stars, Lovecraft meets Traveller

Coming this summer, from the guys that produce CthulhuTech, Cthonian Stars is Lovecraftian sci-fi using the Traveller game system. This could be interesting, although I confess I find the Traveller system a little bland, with its emphasis on combat avoidance. It may be realistic, but not especially heroic or exciting. Of course, until CthulhuTech came along, rpgs that revolved around the Cthulhu Mythos tended to have a similar emphasis. I suppose my interest in Cthonian Stars will depend largely on how the guys at Wildfire chose to present it. I'm also somewhat hesitant to buy a product published by Mongoose. My first copy of the CthulhuTech core rulebook, an original Mongoose edition, fell to pieces in a matter of hours. I had never seen such a poorly-bound book before. I have heard they have improved their quality since then, but once bitten, twice shy.

-Rognar-

cross-posted at Rognar's Space Horror RPG Blog

Conflict Roleplaying looks cool

Some nights you really want to roll some dice, but you can't get the whole group together. Conflict Roleplaying just might be what you need to scratch that itch. Get together with a buddy, roll up some Pathfinder characters and throw down. Probably not something you would want to encourage in regular play, but could be useful in running gladiatorial combats.

-Rognar-

h/t Mad Brew Labs

Nogra the ghoul assassin, remember him?

A pretty cool character from our D&D 3.5 days. I can't remember if he survived? Obiri, we had quite a battle, no?

Nogra - Evolved Ghoul Rogue/Lurking Terror 3/3 (8 HD)
Str:16 Dex:22 Int:14 Con:N/A Wis:14 Cha:18
HP:58 AC:25 (+6 Dex, +2 natural armour, +5 armour, +2 ring)
Spd:30ft.; Init:+10
Fort:+2 Ref:+10 Will:+9
BAB/Grapple:+5/+9

Feats: Weapon Finesse, Ability Focus (paralysis), Improved Initiative, Improved Turn Resistance

Skills: Move Silently +17, Hide +17, Spot +13, Climb +14, Jump +16, Balance +14, Use Magic Device +12, Tumble +16, Listen +9, Intimidate +9

Special Abilities: Darkvision 90ft, +2 natural armour, sneak attack +2d6, evasion, trap sense +1, fast healing 3, turn resistance +6, hide in plain sight, undead immunities

Attack: bite +11 melee (1d6+3+paralysis+disease/x2)
or punching dagger +13 melee (1d4+5/x3)

Special Attacks: paralysis (1d4+1 rds., Fort DC 23)
ghoul fever (1 day, 1d3 Con + 1d3 Dex, Fort DC 21)
haste (self only) 1/day 8th level caster

Items:
+3 leather armour
+2 ring of protection
+2 punching dagger
1 vial of dragon bile poison

I recall because of his undead immunity, he would envenom his bite attack by chewing on a sausage casing full of poison. This is the kind of character that's hard to build in Pathfinder. I'm not sure why they changed the rules for monster characters.

-Rognar-

Catalyst Game Labs in trouble

Another gaming company in trouble due to negligent financial practices, if you believe the press release or outright embezzlement, if word in the blogosphere is to be trusted. While most of the discussion revolves around Shadowrun, CGL also publishes Eclipse Phase (although they don't own the IP), a game I am quite keen on. I will be watching this closely to see how it shakes out. Certainly it's bad news, but if Palladium can survive something like this, maybe Catalyst can too.

-Rognar-

The slow death of West End Games...

...is apparently on again. Over at RPG Blog II, Zachary Houghton has a post on the latest news (if you want to call it that) about WEG and Septimus. Eric Gibson (owner of WEG) has been so out-of-touch lately, even the author of his shiny new game setting, Bill Coffin, can't seem to contact him. Mr. Gibson responds with some lame excuse about being too busy with school. I echo the sentiments of Houghton and many of his respondents. It's time for Mr. Gibson to get out of the business, or at the very least, sell off the Septimus license to someone who will be able to publish and support it, so Bill Coffin can make some money from his work.

-Rognar-

Rippin' on Original D&D

Ooooo, this one's going to generate some buzz on the interwebs. Zack and Steve at SomethingAwful.com take a swipe at:

Original D&D

-Rognar-

Note: Don't worry, they save the last parting shot for 4e

The Sandbox campaign

Our group mostly plays published Adventure Paths. We're all busy professionals and don't have tons of time anymore laying out expansive campaign worlds with dozens of adventure hooks and encounters prepped. I don't have the spare brain capacity to memorize the stats of a dozen monsters (it doesn't help that 3rd edition+ monster stats are so much more complex then earlier editions). I would love to open up the world to everyone and say "Go play with what you want" but I honestly don't think I can handle that anymore.

