Emerald Lich

Free RPG Day 2010

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:42:51 EDT

Apologies for the long absence ... had a lot going on lately. Still do. And gaming, at the moment, isn't really a part of that at all.

However, I'd be totally remiss if I didn't mention that tomorrow was Free RPG Day. Some great stuff - new, and for free - from some great gaming companies. Did I mention it was free? So hopefully your Friendly Local Gaming Store is participating, and you can go check things out there (and support your FLGS while you're at it.)

Myself, I'm looking forward to checking out the Warhammer 40K Deathwatch offering from Fantasy Flight Games, and the new Dark Sun 4E adventure from Wizards of the Coast. (Always loved Dark Sun ...)

Oh. Right. And some guy wrote this for Goodman Games.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Happy Dice Rolling!

Age of Cthulhu III: Shadows of Leningrad

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:19:02 EDT

�Shadows of Leningrad� � my first foray into creating a �Call of Cthulhu� adventure for publication � was a challenge to write.

It also was a hell of a lot of fun.

As I�ve noted before on this blog, �Call of Cthulhu� ranks as one of my favorite games of all time. When the Age of Cthulhu line was announced by Goodman Games, I immediately contacted the good folks there, and let them know that I�d be very interested in writing an adventure for the line. One thing led to another from there, and � wham. From there, the ball started rolling on �Shadows�.

Writing �Shadows� proved to be much more difficult than any other adventure I�d previously written. One of the main reasons for this was because I wanted to make this a non-linear adventure. For the most part, the traditional fantasy adventures I�ve previously written for publication were very linear � players (and their characters) were expected to go from point A to point B to point C during the adventure, in that specific order, without much room for deviation. In a fantasy adventure, that�s simple enough to do � especially when you make the environment of the adventure a castle, or a series of underground caverns, where you can better control all of the chokepoints in the adventure, and where and when encounters occur. That works fine for fantasy � but in a city-based Call of Cthulhu adventure, not so much. There may be unspeakable horrors lurking in every shadow of a CoC adventure, but the game�s firmly grounded in reality. And reality involves choices. Forcing players down a linear railroad just wasn�t something I wanted to do with �Shadows�.

(�No, you can�t go to the sanitarium yet, you need to go to the library, even though based on how you�ve read the clues, it makes perfect sense that you'd want to go the sanitarium.")

So I structured �Shadows� in such a manner that you could start the adventure from a few different scenes, not just one. Clues in each scene would potentially lead to several other scenes, in a way that the order wasn�t terribly important, and in a way that usually meant there were choices. In "Shadows", you don�t have to go from Scene 1 to Scene 2 to Scene 3, in that order. Instead, you can potentially start in Scene 2, then go to Scene 1, then go to Scene 5, then to Scene 4, for example � it took a bit of planning in the early writing stages, but it�s possible.

The scenes all eventually lead to the same place, but I felt it important that players in the adventure have options, and be able to make legitimate choices, not ones forced upon them. (In one of the playtests, the investigators skipped over an entire scene, believing it not to be important, and it ultimately didn�t affect the outcome of the adventure.) This looser, investigative structure mirrors much more closely how I tend to run my own home games (whether Call of Cthulhu, D&D, or Warhammer), so I�m pleased that I was able to work a similar structure into �Shadows�, despite the extra planning that it required.

The other difficulty came from trying to make the adventure historically accurate. I�ve always been fascinated with Russian culture and history, so the original thought � �let�s set an adventure in Leningrad� � seemed an easy choice. However, if you want to make an adventure set in an actual place believable, it means making the details accurate.

In a fantasy adventure, it�s very easy to say �the orc has a sword� without getting into specifics of what type of sword. The made-up town that the heroes need to travel to � how long does it take them to get there after leaving the dungeon? Since I just made the dungeon and the town up in the first place, it�s easy for me to say as the author �oh, three days�, and not worry about checking for things like accuracy. In cases like that, I'm not checking facts, I'm making them up, and it works.

For Call of Cthulhu, though, when you say �the Soviet secret policeman has a gun� � well, what kind of gun? (The answer is �typically a Nagant M1895 Revolver, in 1927.�) When you say �they take the characters to the sanitarium� � was there actually a sanitarium in Leningrad in the 1920s? (�Yes.�) Was the city even called Leningrad in 1927? (�Yes. The city was originally named St. Petersburg, then renamed Petrograd in 1914, then renamed Leningrad in 1924 after Lenin died, and then finally restored back to St. Peterburg in 1991.�) What was the U.S./Soviet monetary exchange rate in 1927? And so on. A lot of it doesn't necessarily relate to the actual adventure itself, but it does all tie into making the world in which the adventure takes a believable one.

In adventures like this, you can�t just make assumptions about how things work. As an author, you need to take the time to research all the details properly. And there�s a lot of details, many of which only get a casual mention in the adventure � but it�s important to get all them right, if you can. The process added up to way, way more research and work than I would typically need for writing a fantasy adventure.

Ultimately, though, the process was enjoyable, and I think the adventure�s all the better for the additional work, so I can�t complain.

(And I�d be remiss if I didn�t mention the editorial crew on �Shadows� � Chad Bowser, Ken Hart, and Matthew �Pookie� Pook, who took the time to review what I�d written. I'll just say that if the historical facts are right in �Shadows�, thank them for verifying what I�d originally written, or for correcting my mistakes; if you find something that�s wrong, blame me.)

As I said, the adventure was a challenge. But I enjoyed writing �Shadows� immensely, so it was all worth it � and then some. �Shadows� stands at the moment as one of the adventures I�m most proud of writing so far in my freelancing career. I�m glad I had the opportunity to contribute something to the world of �Age of Cthulhu�.

And I hope you enjoy it as well. Please let me know if you do.

And if you do like it � well, here�s something to look forward to, to be released on Free RPG Day � Saturday, June 19, 2010.

Old School Gaming: The Art of (Im)balance

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:08:49 EDT

Three things you may have noticed in yesterday�s post, about the long-ago encounter with the vampire queen.

1) The average level of the characters in the party was around 4th-5th level. We were fighting a vampire with access to magic-user spells, a bunch of ghouls, and I think a wraith were in the fray as well. In a straight-up fight, we were completely outmatched. Fortunately, we fought dirty, and the little trick with the makeshift holy water made the odds a bit better.

2) We still didn�t win the fight, at least not in conventional terms. The vampire queen survived, as did probably half the ghouls. We only got rid of the wraith with a lucky turning roll by my cleric, killed a few ghouls, and mostly stalled until the thief got the sword we wanted. Then we ran. We considered it a win, even though in terms of the fight, we would�ve been killed if we stayed around a couple rounds longer.

3) John�s druid was � thanks to a deck of many things � several levels higher than the rest of us. I think he was 8th-level (that�s what pulling the Sun card will get you!) while the rest of us were 4th. But the same deck also killed another player�s character when he pulled the Skull card, and another lost all of his magic items and treasure when he pulled the Ruin card. For the most part, that deck was extraordinarily cruel to our group.

In short? An unbalanced group, and an unbalanced encounter.

Shockingly, the campaign worked very, very well.

I�ll be the first to say that designing encounters for 1st-edition AD&D could be a complete bitch. There wasn�t anything solid to look at when you wanted to see what 4th-level characters could handle. Some 5 HD monsters worked better than others, some would have weird powers that would make them ten times as powerful as another otherwise equivalent monster, some sucked as lone monsters but were great in groups � experience, built by trial and error, was the best guide towards developing your own personal �challenge rating� for monsters. And it wasn�t always pretty. I know I ran one or two adventures where the monsters started �missing� just to give the players the opportunity to retreat, since the players were about to otherwise get slaughtered (and they knew it). I had no qualms about having monsters kill people�s characters; I just never wanted it to be because the DM (me) designed a lousy encounter.

However, I will say this � the attitude kept you on your toes, and led for much more of a variety in encounters. Oftentimes, the encounters weren�t too powerful, they were too weak � but in the context of an adventure, they made sense. I remember one adventure when the same group (more or less), a couple of levels higher, had to storm a stronghold of a warlord. The warlord was a tough son-of-a-bitch who rode a blue dragon, or something like it that was hideously tough, and some of his main henchmen were extremely powerful as well.

As for the guardians of the stronghold , patrolling its walls? Orcs. Ordinary, shabby, 6 hp orcs. Our fighters could kill them with a single swing of the sword (adding up bonuses for Strength and their magic weapons, they automatically dealt 6 hp of damage, if not more.) Unless the fighters rolled a 1, the orcs died. The trick was to do it quietly, so they didn�t warn their masters. We never looked at having to kill lowly orcs as a waste of time or a pain in the ass; it was part of the adventure.

On the other side of that, we got fights like the warlord. And the vampire queen. Foes that we weren�t sure if we could take in a fight or not. There were encounters � some, not often, but enough � where we were overmatched, and we had to retreat to stay alive. And that was taken as a given. Resource management and tactics played a part in things, but there was always a chance that no matter how well we approached an encounter, no matter how clever our tactics, no matter is every character and every hireling was at full strength, our characters were going to die if we fought until the bitter end.

(This didn't necessarily mean we were expected to die when we were overmatched, by the way. Sometimes it was a not-too-subtle way of saying that we were missing something, like a particular magic item. Sometimes it meant coming back for revenge at a higher level. Sometimes it meant getting more hirelings and henchmen. And, sometimes, it meant talking with your enemy was a far better idea than drawing your sword.)

We entered virtually encounter not knowing if we�d survive or not, and damn it, it was exciting. We usually lived, but there was enough character deaths from opponents who were too powerful or the ever-lamentable failed save vs. poison to know that our characters lived in a dangerous, violent world. Just surviving a trip through a dungeon was great; surviving and grabbing the treasure was awesome.

When Third Edition D&D came around, I remember spotting the Challenge Ratings that had been assigned to each monster. I remember reading about Encounter Levels, and nodding my head. Thank Crom. No more need to agonize over whether mixing a bulette with six hobgoblins would be too tough for a party of 5th-level characters, or whether a fight in the graveyard would be better with five ghouls or eight. On the face of it � and I still believe this � knowing how to balance encounters in a game is a Very, Very Good Thing.

But �

The problem � again, just in my opinion � came when players began expecting encounters to be balanced, and when the adventures published for the game took that into consideration.

An initial fight in a D&D 3.5 adventure � or, for that matter, one in 4E � is almost never considered to be something lethal by players, unless it�s completely misplayed or everyone�s dice goes cold all at once. Balance has evolved the game, to a certain degree, into resource management. Players know that as long as they face reasonably-balanced encounters, they almost certainly can survive a couple of combat encounters before needing to heal up and memorize new spells.

And, in a modern gaming philosophy, they expect reasonably balanced encounters, since that�s what is presented and recommended in the rules, and that�s what gets featured in most modern adventures. Players usually don�t give any real thought to retreating from that first or second fight because it�s too tough, since according the �balanced� philosophy, it shouldn�t be too tough. If retreat becomes necessary, then the encounter�s labeled �unfair�. (Assuming the players recognize the need to retreat, of course; if they don�t, then there�s a Total Party Kill before the encounter�s labeled �unfair�.) If the encounter�s not balanced, then the thought is something is wrong, and that�s something I don�t agree with at all.

Other changes to the modern editions of D&D, made in the name of balance � yeah, I didn�t like those much, either. Poison that just causes damage, rather than killing characters outright? Ugh. The deck of many things somehow made the cut to Third Edition, but I wasn�t surprised to see it cut from 4E � Crom forbid that a party not be comprised of everyone from the same level. Ugh.

I totally get the basic premise � balance makes for better designed encounters, which can lead to better adventures. And nobody (well, almost nobody) is a big fan of having their character die simply because they botched one lousy saving throw. If you think balance is a good price to pay for making your adventures better, and makes the players at your table happier, well, I can�t � and won�t � argue with you. If you hate the randomness of the old school game systems, that�s totally fine.

My point is this � much like the rules of an old-school game versus those of a modern game, I think balance is better as a guideline, not a rule. Balance should help in creating adventures, but it shouldn�t be a given that all encounters must be reasonably balanced. Retreat isn�t always a bad thing. The adventures don�t always need to be fair in terms of design or rules. The simple fact that your character can die in any given encounter � to me � makes the game much more dangerous, and much more exciting. And, to me, that keeps the adventures more interesting, and makes the victories all the sweeter.

Just my opinion, though. Or, maybe the rantings of a gamer screaming GET OFF MY LAWN. So feel free to ignore them.

Although I guess I�m more of an old school gamer than I originally thought.

Old School Gaming: Four Gallons of Holy Water and a Vampire Queen

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:28:59 EDT

More and more lately, I keep finding myself trying to define what an old school game would be. Some people say it�s not something that can be defined; I don�t really agree with that. Some people define old school as simpler games; can�t agree with that, either. Just take a look at the character creation rules for Traveler sometime, or all the henchmen tables in the 1st-edition AD&D Dungeon Masters� Guide � not simple. In fact, pretty clunky and rules-heavy at times.

Arriving at a simple definition of old school gaming isn�t something that�s painfully obvious (at least to me), so I decided to give it some thought. I�d previously taken a look at the various editions of D&D and AD&D, so I went back to that and tried specifically looking at the break from 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D to its more modern counterparts � to me, the dividing line comes somewhere in there. After knocking the idea around for a bit, what I concluded was this:

Old school � to me � means that the rules are firm guidelines, intended to mostly define how the game works, but do not ultimately decide how a situation works. The gamemaster is intended to be the final arbiter of how things work. In a more modern game system, the rules aren�t guidelines, they�re laws. The gamemaster�s job is to interpret those laws.

Let me give an example of this.

A very long, long, long time ago on a Tuesday night, in my friend Eric�s 1st-edition AD&D Tunnelworld campaign, our hardy band of adventurers encountered a Haigyptian vampire queen beneath a pyramid. The vampire queen had several ghoulish friends with her, and our party was outmatched and outnumbered. We were there, ostensibly, to parley with her in order to acquire a magic sword from her, or something like that. I think Eric�s plan was that we would agree to go on a quest for her, get some cool artifact, and return to the pyramid after we�d gained a few levels and were capable of taking her on. But, like all good villains do, Eric had her start monologuing at us, so we started plotting ideas.

I was playing a cleric (about 4th-level, I think), my friend John was playing a druid (a deck of many things had him a couple of levels higher than the rest of us). We hit upon the same idea at about the same time.

�Hey, did you know create water is a ranged spell? Only takes one round to cast it.�

�If we create water over her head, and bless it, would that be holy water?�

�Holy water does what � 1d6 points of damage for a direct hit from a vial, 1 point for a splash, something like that?�

�It says we can create a couple of gallons of water with a create water spell.�

�How much water is in a vial?�

�The book says 4 ounces.�

�How many ounces in, say, 4 gallons?�

Pause, for some math.

�Holy shit.�

�Let�s do it.�

So, when the monologue was completed, we announced our plan to Eric. We wanted to dump several gallons of holy water on the vampire queen�s head.

After a brief amount of shock, Eric went through the Dungeon Master�s Guide to see if our plan was even viable, and we pored over our Players� Handbooks. We really didn�t think the plan would work � it seemed way too easy (and we hadn�t really grasped the concept of �broken rules� as yet, so that notion didn�t occur to us, either.)

Now, here�s the part that helps define old school. Technically, we couldn�t do it. Page 114 of the Dungeon Master�s Guide actually explains the creation of holy water (it�s a ritual that takes hours, spells like purify water are also needed, etc.) But we never found that rule in the book that particular night. Nor, quite honestly, did we look terribly long for it. We were used to the rulebooks not covering exactly what we wanted to do, so we didn�t assume the rules for making holy water must be in the book. Were this D&D 3.5, for example, or 4E, I think we would�ve pored over the books for hours if needed, looking for the precise rules to fit what we were attempting. We would�ve been more determined to have the rules of the game precisely define our actions.

Instead, after maybe fifteen minutes of looking over rulebooks and failing to find what we wanted, Eric made the decision. He thought it seemed ridiculous to just be able to make the equivalent of a holy water atomic bomb over a vampire, so he said we couldn�t do that. However, he basically gave us the equivalent of a Dexterity check (roll your Dex or less on a d20) to cast our spells without being noticed � and then our makeshift holy water would do 6d6 points of damage, or something like that. If we wanted to go through with this plan, that�s how things would work.

So we agreed to it. And we pulled off the plan, such as it was, and much to our own amazement. We rolled really well with the damage, fought the vampire queen and her ghouls long enough for our thief to sneak off undetected and snag the magic sword we were supposed to negotiate for, and then we all ran like hell. We didn�t kill the queen, but we caused enough mayhem to get the treasure. (In what I always thought was a great touch, we encountered the vampire queen again later on in the campaign, with her formerly beautiful face covered by a jewel-encrusted silver mask, as the holy water had horribly burned her flesh.)

Now, I know what you�re thinking. �You can do that with 3.5 and 4E as well.�

Well, yeah � but both systems are designed to more precisely define what you can and can�t do. They�re intended to be the laws defining the game world, not be guidelines. If you ignore the rules in 3.5 and 4E, well, you�re ignoring a lot. But if you�re playing Holmes/Moldvay Basic D&D, or 1st-Edition AD&D � the game�s a lot less dependent on the rules. They might be overly complex or cumbersome at times, but they�re not meant to necessarily describe how every possible action in the game works. In those earlier games, the rules are intended to help shape the game, not rigidly define it.

Another example of this, perhaps.

You have a character in a game. You�re chasing after a villain in a grand ballroom. You want to leap off a balcony, grab onto a chandelier, jump to the ground, and take a swing at the villain before he can escape.

In 3.5, if you�ve got the right combination of skills and feats, you can pull this off. You probably even have a good idea of if you�ll be successful or not. If you don�t have the right combination of skills and feats, you know right away if you can do this or not.

In 4E, same thing. You may even have class powers that help (or not), and the DM may choose to frame this as a Skill Challenge.

In more old school games � there�s no hard and fast rules for this. It might come down more to the DM saying �you can�t do that�, and that�s the end of it. However, in most games I�ve played, the DM may allow this with some rudimentary sort of check (roll under your Dex, make a saving throw vs. Dragon Breath, whatever). I tend to personally prefer this, only because this method � to me � often better serves the adventure at hand. A wizard in 3.5 and 4E would never try this in a million years, only because the odds of achieving all of the appropriate skill checks (and having all of the appropriate feats) are next to none. A magic-user from an older game, though � well, the odds might be low, but at least there�s a chance.

Old school games tend to be a little more wide open, which inspires creativity. It�s probably the thing about D&D 4E that I find the most disappointing � the powers, to me, limit what your characters can do. In running mid-level fighters in 1st-edition AD&D, I found myself trying all sorts of crazy tactics in battle, unsure if they would work � and that was part of the fun of it. In 4E, you try to figure out how to maximize the use of your at-wills, your encounter and your daily powers � and you tend not to stray too far from them, as you�re giving up too much by doing so. Can your 4E fighter do other things in combat? Absolutely. But the rules aren�t designed to actively support that openness, and they don�t encourage trying new things.

I don�t say this in any way to knock newer games. (Hell, I just started running a 4E campaign of my own!) Old-school games have plenty of their own issues. For me, there isn�t a dream edition of D&D or AD&D � each has their own merits and flaws.

But there�s something I personally prefer to the old-school approach, which is probably more of a gaming philosophy than anything else. I prefer DMs working with players to achieve crazy things, like dumping several gallons of holy water on a vampire queen�s head, with the rules meant as something to guide a game, rather than be the game. And for what it's worth, I personally think old school games lend themselves better to achieving moments like that.

For Want of a River Kingdom

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:52:48 EST

Memo to any would-be writers out there � never, ever throw anything you�ve written away.

You never know when it might come in handy.

A couple of years ago, I was asked to write a follow-up to a project I�d written that had already been published. That follow-up included a full-length adventure, and some gazetteer-type material giving some history and backstory to both the new adventure and the initial project.

Of course, I agreed to write the follow-up, and was pretty stoked to do so. In particular, I was stoked about writing the gazetteer parts of the follow-up. I tend to write lots of backstory for just about all the adventures I�ve ever written, even though that backstory usually doesn�t see the light of day � I just like figuring out the hows and whys behind an adventure, and backstory is a good way of figuring that out. For example, I�ve got lots of material on the duergar armies and kingdoms for �Dreaming Caverns of the Duergar�, even though the adventurers only meet a duergar advance scouting party in the adventure. I wrote a whole history for the frost giants in "Talons of the Horned King", even though they aren't even encountered in that adventure. It�s a bit overkill, but it works for me.

So the chance to take some of that material and work it into something worthy of publication � awesome. I spent quite a bit of time on that and the adventure (which remains probably the best adventure I�ve written), sent it to the publisher, and � waited.

And waited. And waited. Finally, I got asked to rewrite parts of the adventure. Did that, and waited. And waited. Finally, I got asked to rewrite parts on the adventure again, and to trim it down to about half its original length. Wasn�t thrilled about that, but did it anyway. And then waited, and waited, and waited �

All of the rewrites happened during the first year after I�d submitted the original drafts. I spent another two years simply waiting. During that time, I�d send an e-mail to the editors every few months, inquiring as to the status of the project. Sometimes I got answers; usually, I didn�t. When I did get answers, they usually said something along the lines of the manuscripts would probably go into production �shortly�, and the follow-up project would be published �soon�.

Second memo to any would-be writers out there � when you�re being told �shortly� and �soon� by a company for over two years, and that company is publishing other products during that time � �shortly� and �soon� aren�t quite the answers that apply to your situation.

The real answer is �we have your project, we keep meaning to publish your project, but now we have a ton of other projects in the production line we�d rather publish instead, we really should just cancel your project, but since there�s maybe a 2% chance we�ll actually publish someday, we won�t do that.� Which, on a certain level � well, I appreciate folks that mean well, but I appreciate realists far more. I�d rather that people be blunt and cancel a project that�s going nowhere, instead of trying to be nice, and inadvertently stringing freelancers along for far too long about something that's realistically never, ever going to be published.

So at the beginning of last year, I simply asked to have the rights to all of the material to be reverted to me. I didn�t care about payment, I just wanted my stuff back, and the rights to publish it elsewhere if I so chose. For some reason, the editor was very confused as to why I�d ask for such a thing, but accepted my request. I was left with an adventure and a gazetteer with nowhere to go � but at least they were going nowhere because of me. I could live with that.

A few weeks after that, I got asked by Paizo to contribute to a book called �The Guide to the River Kingdoms�, a gazetteer for the Pathfinder RPG. The River Kingdoms are a rough-and-tumble collection of bandit kingdoms in Paizo�s campaign world of Golarion. It�s the sort of place that�s chock-full of wild adventure, just my sort of taste for a campaign setting � and very similar to the material in the gazetteer I�d already written a few years ago.

No, I just didn�t rename my existing gazetteer material and submit that to Paizo. For one thing, the project had a bunch of specific requirements that I hadn�t covered in my old gazetteer material. For another, I needed to make the material much more specific to the Pathfinder RPG, to the world of Golarion, and more importantly, to fit in with the material of the other authors for the River Kingdoms book. (I got to collaborate with Colin McComb of �Planescape� fame on a bunch of ideas, which was a lot of fun.) For a third � well, I�m not the sort of writer who can let something sit around for years and not tinker around with it. The original material was good, but I knew I could make it better.

So, the material I wrote for my section of the River Kingdoms � the Kingdom of Pitax � was by and large new, written and rewritten more specifically for Paizo. But the core of that material, and many of the underlying ideas, came from the original gazetteer material I�d written years before. Waste not, want not.

I guess Paizo liked what I wrote about Pitax, because I was later asked to expand upon it and write additional gazetteer material for an upcoming Paizo Adventure Path called �War of the River Kings�. There�s also going to be full-blown maps available for Pitax and the other River Kingdoms, which is pretty damn sweet.

I�m very pleased with how it all turned out, and hope you�ll enjoy it as well. Myself, I�m still scratching my head over how my name is mentioned in the credits alongside the likes of China Mi�ville, Chris Pramas, Elaine Cunningham, and Steve Kenson � but I�m not complaining. Not at all.

So, save what you write, even if you don�t think it�s going anywhere, or you don�t know quite what to do with it. You�ll find a use for it someday.

Promise.

FASERIP

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:52:30 EST

I was planning on writing a blog post relatively soon about one of my favorite games not featuring "Dungeons & Dragons" in the title:

However, I noticed that the main person responsible for creating the game - a certain Mr. Jeff Grubb - wrote an interesting post regarding the genesis of the Marvel Super Heroes RPG. For those interested, by all means, please go read it: HERE.

I'll save most of my own thoughts on the Marvel Super Heroes RPG for a later time, but suffice it to say I found it to be a great, easy game to play. It also emulated the superhero genre quite nicely - when playing a character, you felt like you could do anything you'd ever seen or read in a comic book. I've played other superhero systmes where that simply wasn't the case - your character would take forver to heal from a simple battle, or be unable to even do simple things like running from rooftop to rooftop. The fact that Marvel Super Heroes could do so while using a pretty simplistic rules system was always something impressive to be.

Besides ... FASERIP. That's just a great name for a rules system involving superheroes.

Time to get out the boxed set this weekend ...

The Advanced Edition Companion

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:43:40 EST

I think I found my dream version of Dungeons & Dragons.

Sadly, I don�t think I�ll ever find a group with which to run or play it at this point in my life � but them�s the breaks. I�m just happy to have found it, to have read it, and to just know it exists. Someday �

The way I was introduced to playing D&D was sort of weird. However, I think it happened in a manner that many gamers who started playing in the late Seventies and early Eighties (like myself) would understand. I made an elf as my very first character, using the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert rules set for D&D � the ones with the Erol Otus covers. With a little �tweaking� from the DM, I played that character in �Expedition to the Barrier Peaks� � a module written for 1st-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. My sister Laura had a similar experience, as she made a halfling from the B/X D&D rules and played it in �Tomb of Horrors� as her first adventure � talk about a trial by fire! In both of our cases, we made characters for one rules set and played them in another that was sort-of-but-not-really-100%-compatible � and, for the most part, it worked.

Most of my earliest gaming experiences worked like that, randomly bouncing things between �boxed set� D&D and the �rulebook� AD&D, like playing assassins in �Castle Amber� and other such things. For a long time, it didn�t really occur to me that there was anything really different between the two. Both D&D and AD&D were all supposed to be �Dungeons & Dragons�, so I assumed (as did most gamers I knew at the time) they were all meant to be part of the same game.

