RPG – Page 9 – MRAAKTAGON

Gladiators Runequest 6 style!

To show off the combat system for those who had not experienced it yet (and Matt, who has), I decided to put together a little player vs player gladiatorial combat action using Runequest 6 based on this article. I rolled about 15 Gladiators for RQ, priced them based on their stats (mostly looking at AP, Combat Style, Damage mod, Evade and Endurance) and had the players buy them with 1000 sectartiis. Most gladiators were about 300s, but a few hardcore guys were more. The only requirement was that they had at least 3 fighters for 3 rounds of that day’s games. The winner of each round would receive $$ and if any gladiators were killed, the owner of the killer would have to pay up, just like in real life.

If they had $$ left over after buying fighters, they could buy luck points for 50s. These could be used at any time for any gladiator to force a reroll on another player, or reroll the dice themselves. Once used for the day, they were gone.

I did use miniatures for this fight to keep things clear. Everyone was close together and there were no ranged weapons, so it made it easy. We had three players for these events, again with 3 gladiators each and a few luck points between them.

When Animals Attack

The first round was a fight with a bear, naturally (I recommend all new players and GM’s start with an animal combat of some kind, like a hunt or bear attack). The players threw in one gladiator each and they went to town. The combatants were:

Beaire the Nasty, a Thracian (note, these guys have big shields, but only a hooked DAGGER)

Nesset the Ugly, a Provocator (huge shield, shortsword)

Tecocia the Reaver, a Retiarius (the net and trident dudes)

There was some early confusion as to what the bear would do with the net being thrown onto him, but I made the call since he didn’t know what it was, he wouldn’t parry. Needless to say, the bear didn’t spend a lot of time parrying, and mostly spent his time attacking.

Nesset was able to impale with his short sword, but it did not hinder the bear’s skills at all (based on a size chart of weapon to creature/person size). As a group, they were able to fend off the bear for a bit, long enough for Tecocia to net it so it had difficulty attacking and then impale it with the trident (which did quite a bit of damage). Unfortunately, the poor Retiarius decided not to parry a blow from the bear and had his leg torn off for his trouble. The remaining two gladiators were able to hack the bear down with the trident still sticking out of him, and survive unscathed to the cheering of the crowd. While it seems forgone conclusion, things could have gone terribly, terribly wrong for the gladiators. Without the retiarius, I think they would have been bloodied meat in the sand mostly because the Thracian and Provocator use their weapon special effects to good use vs humans, but not so much vs the brawn monster that is a bear.

Individual Fights

The second event was the individual fights between gladiators. The players put forth their champions and lots were drawn to determine the fighters. I stepped in because we had only three players in order to give a fight to the odd man.

The combatants in the first fight were

Coprica – Murmillo (Large shield, short sword, Heavy head armor)

Pepominili – Hoplomachus (Short spear, tiny shield and a dagger)

This went back and forth and really caused us to look in the rulebook a lot for being prone, tripping, different weapon lengths and a few other rules since the spear and the short sword were two weapon lengths apart. While I love the RQ6 book, not everything you need for a rule is in the same place, so there’s hunting and pecking. Also in this fight we ran into some trouble with players taking a long time to pick special effects– the android app would have helped here, but no one had an android, so we had to use sheets of paper and my homemade GM screen.

This was a reach fight. The Hoplomachus was able to keep the Murmillo at bay for most of the fight, despite his small shield he was able to defend mostly by backing away. There was a big difference in combat style % here, with the Hoplomachus at 82%!

Eventually due to sheer luck, Coprica kept getting hit in his unarmoured arm (among MANY armored places) and passed out from the shock and blood loss for a win for Papamillia the Hoplomachus.

The second fight was the fastest RQ6 fight I’ve ever experienced. The combatants were:

Nesset the Ugly (the Provocator from the first animal fight)

Necnipro the Doomed (a Dimachaerus, which has only leg armor and two short swords !???)