Since I am trying to avoid a narrow path where the story drags the PCs from one encounter to the next I've decided to go with a mystery type adventure. The clues are hidden in various locations and its up to the PC to solve the mystery. Of course, events will going on in the back ground that will also effect the main plot. I don't want to script things to much since interesting things often occur during play sessions and it would be nice to be able to run with them.

I'm a bit concerned about pacing. I've been watching our CoT sessions and we seem to get through about 3 major encounters a night and so I've tried to plan accordingly. I've been trying to come up with some interesting encounter designs. Too often it's just fighting in a room. I can foresee some environmental obstacles coming into play which can either be a boon or bane.

Pathfinder + d20 Modern, Hmmmm

Okay, I like Pathfinder and I like d20 Modern. So, do they have anything to offer one another? That is a question I have to ask myself as I ponder the P20 Modern patronage project. For an initial buy-in of $50US, you get a .pdf and a hardcover copy of the finished project. For a $100US buy-in, you get a signed copy. This is no fly-by-night operation either, with big name designers Owen K.C. Reynolds and Stan! on board. They have to raise $70K by the end of April and they're way short of that right now, but as the date gets closer, I'll have to give it some serious thought. The truth is, d20 Modern is already a pretty solid game. I'm not sure what "pathfinderizing" it will actually do to make it better.

-Rognar-

Review - Mindjammer campaign setting

Last month, I reviewed a FATE-based space opera game called Starblazer Adventures. Well, DriveThruRPGs just had another sale in time for me to buy the first campaign setting, called Mindjammer. The setting envisions a future in which humans have been expanding out into the galaxy for thousands of years using sublight ships. Naturally, contact with most of the colony ships is lost along the way and the ones that do maintain contact with Earth take decades or centuries to send and receive replies. Then, about 200 years in the past, Earth develops FTL capability and expands outward to reestablish contacts with the human diaspora and create the Commonality, a loose association of human colonies. Millennia of divergent development has created a plethora of different cultures and societies, some of which are not too happy to be receiving visitors.

Culture plays an interesting role in the setting. It provides aspects to characters derived from them, as one would expect. However, cultures also have their own rules for interaction with one another. The actions of characters can even result in societal changes, if a particular culture is not equipped to adequately deal with the stresses of making contact with the wider galactic community.

Another aspect of the setting is the Mindscape, a futuristic equivalent of the internet. Taking a page from the Traveller game, space travel is FTL, but interstellar communications are not. Therefore, AI spaceships, called Mindjammers, serve as nodes in the Mindscape, ensuring that all people of the Commonality have access to up-to-date information. Humans access the Mindscape directly via implants. This creates a sort of shared consciousness allowing the sum of all human knowledge to be available, although finding what you're looking for is not a trivial undertaking. The Mindscape also allows humans to display pseudo-psychic abilities.

Overall, Mindjammer is less pulpy than the default Starblazer Adventures setting, incorporating some cyberpunk elements and a more sophisticated approach to alien contact. I'm still not completely sold on the FATE game engine, being a fan of rules-heavy game systems and tactical combat, but it is growing on me and the wealth of good ideas in Mindjammer make it a goldmine for any space opera game.

-Rognar-

The paladin is Doctor Manhattan, the fighter is the Comedian

As I watch Obiri's paladin dish out 60 to 80 pts. of damage per round, inspire his allies, heal his wounds, save against everything and even turn on the charm when it's called for, I am left with one undeniable conclusion, the Pathfinder paladin is the ultimate base class in the game. So here we go. In a few weeks, we are going to start up an evil campaign. Who's going to DM this? Obiri! The guy that just spent the last six months playing the most potent PC I can recall seeing in years, maybe ever. Boys, I advise running away as fast as you can from even the rumour of a paladin in the upcoming campaign. We are going to get spanked.

-Rognar-

What is your favourite spell?

Is there really any better spell in D&D 3.5/Pathfinder than magic missile? In a game which features energy resistance and ranged touch attacks and evasion and concealment and cover and saving throws, isn't it nice to have the old standby to fall back on. That maximum 5d4+5 pts. may pale in comparison to the 10d6 or 15d6 spells of higher levels, but at least you feel confident of actually doing damage with a magic missile. The same can't be said of fireball. Sure, you occasionally get thwarted by a brooch of shielding or spell resistance, but compared to all the options available to defend against most other offensive spells, I'm happy to put up with a fizzle once in awhile. My vote is for magic missile.