At the time, I was also flying model airplanes in competition events where there were four skill levels: Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert. For some reason, I assumed that D&D worked exactly the same way as my model airplane competitions, and that �Advanced Dungeons & Dragons� was somehow supposed to slide neatly between �Basic� and �Expert�. The fact that a careful analysis of �Advanced� D&D would instantly shoot holes in that logic never fazed me; at the time, that�s just what I believed. (I also spent an inordinate amount of time searching for �Intermediate� D&D rules, to no avail �)

Though the D&D/AD&D games I played back then eventually moved over towards something far closer to what was in the AD&D rulebooks, and the Basic/Expert D&D elements eventually got phased out, those games that I played always remained, by and large, houseruled games. I�ve spent a bit of time thinking about this in recent years, and I think it�s one of the main components of what I�d call the �grognard� experience. Basically, I learned how to play D&D/AD&D not from reading the rulebooks in any great detail, but simply by playing with more experienced gamers who �already knew the rules�. I learned enough of the rules so that I could make a character, but I never really knew a lot of the fiddly details. It was much more of an informal experience � rather than relying on the Rules As Written, there was much more of a reliance on the Rules As Played. When I eventually started running my own AD&D games, I essentially took the rules as I�d learned them through play, and used them to run my own games, despite the fact that a close examination of the rulebooks would�ve revealed I wasn�t doing certain things �correctly�, or at least with the Rules As Written.

I think this is how a lot of gamers learned to play back in the late Seventies and early Eighties. There was no online community, no global group of gamers with which to easily check and compare ways to interpret rules or to optimize characters. The only way to get rules clarifications from TSR was to mail a letter to �Sage Advice� in Dragon Magazine and hope that it got answered � in a couple of months. Rules disputes and interpretations back then were all handled within the group, without relying on �official� rules interpretations.

Compare that now to D&D 3.0, or 3.5, or 4E. When 3.0 was released, everyone started from the same playing field, so to speak � it was no longer a matter of learning from group to group, but an entire community learning how to play a game they loved all over again all at once. And, with the advent of the Internet, it was easy to share that experience, and to compare notes with one another, and to get �official� rulings and errata from the writers of the game very, very quickly. That�s when the game shifted more from something that had rules which varied from group to group, to something where everyone could adhere more strongly to the Rules As Written. I don�t look at either method as necessarily right or wrong � they�re just different.

I�ve learned over the years that I really liked the loose flexibility of my old AD&D games. I never really liked the mechanical bloat of D&D 3.0/3.5 and its stubborn insistence on explaining how everything works. I like D&D 4E a little better, but it strays perhaps a bit too far from the old versions of D&D/AD&D for my liking. I like both of those versions of the game, and enjoy playing them a lot, but they�re far from my own personal �ideal� version of the game.

My own dream version of D&D is something that�s rules-light, and that doesn�t rely on miniatures for combat. While I used to love painting miniatures, I never really used them in my own games, apart from big battle or when combat would get super-crazy in terms of the number of opponents the characters faced. I never used the weapon speed factor chart from AD&D as written (then again, who did?), instead relying on a slight penalty for polearms and a slight bonus for darts and daggers. I never used the flanking rules, or a whole bunch of other combat rules listed in the good old original Dungeon Masters Guide (most of which I didn�t remember, or even knew existed until a careful re-read of the book a few years ago!).

In short � my ideal version of the game is Basic/Expert D&D, with a healthy smattering of 1st-edition AD&D thrown in for good measure.

A few years ago, Goblinoid Games put out a game called Labyrinth Lord, a �retro-clone� of the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert rules set for D&D. Now, they�ve just put out the Advanced Edition Companion for Labyrinth Lord � an optional rules set that lets gamers add in fun stuff to their Labyrinth Lord games like gnomes, assassins, and the demon lord Orcus.

Kind of sounds like Basic/Expert D&D, with a healthy smattering of 1st-edition AD&D thrown in for good measure, and it is. And it works beautifully.

The main thing I love about the Labyrinth Lord/ Advanced Edition Companion combination is that it retains that wonderful �old school� simplicity while streamlining and cleaning things up. A Labyrinth Lord game using the Advanced Edition Companion wouldn�t be like the old days of mishmashing B/X D&D with AD&D � the Advanced Edition Companion makes the amalgamation of the two concepts pretty damn seamless.

Granted, I wish there were a few more tweaks to the Advanced Edition Companion rules that more closely matched some of the better house rules I�ve heard for AD&D (like giving magic-users a spell bonus for high Intelligence, in the way clerics get a spell bonus for high Wisdom), but overall, I can�t complain. It�s done extremely well. Kudos to Daniel Proctor for making such a great addition to an already great game.

So now, the Advanced Edition Companion sits on my shelf, patiently waiting to be played someday. Realistically, that day might never come. Most of the gamers I know right now are much more into D&D 4E, or Pathfinder, or Exalted. Of all the gamers I know and roll dice with, �old school� D&D seems to be something that only interests me at the moment.

But if you want a game that provides a fantastic old-school gaming experience, one perfectly suited for the dungeon crawling days of yore, look no further than Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion. It�s a perfect fit for that open style of gaming.

And who knows? Weirder things have happened. The Advanced Edition Companion may get its chance someday �

Here There Be Vegepygmies

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:13:33 EST

Certain monsters always grabbed my attention. I don't know why. I suppose it's because most of them featured prominently in many of the modules I played during my earliest forays into gaming. The yuan-ti, of course, remain the favorite. But I've also always had a soft spot for critters like the xorn, the phanatons from "The Isle of Dread", yellow musk creepers ... and, of course, vegepygmies, who very nearly killed my very first character during "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks".

I've tried - where I can - to incorporate these nasty beasties into the adventures I've written over the years. One of the reasons "Dreaming Caverns of the Duergar" remains my favorite published adventure to date is because it contains a good number of those creatures, such as the executioner's hood, the yellow musk creeper, yellow musk zombies, and vegepygmies. (True story - that almost didn't happen. I submitted the original outline for "Caverns" to Joseph Goodman, who sent back a quick note saying "Nice, but why don't you put a fungal garden somewhere in the caverns?" I thought about what sorts of creatures would live in that garden, and suddenly some vegepygmies and yellow musk critters decided to make their way into the adventure.)

I even went so far as to start writing some additional supplemental material about the vegepygmies in the adventure, but between word court and relevance to the actual story adventure, it didn't really fit. So I cut it out of the final manuscript, and saved it for a project for another day.

Today's that day.

"Behind the Monsters: Vegepygmy", published by the folks at Tricky Owlbear, is now available. It lists me as the writer ... truth be told, it's a collaboration between myself and Bret Boyd. For whatever reason, I could never get my original concepts to mesh in a finished format that I liked. It was mostly there, but certain elements were missing, and I wasn't happy with that. Bret took my ideas and polished them up nicely.

My personal favorite part of the piece is the vegegyant (someone big who's green but decidely not jolly), but overall, I think it came out pretty well.

If you're interested in checking it out, it's available at a bunch of places, like RPGNow, YourGamesNow, and Paizo. It was a neat little project to write, and I hope you enjoy it.

The Art of the Mega-Dungeon

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:41:09 EST

Confession time � I�ve never been a big fan of mega-dungeons.

I think this is more due to my typical game play style than anything else. Most of the original adventures run and played by my own long-time gaming group simply don�t fit the mega-dungeon format. Our adventures tended to prominently feature roleplaying and investigation, with a smattering of combat here and there. If anything, a typical adventure session of my group has aptly been described as a sword-and-sorcery version of �The A-Team� � receive a mission, come up with a ridiculously elaborate plan to combat the enemy, and then fight the enemy in one big battle. (The ridiculously elaborate plan rarely survives initial contact with the enemy, but that�s neither here nor there.) Sustained, small encounters didn�t fit the style of our group � nor did adventures taking place at a single location. Our characters were the original group of well-armed mercenary hobos, going from place to place in search of adventure, never stopping at any particular location for more than a gaming session or two.

As you�ll see later, it�s a style that doesn�t always lend itself well to a good mega-dungeon format.

That being said, mega-dungeons always fascinated me. They fascinate a lot of gamers. If you�re a longtime gaming grognard (like myself), I think the legend of Castle Greyhawk has a lot to do with that. Castle Greyhawk was undeniably the original mega-dungeon, and the late Gary Gygax wrote and spoke about it frequently in the early editorials of Dragon Magazine and other places, as did the other TSR folks who played in Gary�s original D&D campaigns. It always sounded awesome � bigger (literally!) and better than any other adventure. The fact that Gary kept talking about finally publishing it someday � but never getting around to it � also helped to build its mythical status as something grand, as anticipation built up steadily for it for years and years, with gamers wanting to finally get a glimpse of one of Gary�s greatest creations.

(Sadly, that never came to fruition; hints of what was and could�ve been only came through the wretched abomination known as the module WG7: Castle Greyhawk; the much-better modules EX1: Dungeonland, EX2: The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, and WG6: Isle of the Ape, which showcased some of the extraplanar levels of the Castle; the much-later Greyhawk Ruins and the much-much-later Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk, which finally started to assemble some of Gary�s original scattered ideas for Castle Greyhawk into a consolidated format, but written by different authors; and finally, Castle Zagyg, which was finally the Gary Gygax-penned iteration of Castle Greyhawk everyone had always hoped to see � but it unfortunately was not fully completed before he passed away.)

And even if the legend of Castle Greyhawk was something that never piqued your interest as a gamer � there�s something about the mega-dungeon concept that�s just damn cool. Tackling a mega-dungeon is a challenge; conquering it is just awesome. The sheer size and scale of the mega-dungeon usually means that the player characters have to do far more to survive and be successful than they would in standard dungeons, meaning that the rewards � and the sense of accomplishment � of beating one is all the sweeter.

I recently began work on a �Lost City� mega-adventure that would�ve essentially been a mega-dungeon. Though this project sadly has been shelved (and I don�t expect it to see the light of day again), it did provide me the opportunity to sit down, look at a bunch of mega-dungeons and mega-adventures, and see what made them work or not work. The better ones, I think, all shared a few common themes. Here they are:

1. Big adventure, big picture, big story. The mega-dungeons that are essentially nothing more than ninety-thousand rooms filled with monsters, traps, and treasure do nothing for me. The adventure�s big, so the stakes need to be big. There needs to be compelling reasons for the characters to be tackling the adventure. The better ones have both small, short-term goals and larger �big-picture� goals for the characters to achieve. (And, ideally, some of these goals are completely unrelated � see the next point and you�ll understand.) But a big hook towards keeping the players� interest will probably eventually be on the endgame for the mega-adventure � ending the prophecy, killing the big dragon, finding the lost artifact, or whatever else becomes the thing that makes your players go: OH HELL YES, I WANT TO DO THAT.

2. Escape is a healthy thing. The mega-adventure or mega-dungeon means you�re in the same place for a really, really long time. In my experience, that means players invariably get bored, no matter how exciting the adventure might be. You can mix things up a bit by throwing in some unrelated plot threads in your mega-dungeon, but sometimes players will just get sick of the place. Having a nearby town where the players can refresh themselves, reload, and have some different sorts of adventures is a good idea, so make sure the characters can leave the mega-dungeon without too much difficulty. (Portals to other places within the dungeon aren�t a bad idea either, provided your gaming style lends itself to that sort of wackiness.)

3. Payback�s a bitch. In my old campaigns, the incessant wandering of the heroes from place to place meant there were rarely repercussions for their actions. They never got to see that slaying the kobold tribe near the village meant that they�d effectively ended a decades-old war between the kobolds and the orcs, and that the orcs now could focus their hostility directly on the village the characters thought they had �saved�. In the mega-dungeon, because so much happens in essentially the same place, you can have fallout like that from the players� actions. It�s easier to have recurring villains with long memories and axes to grind. The mega-dungeon�s a more living environment, where even the simplest of actions might mean dire things down the road.

4. Overall holistic design. Living environment also applies to the guys writing and designing the mega-dungeon as well. The place as a whole needs to make sense. How do the various denizens of the place get along? Are there groups of allies or sworn enemies? Also, keep in mind that stuff found in one part of the adventure could affect something else down the road, often to a great extent. That �invincible� frost giant jarl at the end of the adventure won�t be so tough if the characters loaded up on all the fire-based magic items you loaded into the beginning of the adventure.

5. No chokepoints. There better not be a point in the dungeon that the players hit where they are faced with �solve this/defeat this OR ELSE YOU CANNOT GET ANY FURTHER IN THE DUNGEON�. Should they fail, nothing sucks worse than this. Absolutes should not be a part of any dungeon, but their problems get magnified in a mega-dungeon.

6. Indexing and organization. There�s a hell of a lot going on in a mega-dungeon. Knowing that the key on the third level opens the chest on the ninth might be important, and being able to quickly look up that sort of information is extremely helpful. While an index is perfect for these sorts of situations, just organizing the adventure to cover those situations is very, very helpful. This gets back to holistic design � if the demon lord on the thirteenth level of the dungeon is badly affected by a magic sword found on level six, putting a page reference number to the stats for that magic sword in the demon lord encounter is a great idea.

Of all the mega-dungeons and mega-adventures I read over the past year, three stood out above and beyond the rest to me. Castle Whiterock, hands down, I consider to be the best of them. Maure Castle is also excellent (and possibly the closest thing we�ll ever see to a complete old-school Gygax-styled mega-dungeon), as well as the original Caverns of Thracia (odd to call it a mega-dungeon, as it�s just 80 pages, but author Paul Jaquays created something really cool, original � and open. There�s no right way to explore the Caverns, no great big villains or set pieces, but it really works great nonetheless).

Your favorite mega-dungeons? Your experiences with them?

I�d love to hear about them.

RIFTS: The Banwok Hunters

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:50:53 EST

This is the one that pretty much got my freelancing career started.

When I first starting running games, my games of choice were some of the earlier editions of D&D and AD&D, and the first incarnation of the Warhammer FRPG. The first adventures I ran were published adventures, like �Dwellers of the Forbidden City� and �Shadows Over B�genhafen�. Later on, as I got more confidence and gained more experience with running various game systems, I started writing and running my own original adventures, set in my own campaign worlds. The stories framing those adventures probably weren�t all that great, but they were mine. I learned a lot writing and running those adventures.

However, while the stories were original, the mechanics weren�t. I never really deviated from what you�d find in the rulebooks for those games. If there was an evil wizard in one of my AD&D adventures, all of his spells came from the Players� Handbook. If there were monsters in a dungeon in a Warhammer adventure, they came from the rulebook or from a White Dwarf magazine article. I liked creating my own stories, but I didn�t tinker around with the games in terms of mechanics. For one thing, the existing mechanics worked; for another, I didn�t have a lot of confidence � yet � in straying too far from the Rules As Written.

When I started running RIFTS, though, that changed. I think it was because of the wide-open gonzo nature of the game. There were a lot of stories I wanted to tell in my various RIFTS campaigns, and quite honestly, the rulebooks didn�t nearly begin to cover what I wanted to do. (To date myself, there were only four RIFTS books when I started running the game: the main rulebook, the first sourcebook, and the Atlantis and Vampire Kingdoms world books.) The monsters were limited, the equipment was limited, there wasn�t much there in terms of magic � if I wanted to tell those stories, I was going to have to develop my own source material and game mechanics.

Also � although the possibility that rules could be �broken� hadn�t yet dawned on me � I did realized that certain aspects of the game really didn�t make much logical sense. So there were certain parts of the game where I started to adjust the rules so they�d make more sense for my gaming group.

So I began tinkering. I wrote my own monsters, my own spells, my own equipment, my own rules � in other words, I started designing. Again, I don�t think I knew what a game designer was at the time, but that�s what I was doing. Using the basics of the rules system, I went beyond just writing adventures, and started developing original game mechanics as well.

While running RIFTS and developing new material for my campaign, I also spent a bit of time submitting articles to Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine, which at the time were still run by TSR. All of these proposals got rejected, but I had it in my head that I wanted to write games somehow, or to work for a gaming company.

Somewhere during this time, while getting yet another rejection letter from Dragon (poor Roger E. Moore, who edited the magazine at that time � he must�ve hated reading the dreck that I sent his way) � I took a look at my desk and saw all the spiral-bound notebooks I�d filled with ideas for the RIFTS campaign. A lot of it was very, very detailed. And that�s when it dawned on me: why write something for D&D? Let�s write something for Palladium instead?

That didn�t exactly work out as expected. You can find the full story of that saga HERE, but suffice it to say that the material I wrote for that campaign never got published by Palladium Books. However, it did lead me to write two books. The first was �The Banwok Hunters�, and then I followed that up with a second book called �Demon Heart Falling�, which you can download HERE.

Much like �Demon Heart Falling�, I got a trip out of re-reading �The Banwok Hunters�, which was originally written about fifteen years ago. It brought back a lot of fond memories of that old campaign. I�d forgotten about stuff like the Hellstar Complex, the base that the player characters used (which was really a landbound version of the Liberator from Blake�s 7), or the villainous cybernetic Tyrannosaurus Rex known as Jericho (who I based on the Ultra-Humanite). Lots of gonzo, over-the-top stuff in there, which reflected that campaign pretty well. Crazy, but tremendous amounts of fun.

I hadn�t bothered to scan �The Banwok Hunters� into digital form only because my own copy of it was pretty crappy. I was afraid to put the pages through the scanning feeder, as I was pretty sure they�d get shredded in the scanning process. Fortunately, my friend Eric had a copy of the book � so, thanks to Eric, you now have a copy as well.

Curious to see what all this looks like? Download it by clicking: HERE.

I�m curious to hear what you think of it.

Enjoy!

The 2010 Gaming/Writing Resolutions

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:10:06 EST

1. Play more games.
2. Write an original D&D 4E adventure, and run it for some friends.
3. Write an original Pathfinder adventure, and run it for some friends.
4. Run "The Lost City" again. Maybe even for some of the guys who were in it the first time around.
5. Read the original "Slavers" series for 1E AD&D. Believe it or not, I've never, ever read this or played it. If it looks like fun, run one of the modules in this series for some friends.
6. Go to some more local conventions.
7. GenCon 2010 ... perhaps.
8. Find some more local gaming stores, hopefully friendly ones.
9. Tinker around with the rules for Nova Storm, my ever-in-development science fiction RPG.
10. Discover a good game that I don't know about at the moment.
11. Get the NaClaMoMo reviews finished this month, before the whole "month" part of the name gets too awkwardly ridiculous.
12. Finish writing one novel.
13. Get the other novel published, or at least well on the road to that goal.
14. Play more games.

Out With The Old, In With The New

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:49:42 EST

Well, it's the end of 2009.

The year went a little differently than I thought it would, but then again, that always seems to be the case. On a personal level, all things considered, it was marvelous. After all, gaming has allowed me to become both acquainted with a marvelous bunch of new friends and re-acquainted again with many older friends, equally marvelous. Pretty damn good times with all of these people, both new and old, and I hope they continue in the months and years to come.

On the professional side of things ... while the real job is just fine, freelancing this year had a lot of challenges. Some projects went well; most didn't. I think the expectations I had for myself over the past few years are simply just never going to become a reality, and I've reached a point where hard work and persistence just isn't enough on its own to get to where I'd hoped to go. I just don't have the energy - or, sadly, the interest - to keep tilting at windmills anymore.

So it's simply time to be thankful for all the wonderful things I've worked on over the years, all the fantastic people I've met and all the great experiences I've had ... and start moving in a different direction. And, to be honest, moving in a new direction is pretty damn exciting, so I'm happy to be trying something new at this point, whether it's successful or not.

To all of you gaming freelancers out there, the very best of luck to you in 2010. I'm still rolling dice, and I can't wait to see what worlds and adventures you guys dream up.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Finding A Voice

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:14:35 EST

Work, holidays, rewriting a project from a corrupted file � it�s been a hell of a busy month. Hoping to complete NaClaMoMo before year�s end, but we�ll see.

In the meantime � a quick rumination on writing in general.

I�ve been writing for a long time. I was writing short stories by the time I was ten, was writing my own adventures for games shortly thereafter � but I never really thought about being a writer, if that makes any sense. Writing was something that I did, but it didn�t define who I was. I enjoyed writing, but it wasn�t a part of my very being. Yet.

End of eighth grade. I�m fourteen, and I�m playing in a baseball game. Stretch out to make a play at third base, with one foot on the bag, and the baserunner tramples my ankles. Just doesn�t break it, he shatters it. So I get to spend the summer between middle school and high school like Paul Sheldon in Misery, laid up and hobbled. Fun, fun, fun.

During that summer, the family goes to visit my aunt in Michigan, and I go with them. There�s not a hell of a lot I can do. So I read. A lot. It doesn�t take me long to go through all the books I brought with me, so eventually I start reading whatever I can find on the shelves in my aunt�s house. Most of it�s not to my tastes. But I find one that definitely is.

I�ve never read Stephen King before. But his stories and his writing style just resonates with me. It�s not just his gruesome horror and his black humor, either. He develops characters so wonderfully well, especially the supporting characters. He captures the way characters speak in a believable way. He has a real sense of pacing, of timing � he�s a natural storyteller, with a very matter-of-fact, almost folksy way of telling a tale. He writes in a way that makes me want to write my own stories. By the time I finish the 1,100 pages of IT, the thought occurs to me: I want to be a writer.

(And if you want to know where I get my fondness and overuse of ellipses from � you can probably thank Mr. King.)

I heal up, and go to high school. Inexplicably, I wind up with a free period in the middle of the day that is shared by none of the few friends I have. So I do what any painfully shy, antisocial dork would do from about 10:00 to 10:40 in the morning. I go to the library. And I discover their collection of Stephen King books. During my freshman year, I proceed to devour the likes of The Stand, Salem�s Lot, Christine, Firestarter, and a good number of other early works by King.

And then I start to write, because I know I'm a writer.

The early stuff, naturally, is nothing but short stories, nothing but horror, and is just a pale imitation of Stephen King. It�s crap, for the most part. But I don�t have my own voice as a writer just yet, and I don�t know quite what to write. So I�m just writing someone else�s stuff instead, trying to find my own original voice by using someone else�s first.

Meanwhile, I continue to read. I continue to devour King. Somewhere in there, I discover The Talisman, which was written by King and Peter Straub. I check out Straub, and books like Floating Dragon and The Throat (still one of my favorites of all time). I see how to write horror in a different way, in a more refined and elegant way. My stories and writings start borrowing elements of Straub as well as King.

And that�s how it goes for a while.

I discover the awesome works of Elmore Leonard, the crime novelist, who has the most amazing knack for writing believable, natural dialogue I�ve ever read.

I discover Neal Stephenson, who has an astonishing ability to seamlessly weave a host of strange and seemingly unrelated topics into a carefully crafted story.

I discover George R.R. Martin, the wonderful fantasy writer who puts unflinching grit into fantasy, and who effortlessly juggles dozens upon dozens of characters in his novels without difficulty.

And I discover dozens of others. I read. A lot.

Every time I discover one of these amazing authors, a little piece of what I admire in them gets added into my own style of writing.

And as I continue to write, the collection of pieces gets a little bigger � and the edges between them start to fade away. It�s not so much a collection anymore as a bunch of influences. For in the middle of them all stands my own unique voice, definitely shaped by these pieces, but ultimately something that�s completely my own.

I haven�t written a novel, or even short stories, in a long, long time. I stopped a couple of years ago to focus on writing for gaming companies. That was fun, and for the most part I enjoyed that experience immensely � but over the past year, I realized that it was time to leave the world of gaming for awhile, and get back into writing fiction. And that�s what I�ve slowly been doing for the past few months, as I wrap up my final gaming projects and obligations once and for all.

I recently started on a horror novel. It�s something I had kicking around for well over a decade, but never quite knew how to write it. Ten years ago, the story was beyond me. Now? I can see it. More importantly, I can see how to create it.

I jumped into the manuscript, which started falling together nicely. Almost too nicely. So I stopped, and took a critical look at it. I realized that in a roundabout way, the story does owe a few things to some of the works of one Mr. Stephen King � IT, for starters. And The Tommyknockers. And The Shining. I got a little uncomfortable.

Whose voice is this?

And that�s when I realized the voice was mine.

My story may be a bit like those novels or the surface, in a superficial way � but it�s definitely my story. Told my way, in my own style, and using my own ideas.

I felt good about that realization. In fact, I felt great.

So since then, I�ve continued to work on the story in earnest. Haven't slept much, but that's okay. I'm back in a creative groove.

I�ll let you know when it starts looking like something like a finished novel.

NaClaMoMo: Looking At "B3: Palace of the Silver Princess"

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:51:36 EST

"Palace of the Silver Princess" is one of those modules better known for its checkered history than for its actual content � which is probably a good thing, since its content isn�t all that memorable. For those unfamiliar with the adventure, �Palace� was originally written by Jean Wells, and featured a now-infamous orange cover. Rumor has it that some of the �objectionable� interior art led to quite a stir in the TSR offices after it was printed � but what isn�t rumor is that virtually all copies of the module were destroyed before ever shipping out to stores. Only a handful of these original orange-covered modules survived, making them an incredibly rare collector�s item. Later on, a green-covered version of the module � now rewritten and co-authored with Tom Moldvay � actually made it to the shelves of gaming stores around the world, with all of the �objectionable� art removed and replaced.

For what it�s worth, I never understood the big deal about the art. The big rumor was that the �objectionable� pieces were very risqu�, but they actually aren�t, or at least they aren�t any more so than artwork featured in stuff like Deities & Demigods or even Vault of the Drow. Wizards of the Coast actually posted the �objectionable� artwork on their website a few years ago, along with a downloadable file of the original "Palace of the Silver Princess". There�s one piece that�s arguably risqu� � but I would venture to guess that a particular piece drawn by Erol Otus that happens to not be very flattering to one Mr. Gary Gygax caused more of a stir than anything else. If there�s a smoking gun as to why the original really got pulped, that would be the one I would point at.

Well, that, and it�s just not a particularly good module.

Both versions of "Palace of the Silver Princess" work with the same basic premise. Unwittingly uncovered by dwarves, a magical ruby known as the Eye of Arik has sent the valley of Haven into utter chaos. In order to save Haven, the player characters must travel to a ruined palace to destroy the Eye of Arik, prevent its evil, god-like owner � Arik of the Hundred Eyes � from escaping a dimensional prison, and save the Princess Argenta.

Apart from the clich�d �save the princess� motif, "Palace of the Silver Princess" departs from many of the other modules of the era in that it pre-supposes the player characters are indeed heroic. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes the DM�s life more difficult if they aren�t. (�Eye of Arik? Evil palace? Not my problem, let�s move on to the next town.�) From the get-go, "Palace of the Silver Princess" � both versions � make certain assumptions about what the players will do, and that�s not a good thing.

As for the rest � well, let�s look individually at each version of �Palace�.

THE ORANGE VERSION.

God, what a mess. The initial levels of �Palace� are structured much like �B1: In Search of the Unknown�, in that it�s assumed the DM wants to take a hand in the creation of the adventure. It�s a true sandbox � rooms are essentially empty, with the DM being told �put a monster in this room� or �put a trap in that room�, with little guidance otherwise. Different, but not necessarily a bad idea, particularly if the adventure�s being run by an experienced DM. However, since the module bills itself as �A Special Instructional Module� intended for new DMs and new players � not a good idea. Basic/Expert D&D came long before the concepts of Challenge Ratings and Monster Levels, so it�s easy for a neophyte to not really get the difference between sticking a single zombie in a room or sticking three ghouls in it, and inadvertently turning the adventure into something next to impossible.