I figured this would be a chance to see how the FLURRY special effect worked since that’s what the Dimachaerus’s come with, but, Nesset engaged and attacked… and fumbled his attack roll! Necnipro succeeded with her parry giving two special effects (and access to the attacker fumble special effects) which were Compel Surrender and Force Failure. This means the combatant would normally get a willpower roll to resist the compel surrender, but the second effect, only usable when someone fumbles, forced the failure. Nesset, while unhurt, was booed by the crowed and probably died of shame in his heart moments later.

The Melee

The final battle was a free for all melee with four fighters and would be a long slough to the end.

The combatants (in order of strike rank):

Misuae (I just kept calling him Mouse) – another Retiarius again with a net and trident

Necnipro the Doomed (Dimachaerus fresh of her 2 second win over Nesset the ugly!) – two short swords

Ecaubus the Monstrous (a huge Gual/Sartar with a broadsword and big shield, but no other armor).

Posttastis the Blood Drinker (Provocator, again, big shield, shortsword and armor)

Misuae charged Postastis (here on out, called mouse and potatoes) and while the Retiarius got in some shots without parries from the Provocator, his armor saved him multiple times (warding location with that fuckn big shield helped too). Mouse was just unable to close the distance for long versus that trident and even hit himself in the leg with his shield at one point. Eventually though, the Provocator was able to strike the spear arm of the Retiarius and forced him to drop his trident. Mouse carried on with only his net until…

Necnipro and Ecaubus had the exact same strike rank in this fight, and this was odd since if one declared and attack, the other parried and… could attack again? We didn’t have time to look into the rules much for this but a few times both gladiators simply attacked without parrying at the same time. In one exchange, Necnipro got a bleeder on Ecaubus and nearly severed one of her arms. She stayed in the fight and impaled Necnipro with her broadsword. Necnipro in a display of bravery, pulled the broadsword out of her abdomen, made her endurance roll and fought on, twice forcing Ecaubus to check willpower or surrender (who made very good dice rolls to stay in the fight). Nearly bled out, Ecaubus had the last laugh and took Necnipro (remember, armourless except her legs) out of action.

The Gaul (Ecaubus) then ran and attacked the Retiarius who had regained his trident from the bloody sand and was warding off Mouse again. We were not sure whether or not the longer weapon (trident) could hold off the broad sword and deemed not because one was L and one was M. Ecaubus got a special effect and compelled Mouse to surrender. Even while bleeding out (she was at formidable skill difficulty at this point) Ecaubus the Monstrous was able to hit the Provocator and that was the end of it– until the owner of the Provocator remembered a luck point and using this, was able to keep the fight going and force surrender on Ecaubus the Monstrous who would have probably collapsed moments later from bleeding…

hoplomachus — that’s a 25mm equivalent of a penis. It’s like the evil plot from Black Dynamite happened to this guy!

So that was that. There was a lot of discussion about the nature of opposed rolls, which means that if both parties succeed, whoever gets highest without going over their skill wins the contest (an ideal roll would be 95% [corrected from 98%, which is an auto failure] if you had 100% skill). This is one of the subtle yet awesome things about RQ6 to keep the game moving and not have ‘nothing happen.’ Granted attacks/parries are not opposed rolls, so there can be times when, if both opponents have the same weapon size, that they bounce off each other in the attack-parry sequence. However, shortly something will happen when a failure, critical or fumble comes along.

There were a lot of new rules I had not had to deal with in the Vikinthulhu campaign yet, so we had to look up a lot. Things in the heat of the moment could not always be made clear. Issues we had specifically were around:

Arise (special effect) and getting up from prone, and what the effects of being prone are.
Charging – it costs an AP to charge…but you don’t get to attack as I understand it with that AP? strange!
Flurry (special effect) seems pointless? I don’t get this special effect. (only unarmed and two weapon guys can have it, so no big deal).
The use of NETS and tripping and immobilizing

Overall a good time and great practice for me as a GM. The special effect selection slowed everything down more than I would have liked, but this could be helped with a better organized cheat sheet that shows normal special effects, critical ones and ones only on fumbles. A sheet specific to each player with just the special effects they can use based on their weapon-set would be cool to make. OR if that special effect app was either web-based or on IOS would help

13th Age characters are tough as hell!