-Rognar-

So, what's on your iPod?, pt.6

The latest effort to reconnect with the bands I loved in my youth takes me, once again, to Saxon. The quintet from Yorkshire went off the rails in the mid-80s, attempting to emulate the hair metal sound of bands like Def Leppard and Whitesnake and doing a piss-poor job of it. It wasn't until the 90s that Saxon began to rediscover its NWOBHM roots and produce quality music again. One of their better efforts was the 1999 release Metalhead. Although a bit uneven, there are several solid tracks on the album, including "Are We Travellers in Time", "Sea of Life" and "Conquistador" (which Biff Byford annoyingly insists on pronouncing 'con-KWISS-ta-door'). Saxon, as it turns out, was quite prolific in the 90s, with Forever Free (1992), Dogs of War (1995) and Unleash the Beast (1997) still to come on my list of albums to check out. I can't wait.

-Rognar-

Psycho-killer, qu'est que c'est?

So apparently this homicidal prof down in Alabama was into D&D and maybe even LARPing! Whatever. If LARPing is going to make someone flip out and shoot up the place, it's time we started taking a hard look at these guys, Redneck LARPers:



After all, their weapons are real.

-Rognar-

Random chargen? I hate it.

Hot topics in the RPG blogosphere always seem to start with something James Maliszewski has to say. Suddenly, his post on the unforgiving nature of Traveller character generation, something of which I have very painful memories, has spawned other posts, rebuttals and comments. I don't really know if any insight can be drawn from all this discussion, but I can tell you why I hate random chargen, because I am a monumentally lousy dice-roller. It's absolutely true. In AD&D, I was almost never able to roll minimum stats for any class at all. Literally, even getting a single 9 on 6 rolls of 3d6 was only achieved after multiple attempts. We had to house rule the chargen process to allow me to play the class I wanted because actually getting a 9 on the appropriate roll to play a wizard or a fighter was astronomically unlikely for me. For all you old school guys who insist the old dice-rolling approach was best, try this, instead of rolling 3d6 for your next character, just roll 2d6+1. That way, you will get a distribution closer to my rolls for the two decades I spent playing AD&D 1e/2e.

-Rognar-

The economics of poison

I've never really given much thought to the use of poison in D&D 3.5/Pathfinder. Some monsters have it and can, on occasion, use it to good effect, but players rarely use it. First of all, there is the danger of a self-inflicted poisoning, a risk to which only assassins are immune. Also, poisons don't seem all that effective against any of the really powerful monsters you might actually want to use it on. Sure, you could use something like black lotus extract with its hefty save DC and its truly scary 1d6 Con damage per round, but at 4500 gp per dose, it isn't even remotely cost effective. Spells and swords can accomplish even more and generally don't cost a thing. However, with the addition of the alchemist class in Pathfinder, the use of poison is going to become more common and it may be time to examine the economics of poison (and alchemy in general).

I remember in the olden days, we used to butcher every poisonous monster we killed, trying to extract the precious poison glands for our own use or resale (assuming there wasn't a pesky paladin in the party). Of course, there was always a risk of being poisoned (an exaggerated risk, in my opinion), but it was worth it. There is, of course, nothing preventing a group from doing the same in Pathfinder, but, depending on how firmly the DM adheres to treasure rules, adjustments would have to be made to include the value of any poison in the treasure of the encounter. This could get tricky since a monster may have multiple doses or it might use up all its available poison in the fight, so the value of its poison could vary wildly and may, in fact, be more valuable than any treasure such a monster might be expected to possess.

Next, there is the question of how to extract the poison. In older versions of D&D, it didn't matter, you just did it and hoped the DM didn't have a fight with his girlfriend the night before. These sorts of things are more formalized now, so some sort of skill check is called for. An appropriate knowledge skill might be a possibility, but that means a different skill for different types of monsters. Also, knowledge skills usually involve theoretical, rather than practical knowledge, like knowing where the wyvern's venom sac is located, but not necessarily how to extract it intact. Craft (alchemy) includes the ability to make poison, but doesn't really seem to imply the anatomical knowledge of poisonous creatures. Survival would seem to skirt along the edges of this activity, since it includes tracking and hunting. It wouldn't be a stretch to include butchering monsters for their valuable body parts and it is a class skill for alchemists, leading me to believe that is what the Pathfinder design team has in mind.

The upshot of all this is right now, poisons are way too expensive, even if you make your own, to be a significant part of any PCs bag of tricks. The alchemist class will likely require some rule changes to make poison use more accessible.

-Rognar-

The Landmaster

Over at EXONAUTS!, Jay has an excellent post about space age vehicles. It got me to thinking about just such a vehicle that is near and dear to my heart...and it's real! I'm talking about the Landmaster from the 1977 post-apocalyptic movie Damnation Alley. Built by Dean Jeffries for a whopping $350,000 US (well over a million in today's dollars), the Landmaster still exists today and is fully functional (except for armaments, I'm sure).