Later on, as we get to the detailed, keyed areas, there�s more problems. The map frequently doesn�t correspond to the adventure as written � for example, there�s no stairs leading to upper areas of the palace where important stuff is located. The encounters are also very disjointed, and read more like a random encounter list than a cohesive dungeon. (In this room, four fire beetles! In the next room, three zombies! In the room after that, a decapus!) I�m all for having monsters in every room, but there at least needs to be a coherent theme connecting them all, and the orange version of �Palace� sadly doesn�t have that. Worse still, the adventure features a slew of new monsters, all of which are incredibly lame. My favorite happens to be the bubble monster that attacks with � yes, you guessed it � bubbles.

The module also commits one of the cardinal sins of adventure design in that in order to achieve one of the big goals of the adventure � destroying the Eye of Arik � it assumes the players will find a number of items to let them commence with the destroying. If they don�t find all the items, though, they�re out of luck. Considering how easy it is to overlook a good number of these items (like a silver harp) � especially since YOU NEED STAIRS to reach some of them � not a good plan. Again, this is something I�ve covered in other NaClaMoMo reviews, but it�s worth mentioning here � having the items should help to destroy the Eye, but it shouldn�t be necessary to actually have them.

THE GREEN VERSION.

Well, now we have stairs, so that�s already an improvement.

Also gone are most of the lame �new� monsters, replaced by more traditional creatures, as well as the open-ended sandbox beginning. It�s clear in comparing the two that Tom Moldvay did a fair bit of overhauling the original module, and trying to make it more true to being �A Special Instructional Module�. Instead, the beginning now reads more like a �Choose Your Own Adventure� story, with very specific options and directions being provided to both the DM and the players. The DM is given read-aloud text for the players, which contains specific choices for the players; depending on which choices the players take, the DM is then provided very specific instructions as to what to do next. It�s a great idea for newbie DMs � the execution, though, isn�t very good. There�s certain lines of read-aloud text that probably shouldn�t be read-aloud (like �The DM should roll 1D6 to see if the party is surprised�), and if you actually follow the logical progression of �If the players do X, then go to Y � if the players then choose C, then go to D� � well, you can wind up in unending circular loops, or dead ends that could frustrate the players. Anyone actually using this as written probably needs to read through it very carefully before running the adventure.

As we get to later areas of the adventure, Tom Moldvay makes the adventure a bit more coherent � certain areas of the original adventure are removed and replaced with new ones, which improve the overall adventure quite a bit � but it�s still very flawed. A lot of the encounters still read like nothing more than a bunch of random encounters, and have little relation to the overall story contained in the module. There�s too much treasure � considering that the players may start as first-level characters, they could easily wind up with close to 10,000 gp and 2 magical weapons apiece by the end of the adventure. And the ending gets very tough. If the DM is awarding XP throughout the course of the adventure and allowing characters to �level up� as the module progresses, that�s not a problem; but if first-level characters are being used, there�s virtually no way to make it to the end of the module if the DM only intends to let the characters level up once the module is completed.

"Palace of the Silver Princess" is an interesting module with some good concepts, but overall, it�s one of the weaker adventures of an era filled with great ones. I wouldn�t even consider running the original version of the adventure � it�s a collector�s item, nothing more � and the later Moldvay revision of the adventure is something I would only consider with a heavy amount of rewriting.

Interesting history? Yes.

Classic module? Alas, no.

********************

Some quick housekeeping notes �

One � yes, it�s December. Yes, NaClaMoMo stands for National Classic Module Month � and it started in November. So sue me. Real life, as always, interfered with the best of intentions. I have two modules left that I intended to cover for NaClaMoMo � �The War Rafts of Kron� and �Starspawn of Volturnus� � and I will do that over the next week or so. So stick around for that, if you think that might catch your fancy.

Two � I�m pleased to note that NaClaMoMo has been embraced by some other writers as well. Rick Maffei chose to make his own personal review of �The Village of Hommlet�, which I enjoyed immensely. He covered several aspects of the adventure that I simply didn�t in my own review, and it�s well worth reading. He also reviewed �The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan�, a module that I like but admittedly know little about � thank you kindly, Rick, for the review! (I remembered the Metamorphosis Alpha nod but little else.) Your high praise for this one means I�ll definitely be digging that one out of storage and giving it a closer look � unless, of course, you still plan on running it at some point!

Though NaClaMoMo was essentially a challenge to myself � namely, to try and write a semi-regular series of articles for the website � if you�ve got your own website or a place on the Internet to write, why not write a little piece on a classic adventure you�ve always liked? You don�t even have to be overly verbose like me. Just a paragraph or so on something you�ve enjoyed, something that�s influenced you to roll dice and kill imaginary monsters, and to have fun with your friends while doing so.

I�d love to hear about the adventures that have inspired you.

NaClaMoMo: Looking At "TS 002: Operation: Rapidstrike!"

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:30:29 EST

HA! You thought all of these modules would either involve dungeons or dragons, didn�t you?

Well � think again.

Top Secret isn�t a great spy game (the criminally under-rated James Bond 007 RPG wins that particular honor), but it�s a very good one. I never played it all that much, at least not in comparison to D&D or some other games, but I enjoyed the hell out of it (along with Gamma World) when I first got into gaming. I first played Top Secret in an adventure that I think was called �Whiteout� that was published in Dragon Magazine � and then, later, I ran and played a few other modules, including one standout called �Operation: Rapidstrike!�.

The rules for Top Secret are a typical example of the TSR games published in the late 1970s and early 1980s � a mishmash of systems and subsystems, some related to one another, some not. Top Secret actually doesn�t hold much resemblance to D&D, apart from its loose usage of �classes� (player characters can belong to one of three espionage bureaus � Investigation, Confiscation, and Assassination). If anything, it�s reminiscent of a more complicated and detailed version of Boot Hill, with a reliance on lots of percentile-based rules, and with a pretty nasty and lethal combat system, especially when it comes to firearms.

The main rules and the early adventures didn�t provide much details for the campaign setting of Top Secret, but that was okay � like most of the games of that era, I think it was kind of expected that DMs (or Administrators, in the case of Top Secret) would be making up their own campaign worlds. About the only thing I found frustrating about the game, then and now, is the relative lack of technology. If you wanted a gadget-filled campaign that would make James Bond envious, Top Secret was not the spy game for you. (Said gadgets only came in later supplements, and only for the revised version of the game, Top Secret S.I.). It�s not necessarily a bad thing � it just means that choices are limited. Any Top Secret adventure is going to run more along the lines of the stripped down �Casino Royale� than the over-the-top �Moonraker�.

And speaking of adventure � this one was my favorite.

Besides being a module that�s just plain fun, �Operation: Rapidstrike!� is a shining example of one of my favorite tools when it comes to writing adventures: the Ticking Clock. Used sparingly, the Ticking Clock is a great way to nudge players in a certain direction without railroading them. It basically means that unless the players do something in a certain timeframe, dire consequences occur. (I also call it the �Or Else� method � you need to do this, or else �)

A badly written Ticking Clock is one that involves black-and-white consequences � do this, or die. Do this, or the bad guys get the atomic bomb and blow up the city. You never want to pin players back to something truly horrible if they fail, especially if the reason they fail is just plain bad luck. Rather, the Ticking Clock should mean that success makes future actions easier, and failure means things become tougher later on, but not impossible. As a tool for the DM/Administrator, the Ticking Clock provides a way to keep the adventure moving, and to keep the players from either preparing for every possible contingency, or from arguing over plans, details, and other minutia that in excess can detract from the adventure. (Don�t get me wrong � I love sitting behind the game master�s screen, watching the players concocting plans! � but when it takes an hour to decide something simple like what door to take, things need to be pushed along, and a Ticking Clock serves nicely for pushing.)

A spy adventure, of course, is a perfect place for a Ticking Clock � and �Operation: Rapidstrike!� features four of them running simultaneously. The players� mission is to rescue a kidnapped scientist, Dr. Felix Fendelmann, who (of course) inadvertently created a deadly drug known as Zucor. The evil Mademoiselle Larreau abducted Fendelmann and forced him to create large supplies of Zucor on a secluded island. The players are expected to rescue Fendelmann, destroy the supplies of Zucor, learn about Mademoiselle Larreau�s evil plans (and possibly neutralize her), and also locate a mole on the island known only as �Gregor�, who has been supplying information to the player character�s agency. It's a tall order, but it's not impossible.

What makes things interesting is how the players choose to approach achieving these goals. Depending on what they choose to do first, later goals may become either easier or more difficult. It might be easier to rescue Fendelmann early on in the adventure, for example, but having to drag him along throughout the adventure might pose some problems, and might cause Larreau�s guards to up the security on the Zucor supply if news of Fendelmann�s rescue spreads across the island. Also, if the players take too long in accomplishing their goals, Larreau and some of her henchmen might leave the island with their supplies of Zucor, causing the players� mission to end in failure.

There aren�t any particular �WOW!� moments that make the module truly stand out, and I suppose that�s my main complaint about the adventure � there�s no signature moment that�s particularly memorable. But it�s very good all the way through, and there aren�t any weak moments in the adventure, either. If anything, I think it�s a better version of �Keep on the Borderlands� in that it seems to be designed to show off the rules of the game and what they can do, so that players in the adventure can better learn how the game works. There�s plenty of fighting, plenty of investigation, plenty of roleplaying opportunities, and plenty of action � depending on what the players choose to do, there�s even a potential chase scene involving a helicopter, which is kind of cool. It might not be the best spy adventure ever written, but it�s action-packed and always fun.

Better yet, it�s solid. Like a lot of the other modules being covered in NaClaMoMo, it hits that great balance between being open-ended and covering all contingencies. The players are free to do a lot of things in �Operation: Rapidstrike!� and the module is written in such a way that the players can do all of them in many different ways, in many different sequences of order � there�s not a lot of railroading going on in the adventure. But it�s also not so open that it�s a total free-for-all, which might be a disaster for somebody new or inexperienced running the module. It's got goals and direction, just not a specific order in which they need to be accomplished. It�s got that nice balance of firm guidelines that are flexible enough to let players make a lot of choices, but still keep the adventure on track towards a grand finale. Not many modules hit that sort of balance, but �Operation: Rapidstrike!� nails it perfectly.

I picked up the boxed set of �Top Secret� about a year ago on eBay on a lark, mostly to see if the game was as good as I remembered, or if my fond memories of the game were colored with nostalgia. It wasn�t quite as good as I remembered � but it was still pretty good nonetheless. And so was �Operation: Rapidstrike!�

Both are great examples of a different age of gaming. Not better, not worse � just different. And fun.

I�d love to run �Operation: Rapidstrike!� at GenCon someday for some friends.

Maybe I�ll see you at the table.

Assuming, of course, you choose to accept the mission.

NaClaMoMo: Looking At "X8: Drums on Fire Mountain"

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:26:14 EST

Put simply, �Drums on Fire Mountain� is probably one of the better adventure modules that you�ve never read, and probably one you might not even know. It's an oft-neglected little gem that deserves some attention.

My first forays into being a DM started with Basic & Expert set D&D. �Palace of the Silver Princess� and �The Lost City� were the first real modules that I successfully ran � and that led to running �Isle of Dread� and �Castle Amber�. All four of these modules ranged from �very good� to �outstanding� in terms of quality (with most headed towards the �outstanding� part of the range), and all were written exceptionally well for a newbie DM like myself. All provided enough guidance to help keep the adventure on track, but a little room for some creative experimenting and freelancing.

I didn�t really pay attention to who wrote each module back then (hey, I was barely a teenager!), so I just started assuming that anything from the �B� series or �X� series would be good. However, after finishing up �Castle Amber�, I moved on to my latest purchase, �Curse of Xanathon�, and found a genuine dud.

�X3: Curse of Xanathon� will not be getting the fullNaClaMoMo treatment, but suffice it to say that it�s a prime example of how not to write a module. It features a lot of heavy-handed, awkward railroading of the players throughout the adventure, and there�s a lot of strange things going on throughout the module that simply defy logic. (As examples, the module relies on players listening to the offhanded remarks of a drunken dwarf in a tavern to propel them towards saving the kingdom; players � who may be of Lawful alignment � are constantly put in situations where they have to kill Lawful town guards; and don�t forget the giant temple of Chaos being built in the center of town that no one seems to care about. And that�s just scratching the surface.) Part of this is due to the module being set first in a city, and then in the wilderness, which lends itself to being fairly open-ended � but how that module handles that open-ended nature is just appalling.

My experience running �Curse of Xanathon� led to the first real bad DMing experience of my time in gaming, as I stubbornly tried to stick to the awkward railroading, and my players tried stubbornly to get off of its ludicrous rails. We never actually finished that one � and after the debacle of �Xanathon�, I avoided the �X� series for awhile, and ran some AD&D modules instead.

It was probably a year or so later when I went to Tiny Tots and found this module.

The cover was what caught my eye (the title certainly didn�t) � and I�ll admit, the little flag in the upper left-hand corner intrigued me. What�s a British module like? I didn�t know, I was curious, so I bought it. And a few weeks later, I ran it.

�Drums on Fire Mountain� did everything right that �Curse of Xanathon� did wrong. Like �Xanathon�, �Drums on Fire Mountain� takes place in an open-ending setting � the entire adventure happens on the island of Teki-nuri-ria. The module starts with a slight amount of railroading, as the player characters are hired by merchants to hunt down and slay the devil-creature KalnaKaa, who has riled up the native kara-kara savages on the island. They are given two specific suggestions as to how to get to the dormant volcano Ni-malowa, where KalnaKaa is thought to be hiding � and then, from there, things get interesting.

The two suggestions for getting to Ni-malowa � using an underground slavers� tunnel, or simply going overland to Ni-malowa from where the ship�s captain wants to land � are given the most detail in the adventure. However, the module�s writers (Graeme Morris & Tom Kirby) do an outstanding job of quickly fleshing out the entire island with a few set encounters and a well-written random encounter guide, in case the players decide to simply explore the island instead of tending to their mission, or decide to approach Ni-malowa in a more unconventional way. (�The slavers� tunnel? It must be a trap! Let�s head to the northern reaches of the volcano instead, they�ll never expect that ��)

It�s an excellent example of adventure balance. Writers only have so many words with which to write an adventure, and in an open-ended setting like an island, it�s hard to balance out the encounters and the adventure against all the possibilities that the players might choose. Spend too many words on the �obvious� choices like the slavers� tunnel, and the DM isn�t given much material to work with when the players choose to ignore the obvious courses of action. Spend too much time fleshing out details not particularly relevant to the main adventure, and more important adventure material and details get short shrift. It�s not an easy thing to balance, but �Drums on Fire Mountain� just about gets it perfect.

The NPCs of �Drums on Fire Mountain� are also well-written and memorable. The kara-kara (who are essentially �tough tribal orcs�) aren�t just mindless monsters � they have reasons for following KalnaKaa, but those reasons disappear if the players manage to accomplish certain things. KalnaKaa�s daughter Maerie makes an interesting foil in the adventure as well � she�s tough, she�s certainly loyal to her father, but she isn�t evil. As for KalnaKaa himself � while he�s a despicably evil sort, he�s more interested in survival than just trying to destroy the player characters, so that switches up some of the encounters in ways the players might not expect. As with some of the other modules covered in NaClaMoMo, �Drums on Fire Mountain� has an abundance of roleplaying opportunities for the player characters, if they choose to take them. The NPCs of �Fire Mountain� are certainly much more than sword fodder.

The module does possess one potentially big, fatal flaw, though. Halfway through the adventure, it�s expected that the player characters will encounter KalnaKaa for the first time, and that KalnaKaa will manage to get away from this encounter, setting up for a rematch and grand finale with him at the end of the module. If things work out that way, it makes for dramatic and awesome adventure � but I�ve learned never to bet against the players in my group. If they manage to take down KalnaKaa the first time around and prevent his escap, it makes for a pretty short adventure, and there�s no contingency plans in the module covering what to do in case the players happen to be a little too successful in combat.

Still, �Drums on Fire Mountain� does far more right than it does wrong. It�s got a lot of distinctive flavor and feel, and really evokes a haunting atmosphere of the strange and the savage. It has a terrific mix of roleplaying opportunities, combat, puzzles, and other sorts of challenges. And it has a lot of options � I doubt two groups would ever play the module the same way, which to me is a sign of a great adventure.

There were two old classics I always wanted to give the �Dungeon Crawl Classics� treatment (much as I gave �Expedition to the Barrier Peaks� the �Dungeon Crawl Classics� treatment with �Talons of the Horned King�.) One was �Castle Amber�. The other was �Drums on Fire Mountain.� At this point, I don�t expect to ever get the chance to do so, but that doesn�t change this undeniable fact � both are exceptional adventures that to me exemplify the way all adventures should be written, whether old-school, new-school, or however the hell you want to classify them. Both have stood the test of time, and in my opinion, are just as good today as they were when they were first released.

But you�d probably heard of �Castle Amber� before, and knew that it was a classic.

�Drums on Fire Mountain� is definitely a classic as well.

And now you�ve heard of it as well.

What Makes A Good Sci-Fi RPG?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:49:36 EST

I don't actually have an answer to this question ... yet. But I thought I'd toss the question out there.

Sci-fi RPGs comprised a lot of the games that I played when I was younger. Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Star Wars, Traveller, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Dr. Who, even Paranoia ... and, of course, RIFTS, which dominated a lot of my youth as a gamer. All very different games, but all very good.

The main difference between sci-fi and fantasy RPGs, I think, is that fantasy games are all basically the same at their core, while sci-fi games can be wildly different. Yes, D&D, Warhammer, and Ars Magica have many differences that make them very distinct from one another in terms of style and play ... but at the end of the end, they're all sword-and-sorcery games taking place in a pseudo-medieval world. The core of all these fantasy games share a lot of common ground.

Sci-fi games, on the other hand, can be wildly different. They can be set on just a single planet (Gamma World) or take place in an entire galaxy (Star Wars). They can feature the planet Earth, or not. The tech levels can be all over the place. The themes can be all over the place. All of the sci-fi RPGs listed above have some common elements, but a lot less so than fantasy games have with each other.

In short ... there's a lot of ways to build a sci-fi RPG.

It looks like I'm going to finally take the plunge and start developing a new sci-fi RPG, one I've been daydreaming about for close to twenty years. Seems as good a time as any to make the dream a reality.

So, for those few of you still reading this blog post, I'll simply ask this:

What makes a good sci-fi RPG?

What makes a bad one?

What haven't you seen yet in a sci-fi game that you'd love to see?

What's your favorite, and why?

To anyone who chooses to answer any or all of these questions ... thank you kindly.

I'm listening, and I appreciate the answers.

NaClaMoMo: Looking At "D3: Vault of the Drow"

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:21:26 EST

I would love to see a well-known �name� author write an adventure module in the style of �Vault of the Drow�, and have it published by one of the big guns in publishing.

I would bet almost any amount of money that it would be utterly murdered by critics, and by a lot of gamers, including a few purporting to be old-school grognards, and dismissed as something completely terrible.

Which is a shame � because �Vault of the Drow� is a terrific module.

It�s also an interesting glimpse into what TSR thought modules could be � and possibly should be � back in the earlier days of published adventures.

My own experience with �Vault of the Drow� goes back a long way. It was part of the first true campaign that I ever played in. That particular game, as I recall, started with �The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh�, continued through with �Danger at Dunwater� and �The Final Enemy�, went on to one or two other modules that I sadly can�t remember, and then went to the fabled big guns: the Giants series (G1-2-3), followed by D1-2 �Descent Into the Depths of the Earth�, D3 �Vault of the Drow�, and then got capped with �Queen of the Demonweb Pits�. It was epic, epic stuff. Taking lowly characters from humble beginnings in Saltmarsh to taking on the likes of Lolth was really cool, and left a mark on me as a young kid that probably changed me from �casual gamer� to �lifetime gamer�.

I remembered playing �Vault of the Drow� at that time quite specifically, as it was one of the high points of that campaign. Travelling through the Underdark to the sinister drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu, surviving as much due to our wits as due to our spells and our swords � it had a lot of memorable encounters, and was brutally tough. I think my sister Laura and I were the only two who made it through �Vault� without needing a resurrection spell in one form or another. Even at the time, though, I remembered looking at that thin module, which we played for what seemed like weeks on end, and thinking � �man, the module really contains that much adventure?�

When we finally finished the campaign, I dug my pastel-covered copy of �Vault� out of my collection � I�d deliberately not read it, since I acquired my fabled $5 box o� treasure in the middle of this campaign � and finally read it. Yep, �Vault� did indeed contain that much adventure � but not in the way you might think.

�Vault of the Drow� is a prime example of a sandbox adventure. There�s not even much in terms of plot hooks to get players moving towards Erelhei-Cinlu and the mad, terrifying places surrounding the city. In theory, the drow were responsible for inciting the giant attacks in the �Against the Giants� modules (led by the drow priestess Eclavdra), so the player characters might be seeking vengeance, or more information about the drow plot � but basically, it boils down to �drow are evil, and evil must be punished�. There�s no real compelling reason for the characters to travel there, apart from they wish to seek treasure and adventure � and of those options, �Vault� has plenty of both.

Once the players are headed towards Erelhei-Cinlu, there�s a few set encounters that are really cool (particularly one involving a succubus and a drow vampire, which I paid tribute to in �Crypt of the Devil-Lich�), but most of the adventure is random encounters, and whatever the DM wants to throw at the players. Gary Gygax � who wrote �Vault� � provides a lot of suggestions as to what these encounters might be, and why the players would encounter a wide variety of horrible monsters, but ultimately leaves the final details in the DM�s hands. And stat blocks for these monsters, of which there are literally dozens? Fuhgeddaboudit. There are no stats blocks at all for those legions of umber hulks, trolls, ghouls, kuo-toa, bugbears, troglodytes, purple worms, and the like anywhere in the module. If there were stat blocks, they'd easily quadruple the size of the module. Be prepared to flip through a lot of Monster Manual pages and do a lot of prepping if you ever run this module. (And there�s plenty of encounters where drow warriors are led by a 6th-level drow priestess � think you can find stats for a 6th-level drow priestess anywhere in the adventure? Think again.)

Some might call this sloppy adventure design. It�s not, as far as I�m concerned. From reading �Vault�, it�s quite apparent that Gary Gygax believed that most modules should provide DMs with some tools for encounters, a basic plot for an adventure � and then, everything would be customized and tweaked by each individual DM running the module. Specifics of exactly how everything worked in the adventure didn�t matter, as Gary assumed the DM would take care of those specifics. As Gary himself wrote in the introduction to �Vault� �

This module is ideal for elaboration and extensive development by the Dungeon Master. The subject matter deserves this, and it should be done by you in order to put personality and finishing touches into a set-piece scenario which lacks the individuality particular to your campaign.

The city of Erelhei-Cinlu itself follows these same loose guidelines � there�s a few set encounters, including the finale of the module, but for the most part, it�s all suggestions, random encounters, some helpful suggestions as to the politics and Machiavellian plotting going on in the city � but again, it�s definitely not laid out in concrete fashion, and players aren�t expected to simply go from point A to point B. Part of this, I think, is just due to the inherent nature of the module � railroading the players through a hostile city filled with drow would border on the ludicrous � but part of this is again due to Gary Gygax�s expectation that the DM will be improvising during the adventure. Note that word: expectation. It�s not �well, the DM might improvise�, it�s �the DM will improvise�.

The module does contain some of the patented Gygax-penned idiosyncrasies of high-level adventures that I hate, where some arbitrary decisions get made for no good reason at all. For example, teleporting in Erelhei-Cinlu simply doesn�t work. Why? Presumably because it can fuck up the adventure and make the DMs� life miserable. Also, if the player characters start a extended fight in the Black Tower that leads to the Vault, it�s specifically written in the module that enough drow reinforcements eventually show up to make the battle hopeless, and all the player characters die (finis, according to Gary). I happen to hate stuff like this � if I�ve played a magic-user since 1st-level and have earned the right to cast a teleport spell, I want to be able to cast the spell, and not just have the module handwave its use and dismiss it. And for �well, the characters will just lose the battle� � maybe Gary knew different players than I did, but I�d never bet against the guys in my gaming group, no matter how impossible the odds. I�d rather play something like that out and wind up with the Total Party Kill than simply make assumptions.

There�s also some weird game balance issues in the adventure. For example, one encounter has the player characters facing off against zombies � considering the characters are supposed to at minimum be 10th-level at the start of the adventure, it�s a pushover fight that serves no purpose. At the other end of the spectrum, there�s the lower levels of the Fane of Lolth, which are just damn brutal, with 9th- and 10th-level drow sorceresses, warriors, and clerics loaded with powerful magic items wandering all over the place, providing some incredibly tough encounters even for a powerful adventuring party. These issues don�t very occur often during the adventure, but they do occur enough to have a DM scratching his or her head sometimes in bewilderment.

�Vault of the Drow� is actually much less of a pure adventure than it is a mini-campaign. I happen to really love the campaign aspects presented by Gary Gygax throughout the course of the module, and it�s here where �Vault� just shines. Erelhei-Cinlu is presented as a foul city filled with danger and decadence (I�m quite sure the Dreaming City of Immyr served as excellent inspiration for it), and quite a bit of the module is carefully dedicated to fleshing it out. In particular, the various drow houses and the intrigue involving those houses are developed nicely, making for a lot of excellent roleplaying opportunities. Yes � roleplaying opportunities. Like a lot of the early modules, the idea that �Vault� is simply a hackfest where all monsters are meant to be killed is something of a myth. It certainly can be played that way, but in the hands of the right DM and gaming group, it�s a fantastic adventure filled with enormous opportunities for pure roleplaying.

So � is it a good module?

I would say yes. In fact, I would venture to say it�s a great one � provided you�re a DM who likes to tinker with adventures, and who likes to improvise. But, to be honest, that�s always been my style of running adventures.

Modern modules, I think, took a cue from 3.5 and decided to explain how every last detail in an adventure could and should work. They�re largely written from the perspective of making sure a DM doesn�t ever need to improvise anything. They�re written instead with the idea that a DM certainly can improvise if he or she wants to � but that shouldn�t ever be a necessity. I certainly understand that sentiment � and can appreciate it, to some degree � but I think something gets lost when DMs don�t ever need to improvise on a large scale. Some of my better adventures came from improvising, and it�s a skill that gets better the more and more it gets used. When you never use it, you lose it as a tool in the proverbial storytelling arsenal.