We’ve been playing 13th Age for over a year now and I’ve been following the balanced encounter advice in the main book (with an excel sheet some dude made to back it up). Most of the time they’ve been fighting humans, which are easy to make on the fly, but a few times I generated a monster with Raggi’s RANDOM ESOTERIC CREATURE GENERATOR FOR CLASSIC FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAMES AND THEIR MODERN SIMULACRA and slapped the 13th Age stats on them (and triggered powers, gotta love those). The system makes it fairly easy to create battles that won’t totally fuck the characters, but I’m finding now that maybe as published the advice leans a wee bit on the easy side and by wee bit, I mean a lot. Most of the stuff I’ve thrown at them is pretty much in line with what the characters, now at level 2, supposedly can take on, but last night I threw the kitchen sink at them, and no characters dropped! The battle was tense, and the characters got messed up, but I went for the (planned) dues ex machina without them really needing it.

1463335205130

Basic math suggestion is that with 4 characters at level 1, you should have 4 (normal sized) monsters of level 1 for an even fight (or equivalent). This changes with tiers to be finally about 2-1 at Epic tier, but if I was to give advice to start the calculation, I would say # of creatures at the party’s level +1. So five first level characters vs 6 first level orcs should be a balanced encounter.

I had a prepped battle ready for about 6 months to pull out when needed (wasn’t sure where it would take place, but I knew what was coming) and I tweaked it from time to time to make sure it wasn’t too hard, yet it was supposed to be a hard fight, the capstone of part of the campaign if you will. It ended up being a 2-session battle and even without the Barbarian in the first session, they mopped the floor with the bad guys including a nasty Hungry Star.

How did they do it?

Paladin (with the apt nickname “the dauntless”) has a ridiculous AC as the escalation die goes up due to a magic shield. By round 4, she was nearly unhittable by the mooks, and one of the bigbads couldn’t manage to hit her.
Bard had a power to give 2 free recoveries out during the fight. This saved a couple character’s asses and is very powerful. The bard’s song also helped quite a bit.
Doling out huge damage from the ranger, including special effects. The ranger class can stunt to get bonuses/effects and there was incredible rolling. He rolled at least two 30’s during the combat– enough to hit anything that exists!
And, as always, the Barbarian in session 2 of the fight, even without being able to Rage this battle, was destroying everything nearby with nearly comically high dice rolling.
The sorceress can and will be a mega-damage dealer as long as she doesn’t get attacked by enemies too often and dropped.

Now they get their first long rest (unless they do something… stupid) after about 6 sessions and the recovery gas tanks will be filled to the brim.

Gencon events, what a chore!

Why do I still go to Gencon? I’m thinking the smaller cons (especially around here) are going to fit the bill better than the 60K attendance monstrosity. Having everyone ready for 11 AM today was a bitch, people got together as if it was some sort of business meeting. Fucksake, this is what you have to go through to get events? Madness. Despite the craziness, the online system is pretty amazing. While confusing at times, it parses a shocking amount of information in a fairly short amount of time. Coordination is the fucking thing. If we weren’t trying to get into games together, it would be a lot easier, but half the fun is playing with part strangers, part amigos.

I got all my Runequest requests, but nothing else. I ain’t complaining. The only game I really wanted other than that was Feng Shui 2 and, though there were no games, Shinobigami Modern Ninja Battle Game.

And I’m running a Lamentations of the Flame Princess game. First event I’ve ever run there after all these decades of going. I was thinking either that, Into the Odd or Feng Shui 2 and LotFP won out. I’m going to run an entrant (randomly from a set of 10 good ones) from the one page dungeon contest.

Mythras- Classic Fantasy is out

alexandria What is it? Classic Fantasy is a mod of Mythras (formerly Runequest 6) focusing on old school dungeon crawls with miniature-based combat. So you have your solid Runequest 6 combat with special effects and weapon builds that actually mean something in battle with the added framework to play crawls, another magic system (akin to Olde schoole D&D) and the monsters to go with it.

Some differences:

RQ is not a dungeon crawl fight to fight to fight game, so Classic Fantasy has allowances for healing up between fights easier (and spells for that to boot)
Use of mini’s is a big change. RQ likely works fine with miniatures (I’ve never played it that way) but this has rules for movement, hexes and squares, etc.
Race and class character creation a bit more streamlined than the concept, culture, class style of normal RQ. All the race and class stuff is what you’d expect from D&D.