I give you, the Landmaster:




-Rognar-

cross-posted at Rognar's Space Horror Blog

Review - Starblazer Adventures

As part of the New Year's sale at DriveThruRPG, Starblazer Adventures by Cubicle 7 was available for a mere $10, so I bought it out of curiousity. For those unaware of this game, it is slightly-pulpy, FATE-based space opera game based on a '70s-era British comic book series. The game setting is enormous, weighing in at over 600 pages, yet still manages to feel a tad light on crunch. I think this may be a function of the modified FATE system used in the game. Actions are resolved by rolling 2 d6s, one designated as a negative die before the roll. The positive and negative dice are added together to give a result from -5 to +5, with the highest probabilities being the closest to 0. Added to the result is a modifier resulting from skills and other factors. This modifier will typically range from +1 to +3, although higher modifiers are possible. In addition to skills, characters also have stunts and aspects. Stunts are a lot like feats (or in some cases, class features) in the d20 system. They typically allow you do something with a skill you wouldn't normally be able to do, or give you a positive modifier to a skill under certain circumstances by accepting a negative modifier on other skills.

Aspects are rather less well-defined. They are brief phrases that describe motivations, personality quirks or background information of a character that can be used under certain circumstances to cajole the GM to allow some benefit. Alternatively, the player can use an aspect to his character's detriment, in order to earn fate points. Fate points are at the very heart of the FATE game system. Spending fate points allows a player to temporarily take control of the story. They can be used for a variety of things from adding an additional +1 modifier to any dice roll to powering some stunts to compelling a negative result from an opponent's aspect. While GMs do have veto power over the use of fate points, they are encouraged not to use it unless doing so would cause serious problems for the story.

Not surprisingly, Starblazer Adventures borrows heavily from the Starblazer comic books, incorporating story arcs, recurring characters and technologies from the comics directly into the game setting. The setting itself is divided into three eras, although other settings are possible. The three main settings are the Trailblazer Era, in which mankind first takes to the stars (think Enterprise or Star Trek), the Empire Era, in which a human empire battles across the galaxy with other great alien empires (more like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5) and the Cosmopolitain Era, in which a galaxy-spanning empire made up of many races including humans maintains the Pax Galactica (best analog might be the Old Republic era of Star Wars).

Overall, the game is pretty good, especially if you are looking for a bit of pulp or campy feel to your space opera campaign. The FATE system tends to encourage a bit of whimsy on the part of the players, so serious or gritty campaigns probably won't work as well unless the GM and the players are all on the same page. I would never use the FATE system for my space horror campaign setting, but if you're looking for "a wee bit o' fun", this might be just the thing.

-Rognar-

Another House Rule: Blasters

Not the Star Wars kind.

Evocation in 3.5 and Pathfinder sucks as a school of magic. Between massive hit point inflation and caster level caps Evocation just doesn't pack the punch it used to. In fact I would argue (and do quite frequently) that evocation spells are a waste of a spell slot.

Sure it's nice against low level mooks but why not just let the melee types feel awesome for a bit. Between SR, Saves and Energy Resistance, why bother?

So for the up coming campaign I am ruling that energy type spells are not effected by spell resistance.

Comments?

Have we seen the last of Axis & Allies miniatures?

I made a rare visit to the WotC website today and scanned through the brands...Magic: the Gathering, Heroscape, Dungeons and Dragons, Duel Masters, Axis & Allies, Star Wars. It got me to thinking. With the Star Wars license gone, has the streamlining stopped or are there other product lines on the chopping block. Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons have to be considered core brands and pretty well untouchable. Heroscape is the only one of the brands commonly seen in mainstream toy stores like Toys-R-Us, which likely makes the Hasbro overfiends happy. Duel Masters is a CCG based on an anime property, pretty much an obligatory product line for a card company. So, that leaves Axis & Allies. Hasbro owned Avalon Hill and rolled it into WotC when it bought the company. It already owned Milton Bradley (man, Hasbro is the Evil Empire of gaming) which developed the original Axis & Allies boardgame, and promptly switched that product line to Avalon Hill. At this point, the various versions of the boardgame, a few other boardgames such as Diplomacy and the miniatures lines are the only Avalon Hill properties actively being produced. Of these, the minis lines are clearly the most neglected, with only two sets being released in 2009. Pre-painted plastic minis are apparently quite expensive to produce, certainly more so than the unpainted play pieces of a typical boardgame and while the Axis & Allies brand is well-known, it's mostly because of the venerable boardgame, not the minis. So, I think all signs point to A&AM being the next property to face the firing squad.

-Rognar-

Further note: Hasbro also owns Parker Brothers, the makers of Monopoly and Risk. In other words, they bloody well own everything. I add Hasbro to my list of other companies and organizations I hate; Microsoft, Disney, the New York Yankees...