Myself, I�d like to see more adventures head back in the direction of �Vault�, encouraging improvisation, and not mapping out every last bloody detail of an adventure to the nth degree. There�s no way you could write out a module like �Vault of the Drow� today in a modern style without it being some 256-page monstrosity with an additional 16 pages of maps, endless numbers of handouts, and an index from hell. It�s not a bad thing, mind you (I�d love to write that aforementioned 256-page monstrosity!), but it is different, and I�m not sure the way adventures are written in this modern style is necessarily �better� than the way modules like �Vault of the Drow� were written thirty-odd years ago.

Gary Gygax wrote a terrific, memorable module in just 28 pages.

It�s definitely worth a look, just to see a different gaming philosophy at work.

That � and drow � at least those penned by Gary Gygax � are awesomely evil.

That � and it�s just a damn good adventure.

NaClaMoMo: Looking At "T1: The Village of Hommlet"

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:54:34 EST

�Keep on the Borderlands� and �The Village of Hommlet� are probably the two best-known introductory modules for the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Both are good, but for very different reasons.

�Keep on the Borderlands� is an outstanding introduction for novice players of the game, so they can learn exactly how the game works. By adventuring through the Caves of Chaos, players go through a trial by fire of how combat works, how magic works, how undead creatures may be turned, how secret doors may be found and how traps may be disarmed � it�s a veritable showcase of the assorted rules of the game. By the time the characters are busy slaughtering ogres or gnolls, even the newest player to the game should have a reasonable understanding of the rules of the game.

But while it teaches the rules in admirable fashion, �Keep on the Borderlands� is a very perfunctory adventure. The story�s simple and flat, and as a cohesive adventure - rather than a bunch of combat encounters strung loosely together - it doesn't really work. It showcases the rules, but little else. In short, while it helps players learn how to play the game, it rarely shows them what makes the game great, or what a roleplaying game has to offer above and beyond combat.

�Village of Hommlet� is the module that shows players � and DMs � why Dungeons & Dragons is a terrific game.

I originally picked up the pastel cover version of �Village of Hommlet� well over twenty years ago, in a great $5 acquisition coupe from Sears, of all places. A large cardboard box marked �CLEARANCE - $1� netted a large number of dust-covered pastel covered AD&D modules, including �Hommlet�, �Vault of the Drow�, and �The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan �, among others; the boxed sets of �Boot Hill� and �Gamma World�, and a giant load of AD&D character sheets that I still have somewhere in storage! (I think Sears had probably been trying to get rid of the box and its contents for years by the time I found it; some kindly sales associate saw me with my $5 bill agonizing over what to buy for the better part of an hour and just let me have the whole thing, which still ranks as uber-nice in my book, and still makes me think of Sears as a FLGS.)

I got a lot of use out of all the various games and adventures that were in that box � possibly the best $5 I ever spent, to be honest � but perhaps the one that gave me the most mileage out of everything it held was �Village of Hommlet�. That became the first adventure I ever ran as a DM, and I would go on to run it probably a dozen more times for various people over the following decade or so. It became the standard adventure that I used to introduced new players to D&D. It�s a short, sweet adventure that allows first-time gamers to get a great feel for the game � both in terms of understanding the rules, and in understanding what a roleplaying game can offer that other games can�t.

Clocking in at just about 16 pages (with an additional 4 pages of maps), �Village of Hommlet� actually doesn�t feature a whole lot of, well, dungeon. The first 12 pages of the adventure are specifically dedicated to the eponymous village itself, as well as its colorful inhabitants. While a sleepy sort of place, there�s certainly a lot to do there, and a lot to learn � particularly about the strange ruined moathouse just past the edge of the village. There�s quite a bit of intrigue going on as well � for example, the rising animosity between the followers of the Old Faith and the followers St. Cuthbert and the Old Faith � and depending on how much the players care to investigate the village, they might learn a fair bit about the forces of Elemental Evil returning to Hommlet. Gary Gygax, who wrote �Village of Hommlet�, manages to do this with a remarkable economy of words, adding plenty of optional layers to the adventure that can add a lot to a campaign if used, but aren�t a necessity in order to make the adventure playable. Do the player characters need to know that the herdsman Black Jay gets along with elves? (Not really.) Do they need to know that the wagon teamsters mistrust Rannos Davl, one of the local traders. (Again, not really, but if they do, it�ll actually be helpful). These sorts of little details can potentially make the adventure a lot more interesting without intruding too much on what the players choose to do.

Hommlet also has a lot of personality, which I really like. There�s places like the Inn of the Welcome Wench, where thirsty adventurers can purchase a pint of Sundish lilac wine for the princely sum of 5 electrum pieces. There�s Burne and Rufus, the adventurers that live in the tower. Basically, there�s lots of non-player characters and other hooks that can get the players involved in a whole bunch of intrigue and stories, some related to the moathouse, some not. This is where the adventure really shines, in my opinion, and to an extent, I think it shoots down the notion that Gray Gygax saw D&D more as a tactical game than as an opportunity to roleplay characters. �Village of Hommlet� is crammed full of roleplaying opportunities, all of them fun, and all of them terrific.

Eventually, though, the adventure winds its way to the aforementioned strange ruined moathouse � a former outpost for the Temple of Elemental Evil. There�s only four pages dedicated to adventuring in the moathouse, but they�re solid. It�s an organic dungeon � everything makes sense, nothing seems strangely out of place � and it�s damn deadly. Those unfamiliar with old-school D&D tactics would be surprised by how nasty some of the creatures are in the dungeon (the giant crayfish in particular!), especially considering that the adventure is designed for 1st-level characters. However, it fits the assumptions of how the game worked at the time it was written � players were expected to retreat at times, and even to head back towards Hommlet to get additional firepower in the form of henchmen and hirelings. All things considered, it�s great stuff.

I have only three major criticisms of the module. One, it�s short. That�s not necessarily a bad thing, but depending on what the players� characters choose to do in Hommlet, they will probably blow through the entire module in a single gaming session, and most definitely in two. Most modules � even those written back then! � provide a little more bang for the buck than that.

Two � well, once you get through the moathouse � then what? The adventure repeatedly refers to the �sequel� adventure � �T2: The Temple of Elemental Evil� � which, sadly, was never published. Quite a bit of the adventure is dedicated to setting up an adventure that would not arrive for quite some time, and then it would eventually come in the form of the bloated and inferior T1-4: The Temple of Elemental Evil. It even references NPCs and story elements that the DM might need, to the point that the adventure states that the DM should refer to the stats for the cleric Y�Dey in �T2: The Temple of Elemental Evil�! Unintentionally, it becomes a great campaign starter and an awesome sandbox in which to set that campaign � but considering that�s not the intent that�s presented, it�s more than a little odd.

(My understanding is that elements of Gary Gygax�s original concept for T2: The Temple of Elemental Evil got cannibalized and used in other modules like Queen of the Demonweb Pits, so by the time it came to finally write �Temple�, Gary wrote up a new outline and gave it to Frank Mentzer to properly flesh out.) Not a huge deal, but it required the DM to figure out where next to take the players and the adventure. Now, in 2009, I would consider this a plus, not a minus � but when I was a newbie DM in 1985 trying to run adventures for the first time, it was definitely a minus.

Three � the treasure�s a bit excessive. If the players successfully sweep through the moathouse, they can easily come up with close to 30,000 gp in treasure, plus some pretty decent magic items � that�s a hell of a lot for 1st-level characters! Were I to run it today, I�d definitely scale it down.

But overall, a terrific module, and definitely a classic.

Wizards of the Coast recently re-created a 4E version of �Village of Hommlet� as part of its DM Rewards program. I have to say, I�m kind of intrigued by this. The original �Village� presents Hommlet as a lonely outpost near a dangerous place, which is essentially the �points of light� philosophy advocated by 4E. It seems a good fit for many 4E concepts, and if I ever manage to get my hands on a copy of it, I�d love to run it.

For that matter, I�d love to run the original again, in all its glory. Re-reading it for this review was like running into an old friend.

And there�s no better way to spend time with a friend than rolling some dice and playing some games.

Take a visit to Hommlet. You�ll enjoy it, I promise.

RIFTS: The Lost Years

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:33:06 EST

From out of the archives (quite literally) �

I spent part of last night digging through some old stuff. I needed to get a recently-retired computer out of mothballs in order to get some files off of its hard drive, and I wanted to look for a couple of older game modules for some potential reviews.

While digging through the boxes, I found this.

�Demon Heart Falling�, featuring a cover drawn by my good friend Eric, was one of two sourcebooks I wrote for the RIFTS roleplaying game for Palladium Books. This was all part of my Stupid And Grand Plan nearly fifteen years ago to break into the roleplaying game industry � and arguably, it worked, although not nearly in the way I originally intended way back then.

Both �Demon Heart Falling� and �The Banwok Hunters�, which I wrote from beginning to end and then submitted to Palladium, originally got greenlighted, went through some considerable development for well over two years � and then, abruptly, got cancelled. It�s not worth rehashing the whole story again, but suffice it to say that it was a very disheartening experience, one that helped to take me out of gaming for a couple of years. My home-published original copies of �Demon Heart Falling� and �The Banwok Hunters� went into cardboard boxes, where they stayed and collected dust for a very long time. I threw away the original manuscripts, which I wrote by hand in a couple of notebooks, as well as the revised manuscripts (which were written in WordPerfect 5.1 and saved to 3.5� disks).

A couple of moves from parents' house to apartment to apartment to own house later, and I stumbled across �The Banwok Hunters� again a few years ago. Oddly enough, I didn�t find �Demon Heart Falling�, which I could�ve sworn was placed with its partner in crime. I�d originally printed maybe six copies of each book in the spring of 1995 at the University of Notre Dame copy center, and given them away to the folks in my gaming group. None of them had copies of either book anymore (as with me, time and moves had thinned quite a lot of gaming collections!), so I�d assumed that �Demon Heart Falling� was just a memory of the gaming table.

Well, not anymore.

I spent part of last evening skimming through it, reading over a couple of sections, particularly a few I�d completely forgotten about. I�ll be honest � it�s not that great. Parts of it don�t seem particularly original to me, parts are badly written, a couple of lines made me cringe, and there were one or two facepalm inducing-moments that made me go �� man, what were you thinking?�

That being said � I enjoyed �Demon Heart Falling� a bit more than I expected. At least to me, there�s a certain raw, unbridled enthusiasm running through its pages that I found surprisingly good. �Demon Heart Falling� has this jittery, unfocused energy that�s pretty decent � it just needs the polish and the focused discipline of a more experienced writer to become, well, good.

But the 36-year old writer reading the work of the 22-year old author envies the passion of his younger self. I remember writing those books in the wee hours of the morning at the Notre Dame computer labs, fueled on little more than caffeine and mad dreams. I still write because I love it so damn much, but I haven�t written anything with that much raw passion since � well, since then.

If I could recapture that energy, that excitement, that passion again � and then combine that with the experience and the focus I�ve developed over the years � well, that would be awesome indeed.

Need to work on that, and to figure out how to make that happen.

In the meantime, I also spent part of last night reviewing Palladium�s byzantine policy regarding online materials. After putting together a quick author�s note and compliance notice, I�ve scanned the original book � warts and all, no edits or touch-ups, despite how badly I�d love to change some things � and posted it for your perusal. You can download a PDF file of the book by clicking on the cover image on the lefthand side of your screen, or by just clicking: HERE. For those of you morbidly curious about such things, you can see what my writing (and gaming style) was like in my halcyon days of yore; if you�re a RIFTS fan stumbling across this, hopefully you can find a few decent ideas to pry out of its pages and incorporate into your own game.

So, enjoy.

Last note � after putting down my copy of �Demon Heart Falling� last night, I had the itch to run a game much like the ones I used to run again. Not necessarily RIFTS, per se � but something with that over-the-top enthusiasm with which I used to run my games. CthulhuTech, perhaps. Or Rogue Trader. Or � hell, yes, even RIFTS.

And that�s what a good gaming book should do. Make you want to play.

Maybe �Demon Heart Falling� isn�t quite that bad after all.

Celebrating Adventure in NaClaMoMo

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:38:00 EST

For no other reason apart from I Thought It Was A Good Idea, I am declaring November to be NaClaMoMo � National Classic Module Month. Time to take a good look at all those classic adventure modules that we remember fondly from days of yore, and to examine exactly what made them �classic� in the first place. Time to perhaps find a neglected gem or two that got lost in the shuffle of history � or, perhaps, to give adventures once thought �great� via the courtesy of nostalgic memories a more honest assessment. Regardless, I�ve always thought the best way to look towards the future is to first know where you�ve been, and looking back at old adventures has proven a phenomenal aid to me in writing new ones.

In the process of looking back at the old classics, I�m hoping to uncover exactly what made some adventures work, find reasons why others didn�t � and, perhaps more importantly, define the elements that made them �classic�. There�s some pervading assumptions about the classic adventures that, well, are just wrong. Such as:

1. Classic modules are all hack-and-slash meat grinder death traps. Not true. A few are, but most aren�t, including some of the more notorious adventures. That�s not to say that they aren�t deadly � but the high death tolls attributed to these adventures come down more to battles of wits, rather than battles with swords. �Tomb of Horrors�, for example, features just a handful of deadly monsters, and can easily be scaled down for lower-level characters. Most of its more vicious encounters are foiled easily enough if the players are both cautious and clever, and have little to do with how many hit points your character has.

The classics also feature an abundance of roleplaying opportunities. Many of the initial encounters in Castle Amber and Dwellers of the Forbidden City, for example, can be bypassed without combat, and actually encourage interaction with monsters and NPCs. Far from being �monsters just meant to be killed�, these encounters are intended to shift around the entire story of the adventures depending on how the characters interact with the denizens of these adventures. Can they be played in a simple hack-and-slash style? Absolutely. But most of the adventures are much more nuanced than that, and rarely receive the credit they deserve for having this depth.

2. Classic modules intend for characters to be heroes that save the day. Not true. In fact, it�s usually pretty rare for modules to push the player characters into doing anything, well, heroic. If they do, it�s usually a side plot that comes later in the adventure. Most classic modules work instead under the premise that the characters are either going to strange and wondrous places simply for the sake of adventure, or for the fortune and glory that awaits them. (A more cynical way of looking at it is to say the characters just want to loot the dungeon.)

Take all four of the S Series modules (Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth). If you examine the storylines of each of these modules, you find that while some dangerous evils lurk in each dungeon (and �Barrier Peaks� doesn�t even really have evil, just danger) � none of them pose a threat to anything in Greyhawk. They�re all akin to a rattlesnake sleeping on a rock. Walk past the snake, you�ll be fine. Poke it with a stick, though � and you�re playing with danger. And entering these dungeons is like poking them with a stick.

But the characters don�t save the world, or the kingdom, or even the princess at the end of these modules. Rather, they�ve usually got tales of some marvelous adventures and fights, some really cool treasure � and that�s it. The early classic modules owe a lot more to the �heroics� of Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser or Conan than to Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring. The idea of being a hero saving something is the exception rather than the rule of most early modules.

So, in this spirit of delving into the classics, I�ll be reviewing a few this month. The first of these will be �T1: Village of Hommlet�, which will be headed your way later this week, followed by �X8: Drums on Fire Mountain� � and then, to be honest, it�s kind of up to you, gentle reader.

There�s a few other modules I have in mind to review, and if no one offers any requests or suggestions, I�ll certainly go ahead with them. But if there�s something you�d like me to look at, feel free to offer a suggestion. My collection of classic modules is pretty extensive; if I�ve got a module you�d like reviewed on hand, I�ll take a look at it.

As a heads-up, the ones I definitely won�t be looking at for purposes of review are as follows: �Expedition to the Barrier Peaks�, "Dwellers of the Forbidden City", and �Castle Amber� (which I�ve talked about in bits and pieces over the years); �The Lost City� (which I�ve talked about a lot in recent months); and �Tomb of Horrors� (which Rick Maffei has already discussed on his blog far more eloquently than I could). Apart from that, pretty much anything is fair game. I�d planned on looking mostly at 1st edition AD&D and Basic/Expert set D&D adventures, but if there�s a 2nd Edition AD&D adventure you�d like to see discussed, or even something a little more off-kilter than that, go for it.

Let NaClaMoMo begin!

Talk of Cthulhu

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:48:38 EDT

Follow-up to the last post �

About a week ago, the good folks at All Games Considered interviewed Ken Hart and myself about a wide variety of Cthulhu-gaming topics � specifically, the Age of Cthulhu line of adventures from Goodman Games, and my own upcoming Age of Cthulhu adventure, �Shadows of Leningrad�.

The interview is now up on the All Games Considered site and can be found: HERE.

I have to say that I find these sorts of things weird. Interviews, signings � these aren�t things I ever expected to do in my life. So when they happen, I find them strange. And a little uncomfortable � but flattering. The fact that people take interest in the things I write is always a little surprising to me.

Hopefully I don�t come across as a total babbling moron during the interview. If I do, my apologies. I meant to convey something slightly better than that. And if you didn�t learn too much about the adventure � again, my apologies. I tried to give a sense of what the adventure was about without giving too much of its mysteries and intrigue away, and in hindsight, I don�t think I did the best job of that.

Anyway � hope you�re entertained by the podcast.

And I�ll be talking more about �Shadows� in the weeks and months to come.

Heeding the Call (of Cthulhu)

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:04:44 EDT

Horror has been an integral part of my gaming experience for a long, long time.

I don�t think horror is a theme that�s particularly easy to mix into gaming, particularly fantasy gaming. A lot of horror�s power comes from fear � fear of the unknown, fear of being powerless, and fear of the gruesome or macabre. For an ordinary person, just wandering through a labyrinth filled with monsters would be a horror-filled experience indeed.

But it�s often hard to inject that fear into the context of a roleplaying game. For example, a mighty paladin, clad in platemail armor and wielding a magical vorpal sword � well, he�s probably not going to fear all that much in a dungeon. To me, when it�s successful, horror in gaming is so much more about setting mood and atmosphere than about attempts to physically frighten a character (or a player). Some of the most horrifying moments I�ve experienced in games turn out to be simple betrayals, or the corruption of innocent souls, rather than just the appearance of a powerful demilich or vampire.

My first real experience with horror in gaming came with a module called I6: Ravenloft. I ran it for some friends in seventh or eighth grade for a couple of friends. We completed the module in a single session � granted, it was a Mountain Dew and cheese doodle fueled session that lasted for almost three days straight and involved little to no sleep! I don�t think that module wandered particularly far away from the typical modules like �The Lost City� and �Ghost Tower of Inverness� that I was running at the time � the style was still mostly find monsters, hack monsters, repeat. However, I6: Ravenloft introduced a lot of interesting NPCs � in particular, the villain, Count Strahd von Zarovich � which added a lot of dimension to the adventure, and encouraged a lot of roleplaying interactions. It was also well-written enough to inject a lot of good moments of horror into the game without much work needed for a then-inexperienced DM like myself. Ravenloft was a solid, entertaining module, and between that and �The Lost City�, I started down a road to playing and running a lot of great games over the next several years.

I didn�t touch anything particularly horror-related, though, until a few years later when my friend Tony bought the then-new Ravenloft boxed campaign setting, and started running some original adventures using it. It was a fun campaign � I played a dwarven barbarian, who I would resurrect in a fashion many years later for a much different 4E campaign � but in retrospect, it wasn�t particularly horrifying. Our characters encountered a lot of grim terrors, to be sure, and we went through many harrowing adventures involving Doctor Victor Mordenheim and his creations, but there was never a sense of fear or terror in those games. Torhak (my dwarf) never was particularly afraid of what he faced, nor was he ever forced to make the tough choices involved in stories of tragic horror. In retrospect, I think it was merely a matter of expecting the game system to inject all of the atmosphere and mood of horror into the game, and not better shaping the stories and the adventures to bring out that atmosphere and mood. It was a learning experience, even though I don�t think any of us realized it at the time.

However, what we did realize back then was that Ravenloft wasn�t doing what we wanted � namely, to give us a game about horror. So, on a trip to the Game Room around that time, I discovered this book �

� which led to a grand experience in my years of gaming, which I�m still enjoying today.

Call of Cthulhu is one of my favorite games of all time. Easy to play, easy to run, drenched in the sinister horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos established by H.P. Lovecraft � in other words, WIN.

One of the interesting things I�ve noticed about Call of Cthulhu over the years is how it seems to polarize gamers. Most gamers love CoC, or hate it. There�s no in-between. (I�ve also noticed that those in the �love� crowd � myself included � tend to be writers.) The split, I think, tends to run along the lines of whether you make characters based solely on concept, or if you like to optimize characters to a degree � and to what degree you like to �win� in a roleplaying game. There�s really no discernable difference between the various types of Call of Cthulhu characters � there�s no sort of min-maxing that will make one character clearly better than another. Yes, some characters might choose to learn spells, others might focus on skills involving combat � but at the end of the day, when that shoggoth comes lumbering out of the shadows, both characters are in deep, deep trouble and headed for some SAN loss.

If you�re looking for standard sorts of �win� in a RPG � �I want to save the day�, or �I want to beat up the monsters�, or �I want to advance my character so he can do some really cool things� � Call of Cthulhu is probably not the game for you. Characters usually don�t survive long enough to evolve into anything remotely powerful, and, well � to use one of the general rules of thumb generated at my gaming table, if you need to draw a gun, you�re probably already dead.

So why play?

Well, I play Call of Cthulhu because I enjoy the atmosphere, and the mood. If you�re a horror fan, it�s a wonderful game. I play because it�s a fantastic environment in which to roleplay interesting characters � pitting ordinary characters against extraordinary foes throws standard D&D tactics straight out the window, and usually brings about a fair amount of innovative game play. I play because of the investigative nature of the adventures � with combat usually resulting in dire consequences, it�s a game where there�s a premium on investigation, and using your wits. And, oddly enough � I play because I enjoy the struggle. I know whatever character I�m going to play is eventually doomed to die, or at least be locked in a padded cell as a raving lunatic � but there�s a lot of fun to had in living to see another day, to survive the horrors unleashed by the Cthulhu Mythos, and to see how long a character can beat the odds and succeed.

Our games began with two of the classic Call of Cthulhu adventures produced by Chaosium � �Horror on the Orient Express� and "The Trail of Tsathogghua" � and then slowly turned towards homebrewed adventures, which we set in more traditional Lovecraftian settings like Dunwich and Innsmouth. One of the nice by-products of the game was that we used a rotating Keeper system � one week, someone would dream up an adventure and run it as Keeper; the next time we played, someone else would take the honors; and so on. I always liked that system at the gaming table. It allowed a bunch of players who normally weren�t accustomed to running a game � or writing an adventure � to try their hand at seeing what the other side of the game screen might be like. It also took a lot of pressure off of the �regulars� who ran games, like myself � it�s much easier to write a one-shot adventure like the ones I wrote for Call of Cthulhu than multiple connected adventures for an ongoing campaign. More variety, more chances to both run and play adventures � it�s one of the reasons that Call of Cthulhu still resonates strongly as a great memory of my earlier days of gaming.

There were many, many fun moments in those long-ago adventures. I remember playing a cowardly scholar who eventually became so paranoid about occult books that he took to carry a can of gasoline around with him wherever he went � and would set books on fire whenever they were found, whether they contained secrets of the occult or not. (This strategy later backfired when he stumbled across a ghoul in a graveyard playing with a crate filled with potato masher grenades. Don�t ask.) As with most of those games, though, they were played for awhile, we enjoyed the hell of them while they lasted, and then we moved on to other games, or other things.

Unlike other many games, though, we still occasionally heed the Call of Cthulhu. Every year or so, a bunch of us still get together to play the game. I don�t know if it�s because the game lends itself to the one-shot format, or because there�s no long-term expectation of character development, or just the simple love of horror and the works of Lovecraft � but whatever the reason may be, it�s easy to gather some of these old friends together for a single night of exploring the Cthulhu Mythos, and looking around for the terrors that lurk in the dark.

And, of course, dying. Or going mad.

It�s fun.

I was asked this earlier year by the good folks at Goodman Games to write a horror adventure for their �Age of Cthulhu� line. Obviously, I jumped at the chance to write it. �Shadows of Leningrad� will probably be out sometime early next year, and while the writing of that adventure deserves its own post, suffice it to say it was one of the most fun � and challenging � adventures I�ve ever written. Researching all the historical details, trying to set up the appropriate mood and atmosphere, setting up encounters where fighting is only meant as a last resort � it�s very different that the other adventure modules I�ve written in recent years.

Hopefully, it works for all Call of Cthulhu fans, and they enjoy it.

In the meantime, in the spirit of the Halloween season, I intend to play the game some more, and enjoy the horror and the madness.

If you�re a gaming fan � and a horror fan � I encourage you to do the same. It�s a phenomenal game.

Here�s hoping you make your Sanity checks, though!

Exalted Renaissance

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:17:25 EDT

I played in my first game of Exalted last night.

And, I�ll admit, much to my surprise � it was a blast.

My friend John has been trying to get me to run Exalted for years. He really liked the game, and wanted to play it, as did a few other players in my gaming group. However, for the past few years, I�ve pretty much been the guy running all the games for my group. I haven�t been �just a player� for quite awhile. So games that we play have largely depended on whether or not I want to run them � and I haven�t wanted to run Exalted.

To be honest, I�m not a huge fan of the various games published by White Wolf. I know this surprises a lot of gamers who know me, as I tend to like games that favor story over combat, flavor over mechanics � and that�s right in line with the White Wolf games like Exalted, or Vampire, or Mage. However, I like to tell my own stories. White Wolf�s games are usually drenched in an established metaplot, and unless that metaplot really grabs my interest, I don�t like running those sorts of games. I don�t like ripping out sections of metaplot and tweaking others to fit what I want to do. Give me a setting, give me a sense of what the game is like � but don�t tell me what�s going on. I want to figure that out for myself.

Exalted takes the �metaplot� a little further in that the game story intertwines with the game mechanics, which is something I never liked. Exalted, put simply, is sort of an anime-inspired superheroic/martial arts game set in a �lost age� of humanity. A lot of the character powers � or charms � are connected to things in the background story of the game, and virtually all of them have names like Graceful Crane Stance or Seven Shadow Evasion. Which is cool, except you can�t tell what the charms do by just looking at their names (Seven Shadow Evasion, for example, boils down to �automatic dodge�), and it makes it even harder to throw away the massive metaplot and backstory built into Exalted, and to try and create something a little more original instead.

(Side note: D&D 4E kind of adopted this annoying habit of giving powers names that don't clearly describe what the powers actually do as well, much to my irritation.)

Exalted also features a lot of game design features that I don�t like. For a game that�s really supposed to be story-driven, there�s an awful lot of math and die-rolling. Which is fine, except in my opinion there�s plenty of instances where the rules are either badly constructed or just broken. (Google �Exalted - Twilight Essence Reactor� for a fantastic example of broken rules, if you�re interested.) Yes, you can houserule away the rules you don�t like, but I�m a lot more forgiving of houseruling simple systems than complex ones, and Exalted � to me � just seems unnecessarily complicated. The game designer in me looks at the concept of the game, looks at the rules, and just believes there�s a simpler way to approach the concept, and some of the rules for Exalted seem to be complex just for the sake of being complex.