This marks the first Mythras branded product from Design Mechanism (the RQ6 guys) and it’s pretty great. Granted, it’s more complex than D&D, but anyone that has played any D20 recently and remembers the long, drawn out fights with attacks to no specific location (I was in one such fight today in 5E) may want to look a this as a salve for that type of combatboredom. In addition, having a new magic system for RQ is nothing to sneeze at either.

This has a better run down of the system than I can do (I have real problems reading PDF’s– I need a physical book or I just can’t plow into a text and that ain’t here yet).

Some 5E thoughts while stroking the variant human dongle

I am in a Strahd game with Matt and others and we made characters from scratch and dared each other to roll (which happened) rather than points buy. Since it’s 4d6 out of order and pick the best, you are going to get some good rolls, and fuck yeah I did.

I made a fighter, rolled 18 str, great weapon combat style and great weapon master feat via the Human variant (+1 to two stats, +1 skill, +1 feat). It turned out every player went Human variant, and we all have extremely different characters. I can’t see a reason why anyone would play anything other than this. You want to make a fantastic assassin? Variant Human. Awesome sorcerer? Variant Human. Basically a two-hander rivaling GUTS? Variant Human. This is at 1st level.

I think this is by design. My limited exposure to 4E, 3rd edition and Pathfinder lead me to believe no one ever chose humans because those games are games solely of ‘testing your stats’ optimization, and the other fantasy races did this better. Optimization matters quite a bit less in 5E because it’s not trying to be the beardy twink game that 3E is. What’s attractive about the variant humans in 5E is specialization. You could (should?) play a game only with human PC’s and you could have a ton of very different characters, even at first level and it would be great. By design? Remember, as a human, you are unique, just like everyone else.

Secondly, while 5E isn’t explicitly a miniatures game, they will get busted out from time to time. I ain’t playing with these shit assed Pathfinder/D&D pre-paints. They are terrible. Reaper bones are a slight level up, but still not great. Given that, and the fact that my brother will do the same thing, I’ve upped the aesthetic a bit and built a couple guys tonight for this weekend’s game from a company that actually knows how to make miniatures.

5egame

Yes, they are not painted yet, yes they are still drying from being glued, and they need flash removed, but look at those badass landsknecht motherfuckers, compared to this shytte:

shytte

Next I’m looking at either Frostgrave or some of the Perry Twin’s foot knights box sets if I’m feeling a bit more 15th Century.

Things I learned from the Exalted Kickstarter

Exalted 3rd edition is out after many years, and seems better than 2nd edition. Yet, after all this time I find that I still don’t have the book I kickstarted, which, according the the kickstarter, was the whole point of it (it was stated they didn’t need funding for development). I reported awhile back that this was on my fucked kickstarter list, and it still is.

From the 3E PDF, the writing is superfluous, inefficient and overblown. The system, while not as crazy as 2E, is as complex as ever, this time with some strange abstractions layered over the top of the WW storyteller system (which should have been abandoned in the first place). People may play this game, but as stated by the new head of White Wolf:

…while the monumental classic-WW-style books generally sell poorly and are more read than played. If future editions … are actively used rather than collected we have done our job.

Monumental. Did I mention it’s ….600+ pages. It’s not 2009 anymore. Why would any RPG book need to be this large? The 5E PHB is half that, even the all-encompassing, rather wordy at times Runequest 6 only 450 pages. So what did I learn for the future:

Never back an RPG that doesn’t send you an immediate PDF of the rules.
- No one needs money to do development on a new RPG system.
- People do this in their free time (Black Hack, Godbound, Zwiehander) and are successful.
- Any COMPANY doing this will be able to support their developers during the development process, long, long long before they ask us for money (Feng Shui 2, Dungeon Crawl Classics).
- I expect to Kickstart PRINTING of an RPG, never development.
- This was just ignorance and stupidity on everyone’s parts that backed Exalted 3E. Remember how long ago this kickstarter was, we were young then, and dumb.
Never back another White Wolf / Onyx Path Kickstarter.
- This goes without saying
Ask for kickstarter money back at the first missed deadline.
- Don’t meet deadlines that you yourselves have set?
Ask for kickstarter money back if the creator is openly stating that they are facing severe health problems. (people finding out on the side is a different matter)
Be very wary of new RPG system re-development Kickstarters.
Don’t back anything that will fucking suck to GM, and Exalted, in all it’s editions is a game that’s great as a player, but it’s horrible to GM, not just the learning, but the playing. This took awhile to discover for myself.
These guys (the second tier signature Solars) are still cooler than the 3E ones, sadly.

World of the Lost session 2

Lost

Had to wait an extra week to play but here we are with the 2nd World of the Lost session report. Here is the first session. As this was a playtest as well, I went in a different direction this time with a straight up fuckall deathcrawl compared to the open ended city session last time. This was not what I was expecting to run when I first set out to do the playtest, but here we are.

Characters. We only had four for this session. One player bowed out because he said he can’t play RPG’s on roll20 and one no-show.

Rainer Keeling – MU with a leather mask to hide his face (1 hp), Move earth, Mass Suggestion and Stone Shape
Van Hagen – Specialist
Bernard Dreu – Fighter
Udo Quattlebaum – Fighter (w/mancatcher)

The characters woke up tied with vines outside of a ruined temple after a night of carousing in Khirima. They woke to the screams of another of the Portuguese from the caravan they had traveled with crawling on the ground with his tongue cut out. Above him stood a tall, severely pregnant African woman with a wild wreath of red hair holding a bloody knife. The very Ekene they had been sent to kill! Around the crumbling stones and edge of the jungle were Ekene’s retinue, many with Leopard kilts, long spears and some with steel drums. She seemed displeased.

She watched the characters slowly wake up to the sounds of the jungle and mid-morning sunlight flitting through the canopy and then told them (in Hausa at first, which none of them spoke since the translator was still passed out, then broken English) that they must beg for their lives for even thinking of harming her. They babbled excuses at her that they hadn’t done anything and after a few of them actually begged for their lives, she called her guards over to remove a large slab from the steps of the temple.

Musty and chilled air poured out over the temple grounds, and the characters were untied, given their weapons and equipment and bade to go into the black space under the tomb to bring out anything they could as repayment for the offense given by their plotting. While they had their pistols and weapons, Ekene confidently turned her back on them, basically daring them to strike her, and went and sat on a portable couch to watch while getting fanned by her retainers. The drummers started up and the characters put their armor on, loaded their pistols and descended into the darkness.

The tomb was chilled and the air heavy. The stone of the temple was impossibly smooth granite and this caused some concern as they hadn’t seen anything like it in Khirima. They hit a wrought iron door first that Udo unlocked easily (a fighter who had +3 tinkering). This lead to a small, empty room with bas reliefs of priests worshiping a humanoid in long robes with a crow’s head. They hit another iron door, but this one was not locked…

In the hallway beyond this door, the characters started to learn that Ekene wasn’t the nicest person. Bernard fell into a pit trap and took 8 damage (I allowed a WIS save), and as the group pulled him out of the pit, Van Hagen hit a tripwire and was hammered by a swinging log on a chain from the ceiling (taking 3 points of damage– I’m listing exact damage cause it’s important later) and barely missed being thrown back into the pit himself (I allowed a WIS save for this as well).

Beyond the trapped hall was a large tomb complete with a sarcophagus, and two steel statues; obviously some sort of protectors of the tomb. Bernard threw his throwing axes into the room to see if he could trigger a pressure plate, but to no avail. When he went to pick them up, the statues came to and after their long wait for intruders to pummel, started attacking.

Bernard used the (new) Guard action to hold them off and to push his AC up to 19. Down to 2 hp it was lucky the statues didn’t hit him. This luck will run out. Meanwhile, the other characters prepped the log to try to swing it at the statues as they came through the hall. Stuck between the pit and the statues wasn’t the most pleasant place to be!