So, Exalted became this thing at the gaming table that got brought up every few months.

Hey, Mike, you should try running Exalted!

Umm � no.

Things went on like this for awhile, until something unexpected happened.

Eric � one of the gamers in my group � offered to run Exalted.

To those of you who�ve read this blog and its predecessor over the years, Eric ran most of the great AD&D campaigns of my misspent youth. Two of his campaigns � Tunnelworld, and his AD&D flavored version of Renaissance-era Paris � stand out as the best games in which I�ve ever played. I�m not exaggerating when I say those games � and Eric � shaped my life. Those were the games that inspired me to write my own campaigns, and to became a freelancer and writer in the gaming industry. The adventures and sourcebooks I�ve written are my own attempt to capture but a fraction of the excitement, wonder, and pure awesomeness that I discovered week in and week out of Eric�s games. With all due respect to the many wonderful people who have been kind enough to run the games I�ve played in over the years - and most of those folks are damn good - Eric is the best game master I've ever met.

Eric hadn�t run a game in many, many years. So the offer was both exciting and a little surprising � and for me, a little frustrating. Because Exalted still hadn�t managed to grab my interest, either as a Storyteller or as a player. In a selfish sense, I was happy as hell that Eric wanted to run a game, I just wanted him to run just about any game but Exalted. But the group was into the idea, and, well � I decided that maybe it was time to quit bitching, throw away my preconceived notions about the game, and just play the damn thing.

Making a character was a struggle, I won�t lie. It took me a long time to get into the rich and complex backstory of Exalted, and to come up with a character concept that I liked. I eventually settled on my character Talon, a Twilight-caste Solar Exalted who essentially is a cross between Bruce Lee and Sherlock Holmes, but getting the character worked out the way I wanted took a long time. When I finally sat down at our gaming table last night, I was still sorting out the final details for Talon, and still eying the game with a lot of trepidation.

All of that completely went away in the first ten minutes.

Is Exalted still unnecessarily complicated? Yes, in my opinion. Am I a tremendous fan of its massive metaplot and backstory? No. Those things didn�t change. However, all things considered, those were minor details once the game got underway. Eric proved once again that he�s a phenomenal storyteller and game master � the campaign kicked off with a bang, and he immediately got our characters involved in an intriguing mystery splashed with tons of cinematic action. Though it took a little bit to get used to the rules system, after an hour or so, we started getting used to it, and things really started to run smoothly. The game became about what all good games are � a terrific, engaging, creative interaction between the game master and the players that�s a hell of a lot of fun.

Last night�s game reminded me of something important � that the games we play are about much more than rules. The rules are just a framework for the storytelling collaboration that goes on in a gaming group. It�s easy to look at a game, or an adventure, and just think it�s not going to work, or it�s not going to suit your tastes. There�s just no substitute for playing that game or that adventure with your friends at a gaming table. They often play much differently than you think they will. Do I love Exalted? No. I�ll be honest, there�s things I still don�t like about the game. But after playing it for the first time, I definitely like it. It turns out my gripes about the game are relatively minor, not major, as I wrongly thought they would be � and I have to admit I�m very much looking forward to the next time we play the game.

So, my thanks again to Eric, for running a fantastic game, for inspiring me � yet again � to try and write better adventures for my own games, and to be a better game master. It was great to see him back in that role once more.

And the next time you look at a game and think, �nah, I wouldn�t like that� � give it a second look. Better yet, take out some dice and just give it a try. At worst, you just confirm what you already thought.

And at best � well, you might be surprised by what you find.

I know I was.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:11:23 EDT

I've been reading the online previews for Paizo's upcoming Pathfinder Bestiary with a certain amount of pride ... and amusement.

Mainly, because of the credits.

I consider the other guys on the list the true designers of the book. Me? I didn't really 'design' much of anything, at least not by my reckoning.

About eight months ago, I got an e-mail from the good folks at Paizo asking 1) if I could write some monsters for them, taking some classic standards from the D&D 3.5 Monster Manual and updating them for the new Pathfinder rules, and 2) if so ... how many could I write in a week?

It turned out the answer was 14.

I got to give my own take on some classics like the purple worm, the ankheg, and the wyvern ... and I got to contribute to a game that's proving to be pretty popular. Not too shabby.

If you're into Pathfinder, take a gander at the Bestiary when it comes out in a few weeks and let me know what you think. It was fun to do some writing for it, even though others really deserve the credit for its design.

And I hope the critters I wrote might make it into your games someday.

Especially the purple worm.

Paradigm Shift

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:33:06 EDT

For the most part, this site has been about my musings on writing, and on gaming.

Over the next few months, you may see that change. But it'll still be about writing, and gaming.

Explanation ...

I had a remarkably creative and prolific run as a freelance writer for the gaming industry for a few years, something that not a lot of people get to enjoy. It's literally been a childhood dream come true. And I got to meet a lot of pretty cool people along the way. I'm incredibly grateful for all of the opportunities provided by freelancing, and wouldn't trade the experiences for anything.

But I've made no secret of my more recent dissatisfactions and frustrations with my journey in the world of freelance writing. I'm a bit more at peace with some of the things that have frustrated me over the past year-and-a-half or so, but honestly, I've come to the realization that this isn't particularly what I want to do anymore. Not with things staying as status quo, at any rate.

My interests have also wandered a bit. There was a time, probably two years ago, where if you told me I'd get to do nothing but write adventures for the next ten years or so, I would've been the happiest gamer alive. Give me the same offer now? I don't think I'd be so enthusiastic. I have a lot of weird and eclectic interests, and gaming has started to take a back seat to some of them. Couple that with the above dissatisfactions, and ...

Oh. Right.

Some of those weird and eclectic interests also include writing, and gaming.

Over the past year or so, while the freelancing end of things hasn't always been wonderful, the personal games at the table have been pretty grand. I've been running a Warhammer campaign that's been a blast. I just finished making my first Exalted character, for a campaign that my friend Eric is starting. I'm making characters for Shadowrun and CthulhuTech. I'm planning on running Rogue Trader whenever the Warhammer campaign wraps up, and I've got ideas for a Pathfinder campaign and a 4E Eberron campaign that I hope to get off the ground at some point. (Or, quite possibly, a 4E Dark Sun campaign, if I can wait until next summer. That just smells of genius possibilities.)

In short, despite the fact I wasn't that into gaming for awhile this year because of the freelancing side of things ... on the personal side, it's been incredibly good. It's been a creative renaissance of sorts, one much like the one I enjoyed during my high school and college years. And I'm loving every second of it.

As for the writing ... well, one of the things I realized is that the gaming freelance projects, while a dream, have taken away from another dream � writing a novel. Every word written for a sourcebook or module is a word less that I�m writing for something else. I�ve enjoyed the dream of writing games for a couple of years now; it seems a good a time as any to try to pursue a different dream.

That�s not to say I won�t try to keep a hand in the gaming end of things. Not at all. But it does mean I�ll probably be working on a lot less gaming projects, and I�ll be way more selective about the ones I do work on. If that means losing jobs because I�m too fussy or because I turn too many things down, so be it. As I�ve said, I�ve had a good run as a freelancer, so no complaints. Life�s too short.

I still have one or two projects that need to be wrapped up, so I imagine I�ll still be talking about those in the weeks and months to come. But I think this site will start to be more about the games I�m playing, rather than the ones I�m writing. More reviews, perhaps. More actual play stuff. It�ll probably head further away from the design end of things, and more towards just how things play at the table.

And it�ll be more about the writing, which I�m really excited about. I already have some interesting irons in the fire, so to speak. No, no contracts with a publisher, no book deals just yet � but I�m a little further down the road towards those goals than I was just a couple of weeks ago. And I plan on sharing some previews of what I�m writing every once in a while.

Exciting times. Different times, to be sure.

Hope you stick around for the ride, even if it�s changing a little bit.

The Challenge of the Skill Challenge

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:12:42 EDT

One of the more interesting concepts developed in D&D 4E is that of the Skill Challenge. To those unfamiliar with 4E, the Skill Challenge is (usually) a formalized non-combat situation that requires a certain number of skill check successes required for the player characters to complete successfully, and with a specific experience point value awarded to the characters if they prove successful (or specific consequences if they fail). The degree of difficulty is set by the amount of successes required � an easier Skill Challenge might require 5 successes out of 8 attempts, for example, something made of sterner stuff might require 7 successes out of 8 attempts. Player characters can aid each other during some of these skill checks, depending on the situation � so in theory, it�s a good way to encourage the non-combat aspects of 4E. Pretty cool stuff, especially for a game that�s typically accused of being too combat-heavy.

I say �in theory� because I�ve noticed that the Skill Challenge tends to be easy to screw up. I don�t find it explained particularly well in the core rulebooks for 4E, and in practice � well, I hesitate to say that it�s �done wrong�, since some people seem happy with the results, but I find that too often it turns into an exercise in munchkinism, focusing on game mechanics rather than roleplaying. (The fact that the rules for the Skill Challenge in the first printing of the rules was a little wonky didn�t help matters, either). I think Wizards of the Coast has done a decent job of fixing the Skill Challenge mechanics with rules errata, and done a reasonable job clarifying the intent of the Skill Challenge through D&D Insider and various editorials on Dragon Online. The problem is that most of those clarifications aren�t centralized very well.

I�ve been playing 4E a bit lately, and have been working on an adventure where a couple of key moments are probably going to hinge around good Skill Challenges. Based on my experience, and my observations, here�s some of my ideas on how to make a good (or at least reasonably decent) Skill Challenge.

1. Don�t tell the players that they�re in a Skill Challenge.

It�s human nature, or maybe at least gamer nature. You want to succeed at things. Nobody likes to fail. So when the DM announces �OK, this is a Skill Challenge!� at the beginning of an encounter � most players drop all pretense of roleplaying, and start analyzing the situation in terms of what skills are needed, and how to maximize the results of those skills. Everything gets viewed through rules-tinted glasses. Which, of course, kind of defeats one of the idealistic purposes of the Skill Challenge � building a situation that encourages roleplaying.

I played in a 4E Living Forgotten Realms game a couple of weeks ago that featured a cool Skill Challenge - our characters needed to do some begging, borrowing, or stealing (depending on how we wanted to handle the Challenge) to obtain some supplies to fix a ship. Our initial reaction to this became �OK, who�s got the highest Diplomacy roll?� � and we set about trying to optimize our chances of success in terms of maximizing the strengths of our various skills. We determined that our sorcerer had a high Charisma and a really good Diplomacy skill, so we agreed to aid him, reached for dice, and �

And that was when our DM (Scott Roberts, one of the co-owners of the Gamer�s Gambit) gave us a curious look and said, �Guys, it's role-playing, not roll-playing. Put down the dice. Tell me what you're doing, and what you're going to say. Then you can roll some dice."

A golden opportunity for roleplaying. And I blew it. A little embarrassing, to say the least.

So, with a hint of chagrin, we did put down the dice. The player running the sorcerer, though, didn�t seem too keen on roleplaying the situation at first, so I stepped in with my dragonborn rogue, and Ken Hart (an esteemed member of Goodman Games East who was also at the table) started in as well with his longtooth shifter druid. Neither of us, skill-wise, were perfectly suited for the situation, but we both starting weaving a web of flattery and bald-faced lies to get what we needed accomplished. When we were done, we got the nod from our DM, and started to roll our skill checks. Our friend the sorcerer offered to use Aid Another to assist our rolls, but the DM wouldn�t allow it � his character hadn�t actually said or done anything to assist us!

I think a good way to run a Skill Challenge, at least from the DM�s side of the screen, is to never tell the players that they're *in* a Skill Challenge. Provide them with the situation, steer them slightly towards using some of the skills that might come in handy, but emphasize the role-playing aspects of the situation. As a DM, I won't use the words "Skill Challenge" until a player asks me "is this a Skill Challenge?" ... and even then, my answer will be "maybe". That way, the players are less likely to put on the rules-tinted glasses.

2. Make the Skill Challenge open enough for the players to freelance, but provide enough structure for the DM to know what works or what doesn�t.'

I noticed this in a Skill Challenge presented in �King of the Trollhaunt Warrens�. There�s a Skill Challenge in that adventure where the player characters can parley with a black dragon, rather than fight it � and if they�re successful in the Challenge, they can gain some information � and loot � that might not be available if they simply best it in combat. From the player side of things, I found it well-written � it listed some of the primary skills that the players could use (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate � the usual suspects), as well as some secondary skills that wouldn�t seem terribly obvious to use, but might fit the situation if push came to shove. That was fine. I think a good Skill Challenge shouldn�t rely on the player characters being reliant on just 2 or 3 skills anyway; some should be better fits than others, but the players should have room to freelance and innovate.

But from the DM�s side of the Challenge � eh. I thought it left a bit to be desired. For example, the player characters may use Diplomacy �to flatter the dragon�. Really? Flatter it how? By calling its scales shiny? By kissing its fanny and calling it the GREATEST. DRAGON. EVAR? I�m all for being open and for freelancing as a DM, but in this case I think *some* guidance is needed. Not much, but something.

From that end of things, I think a good Skill Challenge should include one or two tidbits about types of flattery that would work better than others, and maybe even something that could make things go terribly wrong. For example: perhaps complimenting the dragon on defeating a past rival (something that could be learned with a History check, or dropped as a clue earlier in the adventure) might add to the chances of success, or even count as two successes. Or complimenting the dragon�s great jeweled eye might count as a failure, as the only reason the dragon has a jeweled eye is because its original was lost long ago in a battle with a paladin (again, something that could be learned as a clue or History check).

3. Make the Skill Challenge is something that can�t be replicated by combat.

The first Skill Challenge I wrote was for �The Warbringer�s Son�. I wrote it literally a week after seeing the 4E rules for the first time � and while it works, if I had a second chance, I�d do it much differently. Suffice it to say it involves a lot of running down corridors, trying to avoid dangerous areas and hiding from Very Bad Things. Sound much different than combat? Not really. There�s no real need for a Skill Challenge like that � if it�s like combat, it should either just be combat, or should be scaled back into something that�s not combat.

I realized that I keep talking about Skill Challenges like they�re roleplaying opportunites. Well, they are, but that�s not a necessary requirement. I could see ascending a giant clockwork structure being a great Skill Challenge, with Thievery checks to disable certain areas of the clockwork, or Acrobatics checks to avoid swinging pendulums, or an Insight check to find the shiny, jolly, candy-like button that switches the whole thing off. No roleplaying per se required for a Challenge like that � but it�s not something that�s like combat.

Anyway. just some thoughts on Skill Challenges.

Feel free to share your thoughts as well.

Top 10 Signs That You're A Gaming Grognard

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:21:00 EDT

From the home office in Threshold, in the Kingdom of Karameikos ...

1. Your armor class is -3? Awesome.

2. They�re not wizards or sorcerers, they�re magic-users.

3. Your fighter�s strength includes percentiles after the 18.

4. Only thieves can climb walls.

5. Initiative involves a d6, not a d20. And everyone in the party goes at the same time.

6. Elves and dwarves have classes? What???

7. What the hell is this newfangled contraption called THAC0?

8. You know what weapon speed factor charts are ... you just choose to ignore them.

9. Saving throws vs. Rod/Staff/Wand. �Nuff said. (And when you fail your saving throws, you die � none of this softie �you lose points of Constitution crap.)

10. You�ve had a character that not only once owned the Machine of Lum the Mad, you also had a detailed drawing of the levers, buttons, and the rest of the control panel that made it work.

Hey ... Cthulhu! Come Get Some!

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 02:07:57 EDT

I love roleplaying games that are big, shiny, over-the-top games that make things go boom.

That�s certainly not the only type of game I like. My current Warhammer game, for example, has been repeatedly described as �CSI: Kislev� � the game prominently focuses on investigation and is heavy on roleplaying, light on combat. There�s been plenty of sessions where there�s just one combat encounter, if even that � two or more generally means things have gone terribly, terribly wrong for the characters. It�s a quirky game that moves along at an unhurried pace, and so far, it�s been a good game. And it�s not the type of game where things go boom.

But I like all sorts of flavors of gaming.

And big & shiny is probably my favorite kind.

I remember seeing the first advertisements for RIFTS in Dragon Magazine back when I was in high school. The Keith Parkinson cover pretty much told me everything I needed to know, but the enthusiastic ad copy written by Kevin Siembieda sealed the deal. Dragons? Robots? Aliens? Glitter Boy Armor? SOLD!!!

The �kitchen sink� approach wouldn�t be something I would want in a D&D campaign, but in the context of RIFTS, it seemed perfect. Despite issues I would have later in trying to freelance for Palladium Books, RIFTS remains one of my favorite games. I ran it on an almost-weekly basis for close to six years, and the adventures that were played in my various campaigns for that system rank among my favorite memories.

One of the main things I liked about RIFTS is its ability to just churn up adventure ideas. Despite the frequently wonky rules system, I was usually able to ignore all of their weird issues simply because of the great concepts in the game. It seemed like whenever a new RIFTS sourcebook would come out, I�d go over to the Game Room in the Woodbridge Mall, find the book, flip through a couple of pages, and � BAM. Ideas for an adventure, or a villain, or something just plain AWESOME would spew forth from the pages of the book and into my head, and I�d open up my wallet and buy the damn thing. It�s something I�ve always tried to replicate in the books I�ve written, even if I haven�t always been successful � putting those ideas and concepts in a book that just inspire you to run out and create an adventure.

Though there have been a multitude of games that I�ve read, bought, and played since RIFTS, nothing�s quite inspired me in the same way. None of them have provided that inspiration � �holy crap, I need to play this NOW!!!� � quite the same way. None of them have given a campaign�s worth of ideas simply by flipping through parts of a sourcebook for just ten minutes. And none have really made things go boom in quite the same way.

Until now.

CthulhuTech, to me, just drips with awesome. The best way I can describe it is this: Take a big helping of Shadowrun then add liberal amounts of Robotech & Neon Genesis Evangelion, a splash of Mike Mignola's Hellboy, heaping handfuls of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and other pulp horror stories, and, of course, as indicated earlier, a giant portion of AWESOME. Created by Wildfire LLC and currently published by Catalyst Game Labs, this game is nothing short of a home run � it�s easily one of the most impressive games I�ve read in years.

The backstory to the game is pretty ingenious. The year is 2085. Mankind, in developing free systems of bountiful energy that invigorates the planet Earth, harness extradimensional energies that inadvertently wakes up some of the sleeping horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos � and boy, does it piss them off. The Earth devolves into a world-wide conflict known as the Aeon War, where the planet has twice been invaded: once by drow-like critters called the Nazzadi, who are �aliens� really genetically engineered by the Mi-Go, and who later join humanity against their former masters, and then later by the Mi-Go themselves. Also, some of the �big guns� from the Cthulhu Mythos have showed up � Nylarathotep is around, as is Hastur, and the Esoteric Order of Dagon, of course, seeks to reawaken Great Cthulhu once more. The player characters need to fight against these horrors to save the world, but unlike a typical H.P. Lovecraft story, their weapons against such horrors are not libraries, books, and ancient relics, but giant guns, giant suits of mecha armor, and plenty of in-your-face things that go boom.

The main book is crammed full of campaign background and adventure ideas, each one better than the next � it�s enough to keep a campaign going for quite awhile. I give the writers of CthulhuTech a lot of credit; they filled the book with a lot of creative genius, and a lot of inspired hooks that made me go � well, �holy crap, I need to play this NOW!!!�

Unlike Call of Cthulhu (another game that I love), there�s nothing subtle about CthulhuTech. There�s no horrors lurking in the shadows. It�s not a game where people slowly descend into madness. The horrors are there, out in the open. They are ruthless, and they want to kill you. However, also unlike Call of Cthulhu, characters in CthulhuTech can have access to powerful technology � and weapons � capable of taking on these horrors. An investigator from Call of Cthulhu who encounters a simple ghoul is probably in big trouble, and should that investigator come across the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath or his or her lonesome � forget it. That character�s guaranteed to go insane, or die, or go insane and then die. In CthulhuTech? An investigator has access to high-tech armor and major artillery. That same Dark Young is still dangerous enough to drive a character in CthulhuTech utterly mad, or still come out ahead in a fight � but the character should be able to give a good fight, and even win if reasonably good tactics are used.

The rules use the Framewerk system, which I�d briefly seen and used before in Weapons of the Gods, and it�s an interesting system. The basic idea is simple � you roll a pool of ten-sided dice, and want to beat a target number. However, there�s a wrinkle to this. Based on the numbers you roll in your given pool of dice, you can choose the highest individual number rolled and add any appropriate bonuses to that to beat the target number. Or, if you get a set of the same number, like three 3s, you can add all them together, if that result is higher than the highest single number that was rolled in the pool. Or, if you get a straight � similar to poker, three or more numbers in a row, like a 3, 4, 5, and 6 � you can add those numbers together. That�s pretty much the consistent unifying mechanic for just about everything. (You can also use Drama Points, which helps your own rolls by adding to your dice pool, or taking away from an opponent�s dice pool, which is another wrinkle I found to be very cool.)

CthulhuTech also uses something similar to the M.D.C./S.D.C. system from RIFTS for damage. Humans use Vitality as their hit points, and most �normal� weapons do Vitality damage. Mecha and �big� weapons either Integrity as their hit points, or deal Integrity levels of damage. 1 point of Integrity = 50 points of Vitality, so an unarmored person with Vitality wandering into a battlefield filled with mechas blasting out Integrity-level damage is just asking to get greased.

And � wow, it�s a pretty book. The artwork is great, the layout is wonderful � you get a great feel for the game just, well, flipping through the pages. I'm usually the first guy to bitch about shoddy layout and crappy editing, so I'll give credit where credit is definitely due - overall, it's a well-produced book, one of the best I've seen in awhile.

Another nice thing I like about CthulhuTech is that it�s set up to be played a number of ways. Want a game that heavily relies on investigation, and not a lot of combat? No problem. Want to make something that�s totally over-the-top wall-to-wall combat? No problem. Want combat, but low-powered stuff that doesn�t feature mecha, and is more like �Band of Brothers� than �Macross�? No problem. And of course, you can definitely find something that falls somewhere between all of these concepts.

I haven�t quite decided where the campaign that I want to run will fall just yet.

But rest assured, when I figure it out � I�ll let you know.

Bring On The Warbringer

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:51:42 EDT

Writing a tournament module is a lot different than writing a "regular" module.

When I write a typical module, I focus a lot on story, and on pacing. I want to have moments of crazy, full-on combat, but I also want quieter interludes that allow the players to catch their breath. I�m also writing an adventure that I want to equally be good for experienced gamers, as well as for brand-new gamers who are rolling dice for the very first time. I might make some things complex, but I�m mindful of the fact that I can�t make things too complicated.

Tournament modules, on the other hand � well, as Nigel Tufnel likes to say, everything goes to eleven in a tournament module. I don�t worry about pacing in a tournament module � everything�s in a redline maximum-RPM full throttle mode, going balls to the wall. Not only am I assuming anyone playing a tournament module is an experienced gamer, I�m assuming that they�re a very experienced gamer � and my goal is to test the limits of how good the players really are. A �typical� module, to me, is a way of telling an interactive story � a tournament module, on the other hand, is a competitive event, designed to test the skills and guile of players, and just happens to use the framework of an interactive story.

Which brings us to �The Warbringer�s Son� � and all the fun involved in writing that one. For the creation of that particular tournament adventure, in its own way, was a competitive event. And it sure as hell tested the limits of its writers.

I originally got involved with the Dungeon Crawl Classics GenCon Tournament for Goodman Games back in 2004. For that initial tournament adventure, a number of writers were invited to contribute individual dungeon rooms, which were assembled collage-style into a cohesive adventure by Chris Doyle. That adventure � �Crypt of the Devil-Lich� � was a great project to write. I didn�t really know what the main story of the adventure was � I just worked on two rooms designed to be vicious deathtraps for unwary adventurers. One involved a drow vampire sorceress in a chapel; the other a golden coin golem in a treasure room. Both were just meant to be Gygax-inspired carnage, and for the most part, it worked pretty well.

The tournament proved to be a big success at GenCon, and the tournament only got bigger and better with every passing year. In addition to continually testing the players in the tournament, the pressure grew to make each successive tournament adventure cleverer and more fiendish than its predecessors. Getting the assignment to write for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Tournament meant that the pressure was on � you couldn�t repeat what had been done before, and you needed to dip into the proverbial bag of tricks once more to find something players wouldn�t be expecting.

In the fall of 2007, I got invited again to work on the tournament. The project manager this time was Adrian Pommier � and this time, only three writers were chosen � Chris Doyle, Rick Maffei, and myself. Unlike previous tournaments, we wouldn�t be writing individual rooms for the tournament adventure � we would each be writing one entire level or round for the adventure, start to finish. Chris got Round 1, I got Round 2, and Rick got Round 3. And unlike previous tournaments, we would be writing for a brand new game system, just announced a few months earlier at GenCon 2007 � Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition.

Now hold on to your hats, kids. The story�s about to get a wee bit complex.

The original tournament idea was this: we planned on writing an adventure for 7th-level characters called �Test of the Gods�. There would be a short, free adventure released in June 2008 called �Maze of the Cyclops� for Free RPG Day that would act as a teaser of sorts for �Test of the Gods�, laying down the groundwork for the story of the tournament module, and perhaps including a few clues for what players might expect in the tournament. With that in mind, we set about writing each round of the module in the 3.5 version of the D&D rules, expecting to be able to convert what we�d written into 4E somewhere in January. After all, that was when Wizards of the Coast promised to deliver the 4E rules to third-party publishers.

Yeah � that didn�t happen. Promises, promises. Thanks, Wizards.

So we waited �til February, waited �til April � and then we couldn't wait any longer, and some drastic changes needed to be made.

Without access to the 4E rules, �Maze of the Cyclops� was dead in the water � there was no way that would be part of Free RPG Day. Also, we came to the conclusion that given how late we would have access to the rules � and how little experience with 4E the tournament players would probably have by GenCon � a 7th-level adventure just wasn�t going to work. So we tossed aside all of the writing and preliminary work put into �Test of the Gods�, grabbed the outline of �Maze of the Oracle� � and slowly began reworking the plotline of that adventure into what would become �The Warbringer�s Son�.

But we still didn�t have the 4E rules.

And, to be honest, we really didn�t have them until the beginning of June 2008, just like everyone else. Which meant we each had two weeks to digest the rules, and come up with an entire round of a tournament � and make it something exciting, fresh, and unexpected. Because this sucker still needed to be playtested, and we were running out of time.

No pressure. None at all.

The next two weeks involved little sleep, a lot of coffee, a lot of frantically-scribbled notes at odd hours of the day, and a lot of writing and re-writing. Part of the problem was that I don�t think we thought the changes between 3.5 and 4E would be as drastic as they were. It wasn�t just a matter of �change some stats and you�re done� � there were a lot of fundamental changes that altered initial ideas for various rooms. But I think we treated this all as a challenge Nobody wanted to lose this battle, so we all took a �damn the torpedoes� attitude and forged ahead, working hard to create the best adventure that we could under pretty weird circumstances.

Somehow, we pulled it off. Rick, Chris, and I managed to write �The Warbringer�s Son� into a tournament adventure that worked pretty well, Adrian took what we wrote and polished it up into something even better, and it proved to be a hit at GenCon. �The Warbringer�s Son�, I think, was a great way to start the 4E era for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. There�s one or two things about the round I wrote that I wish I�d written differently (the Skill Challenge in Round 2, in particular, is something that I think could be better) � but overall, I�m proud of this one. It�s probably not the best thing I�ve ever written, but it was written under very challenging circumstances, and it still came out pretty well.

�The Warbringer�s Son� � yeah. More like �Test of the Writers�.

If you�re interested in seeing what a tournament module looks like, I suggest picking this one up.

And let us know if we successfully passed the test.

Return to the Talons

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 01:51:14 EDT

I'm not at GenCon this year. (Probably a good thing, since I'd be busy shouting my extreme displeasure about the new incarnation of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game to everyone within earshot.) Lack of funds and a couple other factors made GenCon ... well, to be honest, I could've gone, but let's just say I don't think it would've been an ideal situation. So to my friends who are going, or who are on their way there ... enjoy! I'll miss your company.

Something I worked on recently, though, is there. And it's only available there, as a conventional special at the Goodman Games booth.

"Talons of the Horned King" is an adventure I've talked about before on this site. To be honest, it may be the one adventure I've written that best represents my own tastes and interests as a writer. While it's admittedly a dungeon crawl, parts of it have that sandbox feel, like "Lost City", where you can do a hell of a lot more besides kill monsters in the frozen wastelands of the North, and it includes a lot of eclectic interests, including some "Expedition of the Barrier Peaks" sci-fi influences. (And a sonic screwdriver.)

Writing this one, to put it mildly, was a bitch.

I had a lot of ideas of what I wanted the adventure to be, and what I wanted it to do. Within the confines of the D&D 3.5 ruleset, though, I found doing many of things fairly challenging, as I needed to clearly define a lot of ideas that didn't quite fit the rules. They sort of fit the rules ... but not quite. And since I believe anything you write for publication needs to be playable by the Rules As Written, this didn't really work for me. The adventure was rewritten three times, playtested a lot more than that, and was painful to write from start to finish. I was glad to see it finally done and published, if only because it meant I didn't have to work on it anymore.

Or so I thought.

About two years ago, I got on an "old-school" gaming kick, playing a bit of first edition AD&D and Basic D&D. I thought it might just be a nostalgia kick, but it wasn't - I really enjoyed the games, and it helped immensely in my understanding of game design. I decided that it might be fun to write a 1E AD&D module, to really dig into the rules and the game system ... but I didn't really want to write a new module from scratch. So I decided to convert one of the Dungeon Crawl Classics I�d written for Goodman Games to 1E.

Which one?

Inexplicably, I decided to go for �Talons�. Call me a masochist.

But I�m glad I did.

Turns out that �Talons� was always a First Edition module desperately trapped inside a Third Edition body. The conversion process to First Edition was so smooth, it was scary. The module seemed to flow a lot better in First Edition, and I think the adventure�s finally found its true home. It worked in Third Edition, and I eventually came to like that iteration of it � but I think it�s really good, properly converted to First Edition.

That�s not to say that there weren�t a few challenges. It was funny to realize how many times I�d written stuff like �� players notice X with a successful Search check� in the original version of the adventure. A lot of the 3E version of that adventure was heavily reliant on skill checks, so converting it to 1E � with its total lack of skill checks � made for some interesting conversion choices. In addition to poring through the First Edition Dungeon Master�s Guide, I did a lot of reading through the old TSR AD&D modules for guidance as to how to handle such matters. �The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth� and �The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun�, in particular, proved to be terrific guidelines in figuring out how to handle some more complicated things.

For the most part, I just turned everything over to DM fiat. Stuff like �� players notice X with a successful Search check� because � � players notice X if they carefully search the far end of the room�. For stuff that was a little more arbitrary, I lifted a �Skill Check� that I found � courtesy of one Mr. Gary Gygax � from �Forgotten Temple�. Here�s a sample of what I used in �Talons�, though the original concept comes completely from that Gygax-penned adventure.

Crossing the bridge requires the player characters to roll a score of their Dexterity or less on 4d6. Failure by 4 or more indicates a slip, but the falling character can attempt to roll a score of their Dexterity or less on 4d6 again to grab onto the bridge and avoid falling. Falling from the bridge causes 3-18 points of falling damage, as well as 3-30 points of potential damage from the ice shards below (a saving throw vs. Poison allows characters to successfully land between the shards).��

There�s other stuff like that, but you get the idea. �Lost Caverns�, �Forgotten Temple�, and the original �Expedition to the Barrier Peaks� provided some other ideas for how to handle certain situations, but overall, the conversion process was pretty easy, and pretty intuitive.

Interestingly enough, I originally started writing this conversion purely for selfish reasons. My intent was to do the conversion, run the adventure for a few friends, and see how it went. That was it. At some point during the early stages of the conversion process, I mentioned the project to Joseph Goodman � he�d previously published a few 1E conversions of other Dungeon Crawl Classics, so I thought he might be interested in the �Talons� conversion project. The original response went something like �sounds cool, let me know how it goes �� and I never heard anything beyond that, so I just kept slowly plugging away at it between other writing projects.

Then, in March, I got a follow-up note.

�How�s the conversion coming? I�d like to release it at GenCon, if you�re still working on it.� So 1E �Talons� went from the back burner to the front burner � and now it�s at Indy. Cool stuff.

If you get a chance, pick up the adventure at GenCon. If you�re into First Edition AD&D, I think you�ll like it. A lot.

I�m just happy to see this one the way I think it was really meant to be played.

Stepping Stones

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 07:07:54 EDT

Even before my sister Laura got an adventure published in Dungeon Magazine, I wanted to be a game writer. However, her success made that desire seem achievable. The idea of writing for a gaming company no longer felt as pie-in-the-sky-unlikely-to-impossible as, say, becoming a New York Times best-selling novelist like Peter Straub or Stephen King � or becoming a guitarist in Megadeth, which were two of my other dreams. Unlike those flights of fantasy, the possibility of becoming a game writer suddenly felt possible.

It just took a long while for me to get there.

Something, I think, that every aspiring game writer needs to keep in mind is the following: a rejection letter (or notice, or e-mail) isn�t an end. Rather, it�s a stepping stone. As you keep writing, and keep submitting things to various game companies, each thing that you write and submit is a stepping stone towards further success. Each thing you write and submit gets your closer to your goals and dreams. Now, there may be way more stepping stones on your path to success than you want � and you may choose to abandon those stones and their winding road before you hit your final destination. But I�m a big believer in something one of my father�s friends once told me:

�Work long enough and hard enough, and eventually no one can deny you success.�

My submissions and proposals to both Dragon and Dungeon Magazine began in earnest shortly after �Lady of the Lake� � my sister�s adventure for Dungeon Magazine � was published. The early submissions sucked, to be honest, and I got nothing but a litany of form rejection letters (�Dear Contributor, we regret to inform you ��) for my efforts. But I kept plugging away at it. Eventually, I got more rejection letters, but they were the personalized kind � Dave Gross, I think, was the editor for Dragon Magazine at the time, and Chris Perkins was the editor for Dungeon Magazine. Both started sending me short but kind personalized rejection letters, some with some quick hints of how I could improve both my pitches and my writing. Those were lessons I took to heart, and eventually � many, many years later � they led to my first success, getting a �Bazaar of the Bizarre� article published in the pages of Dragon called �Tools of the Trade�.

In a certain amount of irony, though, right around the time this article finally reached print, I decided to get out of gaming for awhile. So � although I didn�t realize it at the time � I took the relationships and the experience I�d built up with the editorial staffs at Dragon and Dungeon, and threw it all away. I left my path of stepping stones � and when I decided that I wanted to write for game companies again, I had to start all over again, back from the beginning.

It wasn�t really until Paizo took over the publication of both Dragon and Dungeon that I decided that I wanted to write for those magazines again. Paizo, in my opinion, injected an excitement and a creative enthusiasm into those magazines that had been missing for a while. So I began my submissions again, and like before, I initially received nothing but the familiar form rejections (�Dear Contributor, we regret to inform you ��). But as before, I also eventually began getting more personalized rejection e-mails, this time from the likes of Mike McArtor and Wes Schneider (�Hey Mike! This looks cool, but we already have something similar in the works �). Though it could be frustrating at times, I could see myself going along a similar path to the one that had worked for me before, and I think if Paizo had retained the rights to continue publishing both Dragon or Dungeon, I eventually could�ve gotten something published in their pages.

However, that didn�t happen. Wizards of the Coast took back the publication rights for both Dragon and Dungeon, which meant that if I wanted to get something published in either of those magazines � I needed to start over from scratch. Again.

So I did. I've been patiently sending proposals to the folks at Wizards of the Coast, and been receiving rejection notices.

However, more importantly, I also still wanted to work with Paizo.

And lately, I�ve been able to do so.

The big break came in the form of �Flight of the Red Raven�. Paizo held a GameMastery Open Call contest, in which the winner got the right to write GameMastery Module W3: Flight of the Red Raven. Although I didn�t win that contest, I was a semi-finalist in the competition � and between that, and the relationships I�d started building earlier submitting stuff for Dragon and Dungeon while Paizo held the rights to those magazines, I landed my first Paizo gig. Wes Schneider asked me to write the monsters for a Pathfinder Adventure called �A Memory of Darkness�, which turned out to be a blast � and also turned out to be a pivotal stepping stone.

Because that led to a gig writing up some monsters for the upcoming Pathfinder Bestiary. �How many monsters can you write up in two weeks, Mike?� It turned out to be fourteen. So if your characters are killed by the Pathfinder versions of the owlbear and the purple worm � you�re welcome. I had a hand in making them a little nastier.

And then that led to another gig, writing up yet more monsters � this time, for a Pathfinder Adventure called �The Bastards of Erebus�. (Love that title!) I got to create a bunch of creepy new creatures for that one, including the haniver gremlin and the shadowgarm � and I got to update everyone�s old-school favorite � the good old rot grub � for the Pathfinder system.

And that led to a book about river kingdoms, which will be coming out later this year, and features a wonderful collection of co-authors. It still surprises me to see my name included in the credits with theirs.

And that�s led to � well, let�s say for now it's led to something else that�s pretty cool and currently in the works.

They�re all stepping stones. It took a lot of rejection letters to reach this spot. The road was practically paved with them.

It was worth it. I�m enjoying the journey. Perhaps more so than I have in a long time. And I hope it keeps going for a while longer, whether with Paizo, with Goodman Games, or with any number of companies I�ve been fortunate enough to work with � or with a few companies that still haven�t sent me anything but form rejection letters so far.

Hope you�re enjoying your own journey, even if you�ve experienced your own frustrations and rejections along the way. Trust me, I�ve been there, I can sympathize � and I can tell you that I really believe if you work long enough and hard enough, success will find you.

Planning & Improvising

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:53:15 EDT

Last night, I ran a new adventure for my ongoing Warhammer campaign.

About a week before a new adventure, I start e-mailing the various members of my gaming group about the upcoming game session, asking them about the things they want their characters to do. I hate railroading. Hate it. So I prefer to let the players take the lead. Once the campaign is up and running, I prefer to let them grab the story elements that they like and determine the initial course of each adventure. If they don�t want to explore a castle, but would instead prefer to investigate the sewers, that�s fine. I�ll prep an adventure that at least starts at the sewers � and then I�ll take more authority over what happens from there.

Freedom isn�t always a good thing, though.

Before the adventure began, the players had reached the consensus that it was about time to finally find out what an evil nobleman and his creepy retinue were up to. Over the course of the past few adventures, they�d gotten several clues directly and indirectly linking this nobleman to a number of weird events occurring in the city of Kislev. The plan was to do a little reconnaissance around the manor house, figure out a way to get someone invited inside the manor house for some more snooping, and then depending on what they found, break into the manor house later that evening to find evidence of the nobleman�s nefarious plans.

So that was the adventure I prepped. No problem.

Five minutes after we got started, though � they decided that the plan was (1) premature, since they still didn�t have a clear idea of what they were looking for (they wanted evidence of the nobleman�s bad deeds, but weren�t sure what that would be), and (2) asking for more trouble that it might be worth if they got caught. (And I can�t say I fault them on their logic!) So the plan was completely abandoned, and they decided to do other things instead.

And absolutely nothing I had prepped had anything to do with the new plans they wanted to try instead.

What to do?

Fortunately, I�ve gamed with these guys a long time. So I had some ideas.

Here�s a few of them, in case you ever find yourself as a game master in a similar situation:

Mapping. No, not a literal map, but something equally helpful. Whenever I�m writing an adventure idea for a campaign, I create what I call a road map � namely, the logical sequence of where certain adventures may lead. If I have the players investigating a warren of rat-men in the sewers, I know that at some point they should find clues to the wherebouts of the Gray Seer that leads the rat-men, or a bigger warren, or the giant warpfire engine being constructed beneath the city. In other words, whenever the players decide to pick up the threads of an adventure that they�ve left fallow for a while (�Hey, remember that coded map we found in the rat-men�s lair? Maybe we should find a sage who can help us decipher it!), I already know where that adventure thread might lead.

Strong supporting characters. I tend to pre-populate my campaign settings with a number of strong NPCs. For each one, I give a quick breakdown of their personality, of their goals and agendas, and most importantly, how they link to each adventure thread I�ve already put in place. (As for the NPCs I make on the fly � I�m looking at you, hundreds of barkeeps I�ve created over the years! � each one gets a similar treatment right after an adventure ends, while the details of the most recent adventure is fresh in my head.) Players will latch onto the words of the most obscure NPCs sometimes, for whatever the reason, so I like being prepared to have those NPCs steer the adventure back on course, or back towards something I at least can manage better.

Improvise. While a good campaign requires a bit of careful prep work by the game master (in my own humble opinion, anyway), sometimes it�s good to go with the flow and just let things happen. The important thing I�ve found in improvising is letting the players take the lead. Let them determine where the action is going to go. If I�m trying to make stuff up out of whole cloth on the fly, I know a lot of times what I try to do isn�t that strong, or doesn�t really fit the campaign well. On the other hand, if I�m just reacting to what the players try to do � I can adapt the pre-existing campaign ideas that I have to fit their actions. If they talk to a particular NPC, for example, and the conversation starts going a certain way I can tailor the answers to fit the direction I want the adventure to go.

As an example:

(Player: �Have you heard about the people disappearing near the docks?�)

(NPC: �Yes, strange, isn�t it? Most of them seem to have worked for the Serpent�s Breath Trading House.�)

(Player: �Really?�)

And I�ve nudged them closer to investigating the Serpent�s Breath Trading House. If I�d just dropped this information on the players out of the blue, they might follow up on it, or might not. Since they were actively seeking this information in the example above, though, they�re more invested in it, and it�s pretty much guaranteed that they�ll follow up on the lead. It�s a truism I�ve found throughout my years of gaming � players don�t trust clues that are simply handed to them, but they�ll implicitly follow the ones they think they�ve discovered on their own.

A caveat to improvising: when you improvise, you�re essentially committing to whatever you�re coming up with off the top of your head. It�s hard to take stuff back sometimes. I love to improvise, but a good rule of thumb I�ve found is to simply take your time. Before you decide that the kindly barkeep the player characters have befriended is really an evil cultist, and that�s the hook you�re going to use to get them headed off to fight some other cultists � just take a moment. Actually think �is this something I want to do?� before you go ahead and do it. If the players have befriended the barkeep and this seems totally out-of-character, or if you�d had other plans for how the barkeep might factor later on into the campaign, you might want to stop and think of something else. If not, go for it.

Anyway.

There was a lot of improvising last night, and a lot of picking up dormant adventure threads. And it all worked out pretty well in the end. The players managed to figure out a bunch of mysteries that had been perplexing them for a while, and connected two storylines in the campaign that they previously believed had been totally unrelated. In some ways, we had a lot more fun � and got a lot more accomplished � than if they�d just investigated the manor house.

But when they finally investigate that manor house, I�ll be ready.

I have a whole adventure for it prepped and ready to go.

The Lady of the Lake

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:40:56 EDT

One the adventures that influenced me the most in becoming a game writer is probably one you�ve never heard of.

It was also written by one of my favorite writers, and one of my best friends.

Both my sister Laura and I played Dungeons & Dragons as kids. Laura was the reason I began playing in the first place. Though Laura doesn�t particularly game much anymore, she�s been one of my favorite people to have at a gaming table during the many years I�ve been playing these things. Much like my late friend Doug, Laura was always well-versed in the rules, able to come up with some fiendishly clever ideas during the course of a game � but she never, ever lost sight of why we were gaming in the first place. Namely, to have fun. And Laura was � and still is � a lot of fun to have at the table.

As kids, we shared a subscription to Dragon Magazine. Sometime it would be a race to get home from school if we thought a new issue magazine would be waiting for us there � after all, the first one to grab it could take their sweet time reading it, while the other person had to wait for an eternity for the other to finish!

In those days, there was no Dungeon Magazine. Adventures popped up sporadically in the pages of Dragon, and as I recall there were a few really good ones in those early issues. Eventually, the featured adventures in Dragon proved to be a popular enough feature to spawn a sister magazine � Dungeon, of course! I remember reading the announcement of Dungeon Magazine�s impending arrival in one of the editorials of Dragon, along with the announcement that the new editors of Dungeon were looking for new writers to create adventures for the magazine.

Even then, I wanted to be a game writer. So I was tremendously excited about this news. An opportunity to write Dungeons & Dragons adventures? Awesome!!! I proceeded to spend a lot of time talking about the adventures I wanted to write, sketching out ideas for the adventures I wanted to write, and coming up with ridiculous over-the-top monsters and traps for the adventures I wanted to write.

One small problem.

I never spent any time writing any actual adventures. Oh, I could talk the talk, but walking the walk � ? Not so much. I liked the idea of being a writer, but then I wasn't putting in the time and the effort needed to become one.

Laura, on the other hand, absconded with the typewriter, and spent a few days actually pondering what the editors of Dungeon Magazine might want. She reasoned � correctly � that everyone submitting adventure ideas would probably be trying to knock themselves out writing the next high-level �Tomb of Horrors�. So she developed an idea for an entry-level AD&D adventure, designed for beginning DMs and players, and wrote a proposal for it. She mailed it off to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

About a month later, she got a letter from TSR � and a phone call from the editor, Roger Moore. Her proposal had been accepted, and they wanted to see the complete adventure.

That adventure became �Lady of the Lake�, which was published in issue #5 of Dungeon.

(For those of you freelancers out there, yes, that does mean Laura succeeded in getting an adventure accepted by a publisher � TSR, no less � on her very first try. You may commence with your gnashing of teeth and frustrated wailing now. I've been doing so for years.)

Laura�s success was vital, I think, to my becoming a publisher freelance writer much later on. Were it not for her success � and being able to see how she accomplished getting an adventure published, not to mention the writing of that very adventure � I think I might still be in that place, talking the talk but not walking the walk, so to speak. If you want to be a writer, you need to write. A lot. You need to make mistakes and learn from them. You need to learn the difference between passive voice and active voice, and why editors go crazy when you use the former instead of the latter. You need to learn about structure, and pacing, and fighting through those moments when you feel all the good words have escaped your grasp.

And that doesn�t happen unless you write.

Laura made it all look surprisingly easy.

I came across �Lady of the Lake� not too long ago. Reading through it was a wonderful trip down memory lane. It reminded me a lot of the games we used to run � much like those old games, �Lady� is more of a sandbox than a dungeon crawl. There�s much adventure to be had in the village of Gydnia, as well as in the forbidding wilderness of the Syzygy Mountains � but there�s no formal structure to the adventure. There�s a point to the adventure (surprisingly, it involves both a Lady and a Lake), but exactly what happens between the beginning and the end is very, very fluid. I found myself surprised by how well it held up, and how well it was written, considering that it was Laura�s first (and only) published adventure!

I�m going to be taking the original adventure over the next few weeks, and updating it for the Pathfinder rules system. My goal is to change as little of the adventure as possible. The words will be Laura�s; only the rules conversions and updates from AD&D to Pathfinder will be my work. This is partly as an experiment to better familiarize myself with the Pathfinder rules, partly to play around with some publishing software � but mostly, to share this adventure with some of you, and to let you all experience the work of a writer I happen to like. When I'm done with it, I'll be posting the final product on this site - free, for anyone who would like to take a look at it.

Much of the success I've had as a freelance writer is due to this adventure ... and to its wonderful writer. So thank you, Laura. Thank you very, very much.

Here�s to a noble Lady indeed.

The Dynamic Dungeon

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:09:29 EDT

Last "Lost City"-themed post for awhile, I promise.

There's other good things to discuss soon.

But in the meantime ...

One of the more interesting aspects of Moldvay adventures like �The Lost City� and �Castle Amber� is that they�re dynamic dungeons. By this, I mean the denizens of those dungeons are actively doing stuff, and trying to advance their own purposes and goals before the player characters ever show up.

When the player characters show up in these adventures, they�re partly there to Kill/Loot/Repeat. However, there�s also active, ongoing storylines already happening in the adventures that the players can choose to join, or modify, or ignore. And when they do so, the actions of these very same dungeon denizens also change. Granted, those actions may become the actions found in pretty much every dungeon ever written (�Intruders! Kill them!�), but they also may be more nuanced than that (�Hey, those guys have the Crown of the Ancients! Maybe they�ll trade it for this map to a dragon�s lair �) Having a dynamic dungeon gives the players more options, which is something I always consider to be the mark of a good adventure.

�Castle Amber� opens with one of the strangest examples of a dynamic dungeon, and it�s also one of my favorite openings for an adventure. The player characters enter the castle, ready for a fight � and almost immediately stumble across a boxing match, one being watched by a bunch of drunken nobles (who, incidentally, are also pretty powerful adversaries in a fight!). They invite the player characters to sit down and watch the fight, to bet on it, and even to participate in it (which means some hapless player gets stuck fighting a nasty monster called a demos magen in a bareknuckle brawl). It�s an opening that invites a lot of roleplaying opportunities, and allows the players to potentially learn about other areas of the dungeon, or even to forge some alliances with the strange residents of the castle.

And if they choose instead to treat the room like a standard dungeon crawl and attack everything in it, that works.

And if they are simply bemused by the situation and choose to move further into the castle, ignoring the boxing match completely, that works as well.

The opposite of a dynamic dungeon, of course, is a static one, when monsters simply hang around and wait for years in a single room, fervently hoping that someday a party of adventuring heroes will stumble into their lair so that they can fight them. The most notable offender of this is �Keep on the Borderlands�, although I kind of give that one a pass because it�s meant (I think) to be more of a �Danger Room� for newbie players. That�s where someone new and unfamiliar to the game can take his freshly-rolled magic-user to the nearby kobold lairs, learn some basic tactics (never stand near the front lines, find a good hiding spot when your magic missiles are used up) and head back to the Keep to heal up later.

But in terms of dynamics � c�mon, just look at the Caves of Chaos featured in �Borderlands�. It's awful.

Apparently, there�s a lair of kobolds just a few dozen yards away from the lair of goblins, which is just a few dozen yards away from the lair of orcs, which is just a few dozen yards away from the lair of gnolls, which is just a few dozen yards away from the lair of bugbears � and they all manage to co-exist in some sort of socialist nirvana without trying to kill each other. These various tribes also don�t seem terribly concerned that a bunch of so-called �heroes� from a certain nearby Keep continually slaughter their neighbors, and sit around their own cave lairs waiting to be murdered.

In a dynamic version of �Keep on the Borderlands�, the adventure would probably work like this instead:

First Encounter: Player characters raid the kobold lairs in the Caves of Chaos.
Second Encounter: A goblin/hobgoblin/bugbear alliance, alarmed by the genocide of their kobold neighbors, try laying siege to the Keep and the player characters inside it.
Third Encounter: A gnoll shaman, sensing the opportunity to eliminate the aforementioned goblin/hobgoblin/bugbear alliance, tries to parley with the player characters, offering to help the heroes attack the lairs.

� you get the idea.

The only danger with a dynamic dungeon is that sometimes you can start including too many options, and wind up juggling too many things at the same time. Most dungeons have an overall goal for the player characters to reach � slay the dragon, find the sword, save the princess, and the like. If there�s too many things going on in the dungeon, they become distractions from this main goal, and the adventure loses focus. A good dynamic dungeon may have things going on that do not directly relate to the main goal of the adventure, but in some way, they should tie back there eventually. In �The Lost City�, for example, the player characters may encounter a lot of various factions, and may interact with those factions in a variety of ways � but at the end of the day, the factions all either fear the great Zargon, or want to see Zargon destroyed. Any interaction the player characters have with any of the factions slowly but inevitably point towards the same goal � Zargon is the Big Bad Guy at the bottom of the ziggurat, and he needs to be destroyed.

Just something to keep in mind when writing your next adventure. A little dynamics goes a long way.

I�ll try to keep it in mind as well.

Farewell to a Friend

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:16:08 EDT

... dammit, I hate writing these sorts of things.

Chuck Cuthbert passed away a couple of days ago. I met Chuck through Bret Boyd's gaming group, with whom I've had the pleasure of rolling dice a couple of times over the past few years. Those games all took place at Chuck's home - specifically, "the barn", which simply put was a gamer's delight. And Chuck was always the gracious host.

I was going to write some stuff about Chuck as a player (he was clever, smart, and just a ton of fun to have at a table) and a DM (one of the best I�ve known), but screw that stuff for a moment ... Chuck was just a really funny, really nice guy.

I guess one of the things that strikes me the most was gaming with him right around Christmas a few years ago. It was only my second time playing with the group, so while I liked everyone in the group a lot, I still felt a bit like the "new guy". When I arrived for the game, I found that Chuck had a present for me. It was nothing major - just a little orange twenty-sided die - but it went a long way towards making be feel like I was indeed part of the group. Little things like that are what made Chuck a truly special, caring person.

And now he�s gone.

Rest in peace, Chuck. We�ll miss you.