Rainer had Shape Stone (a 5th level spell), so when Bernard ran back into the hall to kite the living statues into the log, he cast it on a block of stone above one of the statues and pinned it to the floor for a bit. Meanwhile, the other statue got the log directly in the chesticle, and was thrown back into the tomb. Rainer fired his brace of pistols at the one he had pinned, but to little effect except a misfire that he burned his session Luck points on (also to no effect), so Udo then used his mancatcher to toss it into the pit, destroying it, and they hammered the other one with the log again. Great job in the combat as there were no attacks with normal weapons (other than the pistols).

The guardians down, it was time to loot the tomb. The characters did a bunch of search rolls (luckily no wandering monsters) and found a trapdoor made of stone at the top of a dais, and a small keyhole in a sarcophagus. After many failings at rolling the dice, Rainer decided to simply Stone Shape the trapdoor, and things went quite awry. Being his second spell of the day, he had to make a Magic save with 5D6, which failed and the spell was miscast! An alien light filled the tomb and all characters re-suffered their last damage. Bernard was killed, and Van Hagen was down to 1 hp. Since they had never taken any hp of damage, Udo and Rainer both doubled their hp. Udo up to an incredible 14 hp (at first level) and Rainer up to a WHOPPING 2 hp.

We had to call it for the night.

Adventure notes

Needless to say, there’s lots of room for stuff in World of the Lost. This tomb fit in pretty well for a non-plateau encounter. I like Ekene, pregnant and fucking pissed as she is, and she ain’t one of the main module characters as written, but she is in mine! World of the Lost has “make this your own” all over it without that making being a lot of work. While this was just a two session game, and didn’t even scratch the surface of the content, so I’m looking forward to going back to the World of the Lost again.

System notes

This is a 0.1 playtest so there are some burrs. I like the spell system, but it’s a bit strange as players have zero control over what they get, a bit like the Arcanum from Into the Odd. I’m used to miscasts from WFRP and especially 8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle so fuck yes to that. However, I think nearly all the spells need to be rewritten to fit the totally random method of selection. A daunting task and one that might fuck with backwards and forwards compatibility. Of note as well, if designers are building adventures, it’s possible that they would assume that parties may have specific spells at certain levels. With the no level requirement and random spells, this may be impossible.

Frankly I would just directly steal the Warhammer Fantasy Battle cast and miscast rules. The MU has a pool of D6’s based on his or her INT score (calculated just like the CHA and WIS saves) except these are used to cast spells. The formula would be XD6’s + level vs spell’s casting number, X being the number of dice the MU wanted to use to cast a spell. Casting number would be the number of pips needed to successfully cast a spell. 1st level spells are cast on a 6+ for example. MU chooses the number of dice they want to use from their pool (say they have a 2nd level spell that casts on a 7+, they might use 3 dice giving them a 9 average roll + their level to hit the casting number). Spells never go crazy if they fail to cast, spells only go crazy when the power used to cast them is too much for the MU to handle! If two 6’s come up, you roll on the ‘really bad’ miscast chart. No matter what, the spell is cast if two 6’s come up, but other stuff happens, bad stuff (see picture below). A 4th level magic user (with a +4 base to the casting roll) would rarely need to roll more than 1 die for 1st or 2nd level spells (D6+4 vs casting number of 6 and 7 respectively), so would have zero chance of a bad miscast. Even with 2 dice to make sure, the chance is very low. A 6th level magic user would never need to use casting dice to cast 1st or 2nd level spells. The magic dice pool is refreshed every long rest the character takes that would also give back at least 1 hp.

miscast

Combat was fine, I’m not sure about the new armor rules so just went with the old version. The guard action seemed to be of use but there is both a firearms and ranged ‘combat style’ that seemed a bit redundant.

The skills are interesting now that everyone has them, but I think the Luck skill is by far the most important skill to get. It can make impossible rolls possible and help the specialist be able to use every single skill in the game with just a small spread of points (by level 13, a specialist with points in luck left has statistically 100% chance of success in all skills if he spread just 3 points into every skill there is). In addition, if Steve had saved his luck for his miscast, things could have gone better. So rather than INT being the go to stat for Magic User, high CHA and Luck is the ideal to keep those miscasts off.