Factions Optional

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:07:46 EDT

Continuing on the �Lost City� theme �

One of the best parts of �B4: The Lost City� was Tom Moldvay�s ingenious inclusion of factions. In the module, the city of Cynidicea fell into ruin long ago, cursed by the appearance of the strange beast Zargon. Over centuries, the descendents of the original inhabitants fell into madness, and separated into different tribes and factions, dedicated to worshipping the old gods of Cynidicea before the fall. The Brotherhood of Gorm, the Magi of Usamigaras, and the Warrior Maidens of Madarua were the three main factions (and the ones the player characters could mostly interact with, if so desired), and the Priests of Zargon were another (though they were mostly intended to be straight-up villains).

(A lot of this was probably inspired by the Conan classic �Red Nails�, but that�s fine. If you�re going to �borrow�, then �borrow� from the best.)

Again, in very elegant and economic fashion, Tom Moldvay laid out the basic goals and characteristics of the various factions in half a page. He also laid out some quick guidelines as to what sorts of player characters might choose to ally themselves with each faction, and why. And that�s all the coverage he really gave the factions in terms of how they would interact with the player characters, apart from combat.

It�s an adventure design technique that I call layering. It�s something I learned from modules like �The Lost City� and �Castle Amber� (another Moldvay classic). If the DM wishes to ignore the faction material, and wants to treat all the Cynidiceans as bad guys that are meant to be killed by the player characters � that�s fine! The module works, and it works very well. It becomes more of a generic dungeon crawl, but there�s nothing wrong with that.

With layering, though, options get tossed on top of that base model. The factions in �The Lost City� are a great example of that. If the DM so chooses � and if the players choose to pursue the option, if presented � the factions become much more than �monsters to kill�. The players can ally themselves with one faction, and perhaps become the enemies of another. Or they can double-cross a faction to gain something better from a third. It adds a lot of roleplaying opportunities into a module that � on the surface � is a nice, neat little dungeon crawl. By roleplaying with the various factions, a short 28-page module becomes a campaign that can last a long, long time.

The nice thing about layers is that nothing happens if the layers get ignored. The DM can always work with the basic adventure structure, and just add the layers onto it like ornaments on a Christmas tree. With modules that are very complex and don�t use this technique � well, they�re structured in such a way that if you want to ignore something, the module usually suffers. If �The Lost City� required that the players needed to ally themselves with a particular faction in order to succeed at something, it potentially becomes more work for the DM if he or she wants to ignore that aspect of the module. I�ve found that it�s usually better if a module is set up in a simple way, with more optional complex features that can be added on to it, rather than in a complex way that needs to be stripped down to be more simple.

The same applies for games in general, not just adventure modules. One of the major reasons I�ve never run Exalted � though some of the players at my gaming table would love it if I did � is because aspects of the campaign metaplot are embedded in the rules themselves, and I�m not a big fan of the game�s metaplot. I have ideas for radically different I�d like to run using the Exalted rules, but that means manually stripping out those pieces of the metaplot from the rules, which is a pain. If there were a basic framework for the Exalted rules, with the metaplot stuff layered on top of that as an option, this wouldn�t be an issue.

I tried the layering effect to a certain extent when writing the Dungeon Crawl Classics module �Dreaming Caverns of the Duergar�. In that module, the player characters stumble across a small band of duergar searching for an underground tomb. The duergar are led by Itharnos Cyvorak, a half-duergar/half-dragon mercenary who has his own agenda. The rest of the duergar don�t trust Itharnos, but they need him to locate the tomb. Additionally, there�s some other duergar priests and warriors that have their own agenda in that little band.

Does all this intrigue amongst the duergar matter? It depends. It�s possible to play the entire module and never find out anything about these various agendas, or ever know that most of the duergar hate each other. �Dreaming Caverns� can be played as a simple dungeon crawl, with �duergar = bad guys�, just meant to be fought, killed, and looted. However, depending on how the DM runs the adventure, and how the players choose to react to the duergar, the characters may find themselves allying themselves with one duergar, plotting against another, making arrangements to betray a third � it�s a lot of roleplaying opportunity, should the folks playing the adventure want to use it, but if they don�t, it doesn�t affect the adventure.

And the inspiration for this, of course, came from �The Lost City�.

In a certain amount of irony, I�m currently working on a �Lost City�-styled adventure at the moment with a very gifted co-author. I�ve been consolidating a lot of rough notes and background material for the adventure over the last week or so, and one of the bullet points included in these notes is �Factions�. I don�t know if it can be done as cleanly as Tom Moldvay did it for �The Lost City�, but ideally, I�d like to include a similar sort of network inside the upcoming adventure. I'd love to feature various factions and groups in the city, each with their own plans and agendas � and then have all of it be optional. Just another layer of the adventure, to be added or thrown away as the DM wishes.

I�ll let you know how it progresses.

And someday, hopefully you�ll be able to tell me if it measures up to the original �Lost City�.

Which is a high, high standard indeed.

Lost in the Sand(box)

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:48:47 EDT

The following was inspired by a post on James Maliszewski�s wonderful blog over at Grognardia. Thanks, James!

I first started playing D&D in 1983. I never DMed the game, though, until three years later.

The first adventure that I ran was B4: The Lost City.

One of the two best adventures ever written, in my opinion.

And a perfect adventure for a newbie DM.

I was in middle school. At the time, I was a painfully shy, scrawny, socially awkward, nerdy kid, just about one rung up the evolutionary ladder from Waldo in the Van Halen �Hot For Teacher� video � but not by much.

You couldn�t get me to speak in public if you put a gun to my head. I did my best to be little more than a shadow in the corner in every class, saying nothing and trying not to be noticed. The very idea of performing in front of others � which is exactly what a DM must do � was a frightening thought indeed. I was still a few years away from the point in high school where I basically snapped one day, decided that I didn�t give a fuck what anyone else thought of me, and went from being a shy, skinny little nerd to � well, a skinny little in-your-face punk who, deep down, was still kind of a nerd.

But I really liked D&D.

And I wanted to try running the game as a DM.

Somehow, I overcame my inhibitions and convinced a few kids I knew to try playing D&D with me. We all assembled after school in our English teacher�s classroom � she usually stayed late after school, and agreed that we could use the classroom for gaming for an hour or so after school let out. So all that year, once a week, I led my new group of gamers through the wonders of �The Lost City�.

And in the process, I learned a lot about gaming.

�The Lost City�, written by the wonderful Tom Moldvay, kicks off as a standard dungeon crawl. The characters, traveling through a desert, seek refuge in some ruins while caught in a sandstorm, and find themselves descending into the remains of a pyramid, down into the darkness of a vast, ancient, depraved civilization called Cynidicea. Most of the various factions of this civilization are ruled and controlled by a beast of great power simply known as Zargon.

On the one hand, the adventure is very straightforward. In the early stages of the module, adventurers go from room to room in the pyramid, kill monsters, take treasure, and explore a lot of rooms. And that�s exactly what I did as a newbie DM. �Roll Initiative!� was a phrase uttered often, and hack-and-slash ruled the day. However �

Anyone familiar with Tom Moldvay�s modules knows that the man could pack more solid ideas for campaign background and additional adventures in four pages of a module than most 256-page campaign sourcebooks do today. He very elegantly laid out how the various tribes and factions found in the Lost City beneath the pyramid interacted. He managed to fill the module with a dark, moody atmosphere, chock full of pulp fantasy. A lot of �The Lost City� is quite reminiscent of the best works of Robert E. Howard.

While it wasn�t necessary to use any of this information � the player characters could simply fight everyone, take their treasure, and move on � it added a new dimension to the game that I�d never used before � roleplaying. As in, social interaction between player characters and NPCs.

Go figure.

So as the game progressed, the player characters wound up making alliances with one of the Cynidicean factions, which thereby automatically made them sworn enemies of another. The heroes couldn�t just walk into a room and wantonly slaughter everything in sight anymore � they needed to be savvier than that, and do a little sleuthing. Battle preparations become more carefully planned affairs, rather than �draw swords, throw magic missiles, and hope for the best�. The game wasn�t the most sophisticated thing in the world, but it slowly evolved to something far beyond a mere hackfest and into something more well-rounded, featuring combat alongside diplomacy, explorations, and investigation, which proved to be much more interesting to the players.

Additionally, Moldvay put in a lot of areas in the module that weren�t detailed on the maps. Rather, there would be a corridor leading off the map, and the module would state �this corridor leads to the Temple of Despair�, or something like that, and a sentence or two about what might be found there. Towards the end of my �Lost City� adventure/campaign, I began writing up the details for things like the �Temple of Despair� on my own. This sandbox approach by Tom Moldvay allowed enough tools and guidance for newbie DMs to start creating their own adventures, and he managed to do so with a remarkable economy of words.

�The Lost City� was my first attempt at running a campaign, and after all these years, I still think it�s one of my best.

I�ve had the opportunity to write several modules of my own over the past few years. In all of them, I�ve done my best to try and emulate that sandbox approach of �The Lost City�. While I�m not nearly as succinct as Tom Moldvay, my goal has always been to provide additional, optional campaign ideas in an adventure in case the DM feels like expanding things, and potential opportunities for a lot of roleplaying, even in the middle of an adventure that is meant more as a dungeon crawl. If a gaming group reads one of my modules and doesn�t care about any of that extra stuff, they should be able to skip past it and go straight for the meat of the hack-and-slash dungeoneering. But hopefully, in case a DM is looking for more, there�s at least some ideas to grab, and to develop, and to make his or her own.

�The Lost City� has had a tremendous an influence on me as a game writer and designer. Sadly, Wizards of the Coast lost their damn minds (again) and have stopped all PDF sales of their out-of-print products, so it�s no longer easy to get of copy of this module. But if you�re a game writer, and you can find a copy on eBay or elsewhere, by all means do so. It�s worth your time.

I�d really like to run �The Lost City� again someday. It remains a true classic to me.

Hooky 3.75

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:14:00 EDT

When I was younger, most of the guys (and girls) in my gaming group were slightly older than myself. This never was really a problem until my senior year in high school, when they were either attending local community colleges, or working all sorts of jobs with weird hours. As a result, a lot of games got played in the middle of the week, during the middle of the day, when I was supposed to be in school.

I say �supposed to be� because given a choice between school and gaming, I ditched school. My priorities were a little warped back then.

I thought of this early this week, when I blew out of work early so I could go play in a game during the middle of the day. Chris Doyle, one of the esteemed authors of Castle Whiterock, was running a Pathfinder-ized version of Whiterock, and there was no way I was missing that. (Especially since the other esteemed author of Whiterock � Mr. Adrian Pommier � was participating in the game as well.)

Apparently, my priorities haven�t changed much in the past 20 years.

The game turned out to be my first real in-depth exposure to the upcoming Pathfinder game, which is derived from the rules for D&D 3.5. I�ve been freelancing for Paizo on a few small Pathfinder projects over the past few months, and I�ve read many times through the Pathfinder Beta rules that I acquired last summer � but this was the first real chance I had to see if my preconceived notions of Pathfinder matched up with reality once the dice hit the table.

One of the more prominent differences I noticed came during character generation. The power level of Pathfinder is more substantial than that of D&D 3.5. Low-level characters in Pathfinder have access to more feats, and are a bit stronger and tougher than their 3.5 counterparts. In rolling up Ravnir, my 3rd-level half-elf rogue, I found myself with a lot of feats and additional abilities I wouldn�t be getting with an analogous character in 3.5. I also found the options for �builds� much more accessible at lower levels � I was able to make Ravnir much more of a find-and-disable traps burglar even at 3rd level than I normally would be able to do in 3.5

Pathfinder also streamlined some of the more clunky elements of 3.5 (grapple, I�m looking at you!). A new mechanic � the Combat Manuever Bonus, or CMB � captures how characters accomplish a variety of different actions in combat, such as bull rushing, or tripping, or the aforementioned grapple. It makes figuring out these maneuvers much easier. Additionally, various skills like Spot and Search got consolidated into simpler skills, like Perception. It makes the game run a little smoother.

(To be fair, D&D 4E did a lot of this sort of consolidation as well, and also for the better.)

Most importantly, I found the game play in Pathfinder to be very close to D&D 3.5. The style and feel of the Pathfinder game was virtually identical to the various 3.5 games I�ve played. Granted, there were some minor changes, but I didn�t find myself going �whoa, that�s different�, or feeling like I was playing something very, very new. If you like D&D 3.5, then I think you would like Pathfinder. For all of the differences that can be found between the games, they�re relatively minor once the games are being played.

That being said, there are differences. Despite streamlining a lot of the bloat of 3.5, Pathfinder also added some bloat back in with some new rules and options. Some work very well, in my opinion (sorcerer bloodlines = win), and others not so much (barbarian rage points = meh). Between the new rules, options, and scaling up in power level, I�d probably be hesitant to drop Pathfinder characters into a stock D&D 3.5 module without some serious tweaks of the adventure. And considering one of the original design parameters of Pathfinder was supposed to be �backwards compatibility� between Pathfinder and 3.5 � I�m not exactly seeing it right now. The Pathfinder game plays the same as D&D 3.5, for the most part, but it�s a stronger game.

This is based on game play using the Pathfinder Beta rules, though. I know Paizo�s plan was to throw some more experimental ideas in the Beta rules, and refine accordingly for the final rules, which are scheduled to be released this summer. Though I have a few reservations about things I�ve seen in the Beta rules, they�re minor issues at best, and I�m looking forward to getting my hands on the �official� rules in a few months.

Oh. Right. As for the game �

� lots of fun. The highlight of Ravnir�s brief adventuring career was an encounter with orc slavers, and a particularly nasty orc leader. Attempting to take advantage of a spell that dazed the leader, Ravnir stepped in with his short sword and dealt out a ridiculous amount of sneak attack damage. He then dealt out some more damage the following round, just as the leader regained his senses � but it wasn�t enough to take down his foe. So the orc leader got a critical hit, dealt out a ton of damage, and Ravnir got relegated to the realms of the permanently dead with -12 hit points.

If Ravnir had just inflicted 1 more point of damage on the orc leader, he would�ve dropped the orc instead.

Still, a great time. My thanks to Mr. Doyle for running a fine game, and to everyone else at the table as well. I had a blast.

Definitely worth playing a little hooky.

At The Root Of It All

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:09:35 EDT

Been very, very busy the past few days. I've been writing stuff involving giants, lost cities, strange puzzles, and river kingdoms ... and sneaking in some honest-to-goodness gaming as well. The next post will probably cover my long-overdue return to the gaming table as a player, but suffice it to say it involves Pathfinder and Castle Whiterock.

And a few thoughts on playing hooky as well.

In the meantime, something short and sweet - I've managed to acquire a curious little edition to my gaming collection.

Yep. Chainmail, which is the predecessor to all things Dungeons & Dragons.

It's a short and interesting game. At heart, it's a tabletop combat game - you move troops around a field of battle, with terrain affecting your ability to move and attack. Everything's determined by rolling six-sided dice. Roll high (5 or 6) and you destroy your foe. Depending on what sort of troops you have, you get more dice to roll during an attack.

You also get heroes. Some of them have familiar roles - heroes, wizards, dragons, and so on. Though they don't really have a lot of detail to them (a dragon, mechanically-speaking, is a catapult that can fly and move over impassible terrain), you can see basic elements that would show up prominently in the White Box D&D rules, the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, and even Boot Hill. And there's some elements that even carry to the modern version of the game - heroes fighting troops in Chainmail is very, very similar to a fighter taking on minions in 4E.

I'm definitely going to have to try playing this at some point, just to see what else I discover. Reading a game is always good, but I always find that playing it gives you a far better idea of how things work.

(And I may have to gank the jousting rules from Chainmail for other games that I run - they're very simple, very clean, and works brilliantly.)

Just need to find some time to step away from the computer and roll some dice again.

Most Exalted

Fri, 29 May 2009 16:58:42 EDT

My friend John has been trying to get me to run an Exalted campaign for years.

So far, he hasn't been successful. Although over time, he's slowly managed to push me closer and closer to doing so.

Behold the cover of an upcoming Exalted book called "Scroll of Exalts".

This may finally push me over the edge.

Taking The Lead

Thu, 28 May 2009 12:59:14 EDT

My Warhammer game is � quirky.

In a good way, though.

The players in my Warhammer game are folks with whom I�ve been gaming for a very, very long time - in cases, twenty years or more. We know each other�s gaming tendencies very, very well. The current game is investigation-heavy and combat-light because that�s the style they � and I � happen to like. Though I still seem to get caught off-guard at least once a game by the actions they take during a given adventure, I can generally guess what they�ll like in an adventure, what they won�t like, and what general direction each adventure will go.

But sometimes, it�s just fun to throw things out there to see what happens.

So far, the game has prominently featured the mysterious goings-on at an opera house, and the nefarious activities of the rat-like skaven in the sewers beneath the city. I�ve plotted out both of these aspects of the campaign in fairly rigid detail. Not quite as rigid as an adventure written for publication, but I have the details of these particular storylines mapped out, along with timelines as to how and when certain things will happen, depending on the actions (or inactions) of the characters.

It�s worked well so far, but I�ve noticed that too much familiarity hurts the game sometime. The players know my tendencies. They know that I know theirs. And after a lot of years of gaming together, it can get a little too easy sometimes to predict what someone will or won�t do. So while the specifics of the game can still be surprising to the players, the general tendencies of it � well, sometimes, they aren�t.

So to combat this, I just tossed in two random elements into the game.

I don�t have any preconceived notions for these two elements. I don�t know what the players will do with these elements. For that matter, I don�t know what I�ll do with them. But rather than taking the lead with them, I�ve just thrown them into the game and watched how the players reacted to them. Their reactions have dictated how they�ll fit into the game. This means I don�t have to adjust anything to fit what the characters plan to do; I just see what they choose to do and react accordingly.

One of these elements involved dwarves involved in purchasing large amounts of guns from a shoddy gunsmith in the merchant�s district of Kislev. For those unfamiliar with the Warhammer campaign setting, dwarves are the premier weaponsmiths � and gunsmiths � of the world. The thought of them ever buying weapons from humans is pretty odd on its own, but from a human gunsmith who isn�t even very good � very, very weird.

The actual reason why the dwarves are buying lousy guns from a human gunsmith? Beats me. I don�t know. I just tossed that tidbit out there to see how the players would react to it.

And the theories they�ve come up with while sitting around the table are far better than anything I ever would�ve dreamed up on my own.

The other � well, I�ll keep quiet about that one for a little while longer, in case any of them happen to drop in and read this post.

I wouldn�t recommend running every aspect of every adventure with random, unplanned elements like this, but if you want your game to head in some interesting directions � well, odds are that you�ve got some pretty creative and talented folks sitting at your gaming table. I�d gotten very used to writing rigid adventures as a result of my freelancing. Sometimes it�s good to remember that home games can take advantage of being more fluid and flexible.

Let the players take the lead every once in a while.

Evolution

Mon, 25 May 2009 09:13:43 EDT

I�ve spent some time in recent weeks reading over the various Player�s Handbooks for four editions of AD&D and D&D. There hasn�t been any grand purpose for doing so. I�ve just come to realize that I like certain things about certain editions of the game, and often I can't quite put my finger on the reasons why. I�m also someone who likes knowing the history of things, and how things evolve. I think you get a much better understanding for how and why the way things are by knowing how they used to be.

So I present to you my random musings on the various editions. Have I really reached any conclusions? Not really. Or � at least � not yet. Suffice it to say there�s things I like and dislike about each version of the game, and I�m actually happy to run or play any of the four editions. If I ran another AD&D/D&D campaign on a regular basis, the version I would run would be �

� well, let�s take a look through them all first.

First Edition:

The 1E Players� Handbook represents all the original ideas for a game called Dungeons & Dragons, as laid out by Gygax, Arneson, and a host of others. These ideas started with Chainmail, made their way into the White Box set of D&D � and then finally crept into the Player�s Handbook.

The main thing that�s evident with 1E is its reliance on subsystems. It�s clear that the game as a whole was not designed all at once. Rather, it started with core elements from the aforementioned Chainmail and White Box D&D, and whenever someone got a new idea, it was tacked onto the game. And that new idea often had nothing to do with the ideas that came before it.

During this early stage of the game�s existence, I�m pretty sure that there was no thought of a unifying mechanic for the rules. Just because something worked a certain way didn�t mean that something else similar should work the same way. So, the game wound up with rules where things were resolved at times by rolling percentile dice, or by rolling a six-sided dice, or by rolling a twenty-sided die and wanting a low result, or a high result � you get the idea. Also, many times, the needed result by rolling any die needed to be compared to a chart or result matrix, and the game had dozens of those. (And sometimes, the �mechanic� was easy � �Touch this and die�.)

There were some arbitrary decisions made for the game as well. For example, clerics wound up with the curious trait of not being able to use edged weapons because Gary Gygax had read stories of the Archbishop Turpin. The good Archbishop wielded a mace in combat because he didn't want to shed blood, as he believed firmly in the motto "who lives by the sword dies by the sword". The same went for the magic system, which was based mostly on the works of Jack Vance, which Gary Gygax happened to like. The rules were chosen more because the designers found such things interesting or fun, not due to balance.

It all led to a slew of fractured systems and subsystems. On their own, most of them worked; it just left a lot to be desired in terms of consistency.

(And for those who complain about the �lack of balance� in 1E � sometimes it helps to remember that the designers were going where no one had gone before. Yes, parts of it are certainly unbalanced � but it helps to keep perspective sometimes. We get to talk about stuff like balance because of their early forays into design.)

Second Edition:

This is the last version of the game that I consider a true revision. When 2E came out, AD&D was enjoying great popularity, and most gamers really liked the game. So 2E didn�t change things a hell of a lot. The game got streamlined quite a bit � we got THAC0, for example, rather than half a dozen �to-hit� charts for the various character classes � but not much got hideously altered from 1E. Gamers were still left with a lot of systems and subsystems. The biggest change I can think of for 2E didn�t really come in the Player�s Handbook, but in the various �Complete� books, which introduced the idea of non-weapon proficiencies � which were the early versions of skill systems, for all practical purposes. TSR�s goal with 2E seemed to be �let�s clean up the game�, not �let�s change the game�. A lot of people liked 1E, so I�m guessing they had no desire to mess around too much with the core mechanics.

The up side? The clean-up. The bad side? Stuff like the "Complete" books added in a ridiculous amount of unbalanced bloat. If you stuck to just the rules in the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide, your game was probably fine. If you went beyond that, though, the game moved badly out of whack.

(And let's not talk of the Monstrous Compendium and its crappy binder system.)

Third Edition:

3.0 and 3.5 blew up a lot of what First Edition and Second Edition had done, and started over from scratch. Classes and most of the core concepts of the game remained the same, but the big goal was the introduction of a unifying mechanic to the rules � the d20. Roll a d20, beat a target number. That�s essentially how every rule in the game works, whether trying to smack a dragon with a sword, or looking for a secret door. Everything else is a modifier to those rolls. Skills and feats let you either do something, or improve your odds of doing something.

The other goal presented by 3.0 and 3.5 was explaining how everything worked � and I mean everything. A lot of 1E and 2E was dictated by the handwave, or DM fiat. How do you create a sword like Excalibur? In 1E or 2E, the answer is either �you don�t�, or �you need to forge a blade like this in the fires of lava beneath Mount Wyvern, during a full moon when the stars are aligned right� � in other words, whatever the DM decreed. Houseruling was pretty much expected in 1E and 2E.

In 3.0 or 3.5, the answer is �if you have a wizard of this level, with these spells, this amount of gold, and these feats, roll a d20. If you beat the target number, you succeed.� The design philosophy went more along the lines of the DM shouldn�t have to houserule anything. The rules should be your reference for anything and everything imaginable.

Explaining everything, I found, was always a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it�s good to know everything. Want to create a monster? Easy. Follow the rules. Want to leap off a balcony, swing from a chandelier, and do a backflip onto a raving lizard creature? Follow the rules. The rules cover anything you want to do, or can be adapted to do so.

On the other hand, too many rules bog things down. In 1E and 2E, it was always easy to create an orc chieftain. Bump his hit points, give him a slightly better �to-hit� roll, hand him a +1 longsword, and away you go. In 3.5? Making a properly-statted 5th-level orc fighter was a nuisance, especially figuring out his skills and feats (and half of which wouldn't even come into play before the characters killed him!). I also found that things would get bogged down in 3.5 because you knew there was a rule for what you wanted to do somewhere in the Player's Handbook � so you spent a half-hour poring through books looking for that obscure rule, rather than just houseruling and moving on.

The complexity of the rules could also detract from trying to do cool stuff at times. If you wanted to do the aforementioned leap from a balcony, you knew you needed a lot of ranks in skills like Jump, Tumble, and the like to try such a thing. So while it was nice to know exactly how such things could be accomplished, the rules also defined limitations much more clearly.

But despite its differences from its predecessors, I think 3.0 and 3.5 had its strong points. I don�t consider it a better version of the game, though � just different. I personally like the more unified rules (even though it got rid of little grognard things like �negative AC = awesome�, which I always loved), but the fiddly explanations for how everything worked had its bad points as well.

Fourth Edition:

I don�t look at 4E as an evolution of 3.5. Rather, I think the designers went back to 1E and 2E � and then designed a new version of the game, as if 3.0 and 3.5 never existed.

A lot of the 4E game is great. I think the 4E design team found a happy medium between the need for houseruling in 1E/2E and the massive complexity of 3.0/3.5. The rules are unified. They explain pretty much everything that you need to run a game smoothly, and they do so quite easily. It�s something that's *very* noticeable from the DM side of the screen. In terms of running a game as a DM, 4E is by far my favorite version of D&D.

I also like the synergies between the character classes. The player character roles, which I thought would suck, are great. In earlier versions of D&D, there wasn�t an intentional effort to have characters work as a team in combat. There certainly were things characters could do together that would improve their chances of success (such as spell buffs), but I don�t think this was part of the initial design process prior to 4E. The ability to mark enemies in combat, manipulate terrain for tactical advantage, and the like shine much more in 4E than any other version of the game.

On the down side �

The game is very combat-intensive, even in comparison to other earlier editions of the game. Enough so that I consider 4E to be a miniatures game that features some roleplaying elements, rather than a roleplaying game that strongly uses miniatures (3.0/3.5), or just uses miniatures if that�s what you want (1E/2E). Utility skills and spells are present in 4E, but they�ve been very much pushed to the backburner.

I happen to like games that are roleplaying-intensive and feature lots of investigation, in addition to the combat. Without those utility skills and spells � well, I can run a 4E game that�s an investigative game, but the rules aren�t suited well � in my opinion � to run a game like that. It�s kind of like running a dungeon crawl for a White Wolf game like Vampire; you can do it, but there�s probably a whole bunch of other game systems better suited to do what you want.

Also, in many ways, the game is the least flexible of all the versions of AD&D/D&D. Everything has a clearly defined role, or a niche, or a slot. If you want to have the player characters fight sahuagin, you can�t just chuck sahuagin at them. To optimize the combat, you ideally need some of sort sahuagin controller, some skirmishers, perhaps a brute or a lurker as well � granted, it�s not too hard to do, but there�s something a bit off to me about making sure everything fits a formula. 3.0/3.5 did this to a certain extent, but I thought those versions of the game had a little more leeway. 4E, while streamlined, often limits options a bit much for my tastes. It makes me miss the days of 1E/2E where as a DM, I could send a group of sahuagin at the players characters, and I could determine the sahuagin's tactics and roles � rather than having the game dictate those tactics and roles to be in the rules by how the monsters were constructed.