A bit we didn’t like was the -4 hp save/partial save mechanic. at -4 HP, while the full save equals ‘passed out but survives,’ the partial save means the same thing as a failed save: death with no chance of healing or recovery (it just takes longer). The feedback loop of a partial save (not that easy to get on 3 or 4d6) makes it feel like it should be a better outcome, like you are out and will die in 1d10 rounds, but can be saved by another player somehow. Also, the death saves are based on Wisdom (non magical), which was a bit odd.

Damage healing was very harsh in the new version, especially with no clerics and no access to healing magic except randomly. Expect characters to drop like flies if they get into combat after combat.

Lastly, I had to make saving throws for the monsters and didn’t know how many D6’s to roll. They can no longer ‘save as a fighter of X level’ anymore (X=HD). Maybe I missed something in the book.

My biggest issue with the playtest packet is that I put the LotFP current ruleset on a high pedestal for my D20 gaming. The rules are really perfect for the style of play and totally compatible with nearly everything put out by the OSR (DCC, S&W, LL) and likely 5th Edition as well. I don’t want it to change as drastically as this playtest doc suggests the new version might. I just want something that I can use with little trouble if I grab stuff as disparate as Secret of Bone Hill, Idea from Space or Out of the Abyss. I think if the LotFP fans grind on this with long months of playtesting, there could be something great out of it.

First 5E action

First game of 5E as a player this afternoon. I don’t get to play much (as one of those perpetual GMs), but I’ve realized I have a one track mind when I do play. My brother and I are totally opposite in this regard. He wants the boss defeated and to save the day (while crushing stuff when needed in fair combat), but I’m displeased unless everything’s Kid Miracleman’s London in order to get there. He’s the St. Cuthbert, I’m the Double Henderson (most of the time, we must not forget Tono and Kono).

GUTS

swinging off some NUTS today

This is a post about people that made some cool shit that just came out. We’re all into the high end AAA video game titles and polished D&D 5E and 13th Age books, but today this post is about two titles that are not AAA by any means, very few people on the planet will ever notice them, but are still fantastic.

First is Venger Satanis’s Girls Gone Rogue, a companion adventure to his recent Space Station module, Alpha Blue. Because I got Alpha Blue along with another module of his that I just couldn’t put down (Purple Putrescence) I hadn’t looked at AB too much except reading it on the shitter here and there. It looks cool, and if you don’t want to use the game system in the book it would be a great setting for Runequest Star Wars (yes, this actually got made by Design Mechanism), White Star (even though the rulebook is the most fucking boring thing ever, the rules are solid), or if you haven’t already become completely disillusioned with FATE like any normal person, Bulldogs! If you are a fucking masochist, you could use Star Frontiers, but no one would do that would they?

That said, there’s not much adventure in AB driving the players. Lots of hooks, yes, and very interesting stuff as a setting, but no flat out adventure. GGR solves this problem where players are tasked with taking down a slutbot gone rogue. I haven’t read much yet but first, the HOOK is just fantastic and unexpected and the art– holy shit. Tits everywhere, alien orgies, some sort of vaginal… I’m not even sure what that is…where Alpha Blue was pretty tame with the art, GGR is gonzo with the nudity and space robot fucking. The names Satanis chooses are ridiculous and some of the charts are incredible. ie: What the Fuck did I do last night??!

All in all, along with Purple Putrescence, which is excellent BTW, GGR solidifies me as a Venger Satanis fan. He’s got a ridiculous sense of humor and he knows his genre and his slavering, sex starved middle aged, children of the 80’s audience as well. If I’m ever having a bad day at the fucking office, I can come home and read some of this crazy shit, and if the feeling takes me, I can run it and you know they’ll be cascades of space piss into your open mouths.

The second item doesn’t have any tits or nudity, but it sorta DID in it’s first printing. Palace of the Silver Princess is a pillar of D&D obscurity, the ORANGE cover version was pulled as soon as it was printed and few copies exist (since I grew up in WI, I know I saw one in person before, but can’t remember where or who had it or if it was on the shelf at the hobby store in Brookfield Square). Why was it pulled? Well there is a part of the adventure where 9 dudes are (maybe) tearing the clothes off a woman tied up. Remember when this came out. Early 80’s? Kids getting into D&D and not just old beardies? Yep. They pulled it even though AD&D and Fiend Folio had drawings of boobs right there for us to beat off to.

It’s unfortunate because the Orange version is better than the Green version that eventually came out because it details an entire area, not just the dungeon/palace. I’ve been thinking about running Orange for awhile (the PDF is around) but it’s got some of those ‘stock your own stuff’ rooms that I just don’t have time for. Christ no.

Bam, then what happens? A bunch of the LotFP writers got together and rewrote the entire module, indoor, outdoor, upstairs, downstairs using the original maps! Raggi, Kowalski, Green and others that I don’t know, probably promising n00bs specially selected. I haven’t read this yet (I hate PDF’s and need to get it printed on lulu before I can read it), but there are good snippets I’ve seen. It lists the writers of each section so you’ll know if you are walking into something interesting and crazy (Raggi, Kowalski, Green) or something boring and pretentious that takes itself too seriously (won’t mention names) and you can then skip the overwritten or lame parts or revert to the original module as needed.

Also, I need to mention, it’s FREE.

Fallout 4 survival mode and some tips

I’ve been playing a good deal of Fallout 4 in the last few months, like everyone else. I just plowed through the Mechanist DLC last week (good, but a bit short) and really liked the new robot/raider mixed faction that appears as well since the regular raiders become, well, fucking fodder.

In addition to the Mechanist stuff, last week, a major new playstyle was also released: SURVIVAL difficulty mode. In this mode you get to suffer hunger, thirst, fatigue, disease along with the normal people trying to fill you will bullets or eat you or burn you with lasers. Sound fun? What’s more, you can only save when you sleep in a bed. While it’s not exactly hardcore, you have to be very careful, especially if you are far away from a bed as all your hard work will be lost when you croak– an you WILL croak. Damage to you and that damage you do to others is super spiked in this version, and healing is much slower. Get shot outside your power armor with a double barrelled shotgun at level 5? You’re dead!

I’m not too far into it, but I tell you I’ve quit a couple times because I forgot it wasn’t saving the game at various points. My advice? Remember when you are dicking around in settlements that if you wander off and are killed, all the mundane building and assigning workers will be completely lost. Remember this!

A few other tips:

Get all the bottles you can early and use the bubbler in the vault to fill those bottles to create purified water. This will save you from drinking radioactive shit early game before you have anything.
Maybe run away from the first Deathclaw. You know where the power armor is, you know how to get it, but you also have to face down a deathclaw right after. Maybe run away? You likely won’t be able to establish sanctuary but you’ll have power armor and won’t be dead…
Watch out for ‘regular’ fights. Raiders can easily kill you and you no longer have the auto spotter dots on your radar for enemies, so you have to sneak, get in position and shoot, then move. Rather than just running and gunning everything and stimpacking out of danger, you’ll get to see that the raiders/gunners actually have an AI!
Watch the rad away– it increases thirst and hunger and leaves you susceptible to disease from stuff you eat. So drink fluid AFTER rad away, but maybe don’t eat right away or eat before. You will eat very yucky stuff, and you want your immune system to be tanked up– rad away will drop that down a lot.
Reexamine the perks. Some of the perks you ignored before so you could blow stuff up real good become powerful for survival, especially the ‘drink shitty water’ one.
Remember you have to walk everywhere so the game world that was once much smaller will feel HUGE. You will need bases of operations (and beds) all over the place if you expect to get anywhere in the plot. If you pick up shitty power armor with no fusion cell, it may be a long, long way back to your base– slowly, slowly walking…
Speaking of plot, remember when you accidentally wandered the wastes for 10-12 play sessions and were super tanked up for the plot missions and they were too easy? Maybe that’s a really good tactic to use now…
Ghouls are horrible to face now. After the first few levels you can swat them like flies in the normal game, but in Survival, look out. Use VATS to shoot their legs off so they can’t move and then finish them off when it’s safe.

That’s it for now, I am going to go back in and see how far I can get. survivalmode