The bottom line?

I like all four versions of the game.

I think they�re all flawed, but in all versions, the good they offer far outweighs the bad.

I probably like 1E and 2E best of all, but that�s probably just my inner nostalgic grognard speaking.

And if I were to run another AD&D/D&D campaign on a regular basis, the version I would run would be whatever the hell best suited the tastes of the gamers at my table.

Orcs Rule!

Sun, 24 May 2009 10:57:56 EDT

Several years ago, I got the opportunity to write a book called "The Complete Guide to Liches" for Goodman Games. It was the first complete book that I ever wrote that got published. I have fond memories of writing it, despite the difficulties I found working on it.

Writing a full-length game book is a weird animal. It has to make sense, rules-wise, as well as be mechanically useful to a game. But write too much crunch, and it's boring.

Fiction needs to play a strong hand in these books as well. But the fiction can't be self-absorbed. It needs to have many, many ideas that are both interesting to read but easily ported into anyone's game. Make the ideas a little too esoteric, and you've killed a huge number of potential readers. Make it too generic, though, and it's boring. And make the book too much fiction ... well, it's interesting to read, but it can't be used in a game without some crunch to back it up.

"Liches" turned out okay - not great, just okay, but it's one of those books I'd love to take another crack at someday. I wasn't all that familiar with the d20 rules at that point, and I think it shows. It also shows the inexperience of a new writer putting words to paper. At some point - in some form - I'll try my hand at another monster book, only I'll do it better.

In the meantime ... I have this gem as my new standard.

Monstercology: Orcs is a great new 4E sourcebook by Rick Maffei. If you don't know Rick's work, you should ... and you will. Rick's one of the great unsung gaming writers I know. His adventure "The Scaly God" is one of the best DCCs ever published; he's written some of the best and most fiendish encounters for the various Dungeon Crawl Classic tournament adventures; and his most recent DCC, "Thrones of Punjar", is a must-have if you're playing a 4E game.

Monstercology: Orcs balances fluff with crunch effortlessly. Better still, it gets ideas for games flowing as you read it, and flowing easily. I picked it up this morning - and although I'm only about halfway through its pages, I've already gotten ideas for a great 4E campaign just by reading this book. I can't really say the same for many other 4E sourcebooks ... so kudos to you, Rick, for a job very, very well-done.

Although it's perfect for 4E, I think it's a good sourcebook for any sort of fantasy game. I know I'll be importing some of its concepts into my Warhammer game.

Rick's one of those writers whose stuff I love to read, and who always makes me want to be a better writer myself. He always makes me shake my head and go "... man, I wish I'd thought of that." And for a writer, I don't have any higher compliment than that.

So pick up Monstercology: Orcs, and get familiar with Rick's work.

I get the feeling that you'll be seeing his name on more and more books in the weeks and months to come.

Which is fantastic indeed.

Worth 1,000 Words

Thu, 21 May 2009 08:19:02 EDT

You�ll notice that I post a lot of old-school gaming artwork on the site.

Part of it�s because the artwork � at times � reflects the sort of projects I�m working on. I might not be able to �officially� talk about the sorts I�ve projects I�m writing at times, but the artwork might provide a hint or two.

Part of it�s because the artwork reflects the subject or the tone of a given post.

But mostly, it�s because I dig the art.

I think I got as much into D&D way back in the day as much because of the cover art as because of the game itself. I still remember my sister Laura coming home with the D&D Basic set many, many moons ago, and looking at that crazy Erol Otus cover.

That made me want to play the game nearly as much as the idea of playing a wizard or an elf. Erol�s art isn�t necessarily the best stuff on the planet, but I love it. It evokes a feel for the game � a sense of something both wondrous and strange � and stamps a personality upon the game that�s unmistakable.

In the pages of the Basic rulebook, I started to become familiar with other artists who would become legends of D&D and AD&D. Jeff Dee. Jim Roslof. David C. Sutherland III. Bill Willingham. David Trampier. Tom Wham. Jim Holloway. And others I�m sure that I�m forgetting.

All gave the game wonderful visuals to the words of Gygax and company, and I think it�s safe to say that the game wouldn�t have nearly have become as popular as it did back in the day without their talented works.

I bought L1: The Secret of Bone Hill strictly because of the cover art. I love this cover. You have no idea what the adventure�s about based on the cover, but dammit, it screams adventure to me. I can�t tell you how many adventure modules I bought strictly based on the cover art, not knowing or caring what the actual module might be about. Turned out that the adventure (and its sequel, "The Assassin's Knot") turned out to be preety damn amazing as well.

I always loved the back cover of White Plume Mountain. It wasn�t until years later that I realized that �Blackrazor� was actually Stormbringer, and that the whitehaired warrior was none other than an uncredited Elric of Melnibone.

Of interest (to me, anyway) are the unfinished parts of this drawing, which recently came to light. Given TSR�s later kibosh of demons and devils in order to become �family friendly�, I�m not surprised that the complete drawing went unfinished.

I got into �Villains and Vigilantes� strictly because of the art. I can remember old advertisements in Dragon Magazine, featuring a hero called Magnetor. Much like the D&D modules, I saw this ad and immediately wanted to play the game. Didn�t know what the rules were, and didn�t care.

I just wanted to play a character as cool as Magnetor.

Dragon Magazine had its share of awe-inspiring artists as well. I remember that Jim Holloway usually did most of the art for the �Ares� section. I got introduced to the art of Larry Elmore and Clyde Caldwell through their great covers as well. Though Elmore and Caldwell usually veered a little too close to cheesecake-chainmail-bikini for my tastes, I still loved their work.

The recent �Master Dungeons� series by Goodman Games has recycled a bit of the cover art from those old magazines. If I ever got a crack at writing something for that series, I�d love to use the Elmore piece above. At least for me, there�s an adventure lurking in that painting that�s just waiting to be told. (Just where does that path lead?)

RIFTS introduced me to the works of Keith Parkinson and Brom.

These two covers, both done by Keith Parkinson, kickstarted a pretty damn good RIFTS campaign that I ran for many years. And Brom�s stuff always had a surreal, sinister edge to it that I always admired. (Brom�s stuff is what stoked my interest in the Dark Sun campaign setting for AD&D as well.)

I�ve always thought that covers are just as important for a game book as the content inside. A good cover won�t necessarily make up for lousy content � but you want people to pick the book off the shelf in the first place. A great cover is a great way to do that. Also, a great cover gets gamers fired up to run something vivid and imaginative. I don�t think I would ever have been nearly as inspired to run my old RIFTS campaign if the book covers had been boring and bland. With Keith Parkinson�s covers, I got a sense of a truly strange, alien menace, and I could take that sense and develop it into something I could call my own.

As a writer, I�ve been lucky enough to have had some great covers on the things I�ve written. My favorite is still the cover for �Curse of the Emerald Cobra�, which Mike Wilson knocked out of the park.

And this guy named Jeff Dee did not one, but two of the covers for my adventures.

I still can�t quite wrap my head around that, but I love it.

Here�s to the artists who inspire us!

Staying Focused

Wed, 20 May 2009 10:18:14 EDT

My writing tends to be feast or famine. While I strive to write new something every day � I think I�ve stated before that I aim for just 300 words a day, no matter what � what I actually write in terms of word count on any given day is a little or a lot. There�s very few in-between days. Often times, it�s 300 words or 10,000. And while I�m getting a better handle on why that happens, that doesn�t change the fact that it does happen, and that I don�t have much control over it. Some days, writing is like squeezing blood from a stone. Others � the words just pour out, and they don�t stop. I don�t sleep, I don�t eat. I just put words to a page, one at a time.

Of course, when I�m riding that wave of creativity, and writing a lot of words � it doesn�t mean that those words are any good. They tend to come out in an unfocused barrage. If I don�t have a clear idea of what I want to write, or where I�m going, what comes out is page of page of awful dreck.

So I�ve resorted to two ways of harnessing that energy, and trying to keep focused. That way, when that creative burst of inspiration finally shows up, I can take advantage of it and keep the writing productive, rather than writing a sprawling disaster.

The first way is something I call the Chaos Outline. It�s not a formal outline per se � rather, it�s just a collection of random thoughts and ideas. I keep a notebook with me all the time. When I think of an idea � a place for an adventure, perhaps, or a line of dialogue that I think might be good for a villain in a novel � I write it down. Immediately. I may have no idea what to do with it at the time, but when I�m in a mood to write profusely, and I don�t have a clear idea of what I want to write � I go to the Chaos Outline. And it�s usually got something I can use when I'm stuck for an idea.

The other way is a more traditional outline, known as a Real Outline, which I use on anything I can call a �project� � an article, or an adventure, or a short story, or whatever. I used to just start writing something and then see where the words would lead me � problem is, I�ve learned that I have a short attention span. If I don�t plot out carefully where I�m going with my writing, I find that where I wind up bears little resemblance to where I started. A lot of times, I get midway through writing something, get an epiphany, come up with a cool idea that I hadn�t considered before I started writing � but the new idea completely alters everything I�ve written before. The end result is a rambling, incoherent mess that lurches from one topic to another.

�Devil in the Mists�, which was an adventure that I wrote a few years ago, unfortunately suffers from that, and I think it shows. I had a decent idea for an adventure when I started, got an idea for something very different halfway through writing it, and instead of shelving the new idea, I tried to merge it with the original concept. The end result works okay, but not really as well as it should.

So I�ve taken to using Real Outlines. They�re never set in stone, but I use them as mile markers � I know where the writing is going, and if I start moving too far off course, I can either use the outline to rein myself in, or adjust the outline to accommodate new ideas. They don�t keep me completely focused on a given subject, but they keep me pointed in the right direction.

Last weekend, one of those creative bursts came along. I had the energy, I had the time, and I had a Real Outline for a project. It was a rare occurrence, like a planetary conjunction, and it was good indeed.

End result? 17,000 words written in a day-and-a-half.

I�m doing some editing at the moment to see if any of those words are any good � but so far, so good. I can't complain. I just hope the editors feel the same way, when they finally get a chance to peruse it.

Just more tools for the writing arsenal.

Somebody wise once said that with every word you or I write, we become better writers. Part of that means, well, writing. A lot. And part of that means understanding the whys and hows of what we write.

I feel like I�m finally starting to understand the latter. Not master it, mind you, but at least understand it.

And now, if you�ll excuse me � I need to see how long I can hold onto this wave, and see where it takes me. More stuff to write, and more outlines to follow.

So, Which Edition ... ?

Mon, 18 May 2009 23:53:34 EDT

Well, I went to my local Borders at lunch to pick up the new Monster Manual 2. I bought it partly out of necessity (a project I�m writing heavily ties into some of the creatures contained within its pages), but partly out of genuine interest. I like a lot of the critters that are in the book, and wanted to see how the 4E version of those critters turned out.

Turns out the cashier at the register is a gamer.

�So, 4E �� he says, as he puts the book in a bag, �what do you think?�

It�s a question I�ve avoided answering for a while, at least on this site - namely, what I think about 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. A few people know my feelings on the game, but it's not really something I've shared up to now.

Guess it's time to share.

I may be in the minority, but I genuinely like First Edition AD&D. I also like Second Edition AD&D. I also like 3.0, and 3.5. And I also like 4E. That being said, I think the various iterations of D&D and AD&D are very different from one another (with the possible exceptions of First and Second Edition), and I consider them all to be different games that share a common name. The various editions of the game support a variety of playing styles, some better than others, others � well, not better.

Part of the problem with the edition wars, so to speak, is that the game always has the same name. It�s almost impossible to look at one version of the game without comparing it to another. It�s hard to judge one version of the game without thinking �well, this version does such-and-such way better�. Objectivity goes straight out the window.

Put another way � well, many years ago, when Metallica put out their �Load� and �ReLoad� albums, I hated them. But I didn�t hate them because they were terrible. I hated them because they represented change. Metallica had gotten bored with playing thrash metal, and moved more towards playing hard blues-based rock. If some band � �Not Metallica� � had released �Load� and �ReLoad�, I probably would�ve been raving about those albums, and about the great new rock band that had made them.

But because Metallica released them, and because I wanted albums and songs more like their older material, I didn�t like them. It was impossible for me to listen to �Load� without thinking I�d rather be listening to �Master of Puppets� or "Ride the Lightning" instead.

I think a lot of the hostility about 4E comes from change, and the fact that it�s not 3.5, or whatever version of the game people used to play. The beautiful thing about gaming, though, is that once you have the rules for a game, you can continue to play whatever version you prefer. �Star Frontiers� hasn�t been printed for years, but I still have the boxed set rules. I can play it whenever I want. Same goes for First Edition AD&D.

(How Wizards of the Coast handled the release of 4E certainly factors into this hostility, of course � but that's a topic for another day.)

4E doesn�t supplant the older versions of D&D and AD&D, it just presents new options, and a new way to play the game. And if you hate those options, and how the game is played, you can still play whatever version you liked better.

Grognards who hate 4E aren�t wrong. They�ve just chosen to continue using older versions of the game, which probably fit their gaming styles much, much better.

Gamers that play 4E who hate the earlier versions of AD&D and D&D aren�t wrong, either. They�ve just found a version of the game that fits their gaming styles much better than the older versions of the game.

Different strokes for different folks is all.

But telling someone that they�re wrong for liking a particular version of the game, whether old or new � well, that I�ll never understand. It might be wrong for you, but that doesn�t mean it�s not great for someone else.

So, here�s what I wound up saying to the cashier. It went something like this:

�If you like a miniatures-heavy game that focuses a lot on combat, and provides a lot of really interesting tactical options, it�s great.�

�The dynamics between the character classes is pretty cool as well � the game supports one character setting another up to do something awesome, much more so than earlier editions of the game. And rules-wise, it�s more streamlined than 3.5, particularly on the DM side of the game.�

�If that sounds cool, check it out.�

�If not, keep on playing what you�re playing, as long as you like it.�

Just my opinion, of course. Take this with a huge grain of salt, and keep in mind that of all these many versions of AD&D and D&D � and I haven�t even mentioned B/X D&D or White Box D&D yet, or Pathfinder, or a whole slew of retro-D&D clone, my current game of choice is � Warhammer.

Here�s hoping you like what you�re playing, whatever the edition might be.

At the end of the day, we�re all rolling dice with our friends. And that�s the most important part.

The Art of Stupidity

Thu, 14 May 2009 21:46:44 EDT

Last night, I tried to figure out how much gaming-related stuff I�ve written over the last decade or so.

The short answer is �a lot.�

A slightly longer answer than that would be �a lot, and most of it was contracted work for various roleplaying game companies.�

A slightly longer answer than that would be �a lot, most of it was contracted work for various roleplaying game companies � and maybe half of it ever got published, and I probably received actual payment for slightly less than that.�

Makes me wonder sometimes why I do this stuff. Albert Einstein once said �The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results�. I happen to agree with good old Albert, except I think "the definition of insanity" is interchangable with "the art of stupidity".

And there are times when I feel like I've eaten a big bowl of stupid for breakfast when I'm working on a project.

I know where it began, though. It all started with Palladium Books. In high school, I moved on from running AD&D and Warhammer games to a pair of games published by Palladium: RIFTS, and the Palladium Fantasy RPG. Yes, those games feature notoriously broken rules systems (particularly RIFTS). It didn�t matter. I houseruled them both into systems my gaming group liked, and those games (particularly RIFTS) became responsible for many, many hours of happy gaming as a teenager. I thought they were phenomenal. The books for the various Palladium game systems weren�t the best things ever written in terms of game mechanics, but they were always filled with great ideas for adventures, stories, monsters, the whole nine yards. I could pick up virtually any Palladium book, flip through a couple of pages, and find something that made me go � �Hell yeah! There�s my adventure!�

(That�s something I try to emulate in my own writing, even today.)

Somewhere during my freshman year in college, I got this strange but unwavering belief that I was going to work for Palladium Books when I graduated as a staff writer. This belief was based upon zero facts. I�d never met anyone at Palladium, or spoken to anyone who worked there. I�d never been to a gaming convention west of Long Island. I had an appalling lack of understanding of how the gaming industry worked, or how much writers got paid � all I had was a bunch of assumptions that were horribly, horribly wrong. I had no published writing credits.

And yet, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to be a writer for Palladium.

I spent many hours of my junior and senior years in college writing two RIFTS books, usually during the wee hours of the morning in a 24-hour campus computer lab. One was called �The Banwok Hunters�, and the other was �Demon Heart Falling�. Both were based on my long-running RIFTS campaign. Both ran about a hundred pages, single-spaced. My friend Eric drew a cover for one of them, and my friend Jon drew a cover for the other. When they were done, I were to the campus print shop, printed up ten copies of each book, and had them spiral-bound. I wrote a cover letter, dumped that and a pair of the books in a large manila envelope (this was well before most people had e-mail), and mailed them to Palladium.

No, I didn�t have any writer�s guidelines. No, I didn�t even know what a non-disclosure agreement was. No, I hadn�t even bothered to contact Palladium to see if they were even accepting unsolicited proposals, let alone unsolicited completed manuscripts. I thought this was how things worked, so that�s what I did.

Shockingly, I received a letter from Kevin Siembieda at Palladium shortly thereafter, saying that he liked the manuscripts, and thought they�d be publishable with �a little work�. That led to two years worth of rewrites, and more rewrites, and still more rewrites � and at the end of all that, I got my infamous letter from Kevin stating �"Mike, I think you have potential but if I were your tenth grade English teacher I'd give you a C- on these manuscripts. I'd feel bad about it, but that's what they would deserve. They will never be publishable."

(I still have this letter. It�s in a frame sitting next to the desk in my computer room.)

At the time, the letter was one of many reasons I bowed out of gaming for a couple of years. But the itch slowly came back. And while I�d learned enough after a few years to realized that my initial assumptions about working in the gaming industry were completely stupid, I still wanted very much to be a writer, and still wanted to write games.

Ironically (or, perhaps more accurately, stupidly), when I decided to try my hand at writing again, my first foray was with Palladium � again. Maybe it wasn�t the smartest idea, but Palladium was still the game system at the time that I knew and loved best, so I thought it would be worth a shot. This time, I got a chance to write for the Heroes Unlimited game � specifically, a sourcebook called Hardware Unlimited � and spent a bit of time working on a proposal, then an outline, then a completed manuscript � and that�s when history repeated itself and the book got cancelled.

This time, however, I was able to use the unpublished �Hardware Unlimited� manuscript for something good. I�d sent a query over to a new publisher called Goodman Games around this time, and this guy named Joseph Goodman wanted to see some of my writing samples. So I sent over an article I�d gotten published in Dragon Magazine, and the Hardware Unlimited manuscript. Based on that, I started getting some writing jobs for Goodman Games � and still do.

Things weren�t all roses from there, though. My first book for Goodman Games was a Broncosaurus Rex sourcebook called �The Ironclad Solution�, which was basically a steampunk mech sourcebook. If you�ve never heard of it, that�s because it never got published, either � Joseph decided that publishing more books for that particular line just wasn�t viable. (Joseph was gracious enough to at least pay a kill fee for that manuscript, though, which is one of many reasons I consider him one of the Good Guys� of gaming.) Mixed in there during that time was a manuscript for a book called �The Dark Below�, for Fast Forward Entertainment, which again wasnever was published, as well as a few other projects that stalled, sputtered, and for whatever reason simply never saw the light of day, despite lots and lots of hours spent writing.

And that�s something that actually still happens. It�s happened last year, this year � despite however many years I put into writing, it�s something that doesn�t seem to change. The past couple of years have certainly seen far more successes than failures, which is always good, but they�re still lurking out there, and when they happen, they�re still a bitter pill to swallow.

So why keep doing this?

Apart from practicing the art of stupidity?

Well, for one thing, there always seems to be progress, in some weird way. The failure of Hardware Unlimited led (eventually) to success with Goodman Games. Recent problems with one publisher led to some productive discussions and small projects for another � and that�s something I never would�ve pursued if I hadn�t had those problems. If you look at the failures as evolution, and part of a dynamic process, rather than static miseries, you can find the good in them.

Also, plug away at something long enough, and you'll eventually succeed. Maybe there's something to be said for my own stubborn stupidity. If I was smarter, I probably wouldn't have gotten published, and I probably wouldn't have made a lot of the friends I have today.

And the other reason I do this, of course, is because it�s fun.

The business end, to be sure, has its share of headaches. But the actual process of writing � sitting down at the computer, or with a spiral-bound notebook and a pencil, and creating worlds, or characters, or tales of great adventure � that�s always fun. While the path the manuscript may take after it�s written may not exactly be pleasant, the process of creating the manuscript � though it may have its own challenges � invariably is something that I love very much. I�ve always said I would write just as much if there were no publishers; it�s just nice to have some folks willing to pay for the time spent writing, and to be able to share my written words with the rest of the world. It�s been a pleasant surprise over the past year or so to realize that statement isn�t empty � I mean it. And that�s what makes this so worthwhile to me.

Speaking of which �

Back to the joy of writing some new manuscripts.

And with any luck, they�ll find their way to the shelves of gaming stores, too.

Tunnelworld

Fri, 08 May 2009 06:01:29 EDT

I never played anything that could remotely be considered a �campaign� when I first started playing D&D. It was more like module hopping � once a module like �The Final Enemy� was completed, there was just a nod to the character�s downtime � �OK, you guys spend the next couple of weeks training at a nearby city� � before immediately rolling up to the entrance of a place like �The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth�. And that worked fine. The game at the time was all about the dungeon crawl. There was no real thought to what characters did outside the dungeons. As a certain publisher likes to say, those early games were all about adventures that were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level.

It wasn�t until a couple of years later than I got to experience gaming on a different level. I�d just started high school, and my friend Alison asked me if I wanted to join her brother Eric�s new D&D campaign. I didn�t know Eric all that well at the time, but I knew Alison, and I knew my friend John was going to be in the game as well. And besides, it was a D&D game. So I said yes, and showed up the next week.

And it literally changed my life. My continued interest in gaming, my adventures in freelance writing, trips to GenCon and other gaming conventions � I owe them all to Eric�s game.

Eric�s campaign world was a homebrewed setting called Tunnelworld. I still remember seeing the map of that strange land from the first time � a sprawling, crazy place drawn out in careful detail on a giant piece of posterboard. As Eric said not too long ago, it was sort of like Piers Anthony�s Xanth � it was a hodgepodge of all sorts of wondrous places thrown into a creative blender and mixed together thoroughly. There were exotic lands based on real places (the Kingdom of Haigyptia), locations grounded in that Gygaxian whimsy (the Keep on the Borderlines), and places drenched in mystery and mythos (K�ltan Isle). Just looking at the map would instantly spark a player�s imagination, and when you started playing in the games, you were immersed in them.

Eric�s campaigns were the first sort of games I played where true roleplaying � as opposed to straight hack �n� slash dungeon crawling � was encouraged. Just as much time was given to what characters did outside the dungeons and various adventures as they did within them. They had memorable, recurring villains such as the vicious warrior known only as the Ankh, and the enigmatic Malian. The campaigns certainly had their fair share of grandiose battles. I can remember setting up giant battlefields on a huge ping-pong table in Eric�s garage, for insanely complex battles where we literally played for nearly a day straight. But there were many situations where investigation played a far more important part than fighting, and using pure roleplaying � not mechanical stuff like Bluff and Intimidate checks, but the honest-to-God old fashioned method of playing your character � would prove to be a better solution to a problem than drawing a sword, or casting a spell.

Part of this focus on roleplaying was made possible by the vivid adventures and campaign ideas that Eric infused in his game. It�s easier for a player to give a character personality and motivation when there�s a solid character concept, and when there�s a vibrant world in which that character can exist. The first responsibility falls upon the player, but the latter goes to the gamemaster or DM � and in the Tunnelworld game, Eric did a phenomenal job of doing that.

When you�re trying to make the details of an adventure seem real to the players, if they can easily imagine themselves in the world where that adventure takes place, then selling the details of the adventure is easy. If there�s no concept for where the adventure takes place, then making an adventure vivid and memorable � well, it�s not impossible, but it�s much more difficult.

Eric always made it look easy to me.

I think one of the reasons my recent D&D campaign ended so poorly was because there was never a concept for the campaign. It hearkened back more to the dungeon crawling epics of my early gaming experiences, where players wandered from dungeon to dungeon, and there was no strong background material to frame the world behind the adventures. That works for some players � but the players for this game were veterans of the Tunnelworld game and my own older campaigns that had stronger campaign settings, and it just didn�t fit their playing style. When I switched to a Warhammer campaign, where adventures took place in the frozen, gritty city of Kislev, and where a vivid world could come to life, things changed dramatically, and for the better.

I�m working on two projects at the moment. One includes � in part � the development of the history of a long-forgotten city, while other is detailing the inner workings of a small but ambitious kingdom. In both cases, I have the lessons of Tunnelworld in mind. I want both to provide the detail for a vivid, memorable setting for adventures to take place. I want to provide a gamemaster with enough material to focus on the adventures he or she wants to run, and not worry about creating the worlds behind them as well. If I can do that (and, to be more accurate, if my co-author and I can do that for one of those projects), then everything will be grand indeed.

Fingers crossed on that.

Sadly, nothing really survives of Tunnelworld. The map is long gone, and all that�s really left of it is a few scattered notes. But who knows? I�d like to collaborate with Eric on a new world someday, and with any luck, we�ll get that chance.

In the meantime � enjoy the worlds where your games take place, wherever they may be.

For The Lions

Tue, 05 May 2009 08:24:34 EDT

Songs by Slayer. Suicidal Tendencies. The Misfits. The Cro-Mags. Sepultura. Madball. Black Flag. Metallica. Sick Of It All. D.R.I. (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, for the uninitiated).

Makes me feel like I'm in high school again, listening to a hissing, sputtering mix tape on my battered Walkman.

But no. It's For The Lions, the new album by Hatebreed. It's raw, powerful, and utterly brilliant. If it had songs by S.O.D., the Crumbsuckers, and Minor Threat, it'd be perfect.

Back in the day, I was a scrawny skateboarding punk with a shaved head who frequented the local hardcore punk scene. I went to shows in northern New Jersey featuring bands like Gorilla Biscuits, Knuckle Sandwich, and the aforementioned Sick Of It All, where I usually got pummelled and bruised in the pit, a ringing in my ears that would last for days ... and a smile on my face that would last even longer.

This album brings me back to all that. Funny times, sad times, but most importantly, good times, though they didn't always seem that way at the time.

Minus the Doc Marten imprints on the ribcage and spinal cord, of course.