Official Dungeons and Dragons Frisbee by TSR (c. 1984)

Back in 1984 one of the advantages of upgrading to "Advanced" Dungeons and Dragons was the expanded range of missile weapons...

YEAH! Found My 20+ Year Old Bag-O-Dice!

Over the last few weekends I've been helping my momma clear out her storage units in preparation for a big move. Some of the stuff I found included:

A bottle of human teeth
Two pistols
A sweet Witco owl
WWII Army Survival kit
1000+ NASA stock photos
A couple bags of human hair
A huge collection of Garbage Pail Kids cards
A 2-foot long slide rule in a belt scabbard
Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman! board game
My old dice bag!

Lords of light! I've been looking for this dice bag for years! My sweet momma made that little drawstring baggie for me when I was 9 or 10 years old. I lost track of the bag when I stopped playing RPGs in the late 80s, and subsequently built up another collection of dice which I use today. Here's what I found inside that old blue baggie:

This collection of dice has been frozen in time since the early/mid-1980s. They are mostly either TSR Dragon Dice or GameScience dice. A few observations and memories:

• That blue Dragon Dice d20 on top was my main rollah back in the day. It was the only d20 I had that actually went all the way up to 20.

• Most of my other d20s were Zocchi / GameScience dice that went to 0-9 twice, but they had a little "." or "+" next to some of the numbers to signify 11-20.

• No pip d6s. I liked the ones with the numbers - especially that groovy green one. I thought that spherical d6 was cool (got it in a trade), but I never used it.

• No d4s, although I distinctly remeber having a well-worn Carolina-blue Dragon Dice d4 and a yellow Holmes Basic Set d4. I guess they escaped from the bag along the way.

• Those blue and red d10s were from a separate Dragon Dice percentile set.

• That light red d6 was from an early printing (i.e. included dungeon geomorphs instead of Module B1) Holmes Basic Set I still have.

What Real Clerical Spell Scrolls Look Like. Ge'ez and Amharic Examples.

Here are some fascinating examples of real Ge'ez clerical scrolls from Ethiopia. They are currently on display at Elizabeth Street Fine Arts gallery in New York City. The gallery website has pictures and descriptions of several scrolls dating to the 19th century, although some extant scrolls date back to the 16th century. Most of the scrolls described on the website contain multiple spells related to protection and healing. It's striking to me how many of these spells are recognizable from our favorite fantasy roleplaying games. It's also interesting how many Ge'ez spells fit onto a single scroll.

Historical background from the website:

So called “Magic Scrolls” are long rolls of parchment, illuminated by talismanic and figurative images and texts, usually in Ge’ez (Ethiopian liturgical language), of protective prayers, invocations of secret names of God, or sometimes demons. They are produced and used for varied purposes, healing, protection from spells, exorcisms etc. Scrolls are referred to as “ya’ branna kitab”, “written on skin” in Amharic, “asmat” or “names” in Ge’ez or “ta’lsam”, “talisman” in Tigrinya.

Scrolls are made for a specific individual by  “dabtara” (an unordained “priest” who studied scriptures, singing and poetry, a practitioner of traditional medicine, magician) and are carried and used by that person extensively. They rarely survive through a few generations of use. The oldest known scroll is recently dated to16th century, while majority of great surviving scrolls date between late 18th to early 20th century, as do the scrolls in this exhibit.

Here are some magic scroll pictures. More thorough details, which I paraphrase here, are available at the original website:

Tigre magic scroll. Three sets of incantations: (1) "The Prayer or Legend of Susenyos, used for the protection of children and infants from illness, followed by an invocation of magical names for the protection of the scroll owner from demons.", (2) "prayers for protection from the demon Shätolay, blacksmiths, buda, etc.", (3) prayers against rheumatism and stomach ache.

Magic scroll contains: (1) Prayer of Susenyos, (2) Prayer for the “expulsion” of disease and the demon Shotalay", (3) prayer against the evil eye, (4) prayer against rheumatism and sciatica, (5) prayers against haemorrhage, (5) another prayer against demon Shotalay, (6) prayer against Zar Wellaj.

Gorgon scroll of Wälättä-Gabriel contains: (1) An invocation against unclean spirits, (2) prayer of saint Susenyos for keeping away sickness from babies sucking the breast of their mothers, story of Susenyos killing Werzelya, (3) names of God against Shotelay (4) names of God said by Mary against devils. ‘Yosamer, Armosadekél…’, (5) speech of Moses against barya, devils, people of Legion, (6) prayer of Susenyos, (7) prayer against belly pain, (8) prayer against side pain, (9) prayer for undoing bewitching, (10) prayer against the eye of Mejer and Tegrida, (11) prayer against the Evil eye, (12) salutation to Fanuel expeller of devils.

NTRPG Con: Some Photos

What a great weekend. I have more to say than I have time to type right now. Let me kick off a series of posts with a few photos I took:

(CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE)

Paul Jaquays - Runequest

Otus, Jaquays, Dee - Artist Panel

Dennis Sustare

Tavis Allison - Metamorphosis Alpha

Erol Otus

Matt Finch - Mythrus Tower

Arkhein and Son - Urutsk: World of Mystery

 Circus Maximus

Marshall Mahurin - Chainmail

Dave Arneson Poseur

I was looking at a picture taken of me this weekend when it dawned on me that Dave Arneson is not only a gaming inspiration but also a fashion icon...

Spelljamming for Reals

On January 20 NASA's new NanoSail-D unfurled it's solar sails. This craft is literally propelled by pressure from sunlight. NanoSail-D will re-enter the atmosphere in April or May, but until then it will occasionally be visible to the naked eye. I love you, NASA.

Gamma World Heavy Metalpocalypse in 3D!

After the Gamma World Mutants of Metal session I ran at the SoCal MiniCon, player Troy Z. made a splendid illustration of the climax of the game (click HERE to read the report).

My pal Tim (Anaglyph Artist) just made a 3D version of Troy's drawing. Grab your old school blue n' red glasses and check dis out:

Whitebox Sunday - Meet the Syndaens of the Ceiling

Gaming has slowed for me since my first baby arrived this summer. The two D&D campaigns I’ve been running have pretty much been on hiatus. No longer!

 

On Sunday the L.A. whitebox gang reassembled to continue the scary adventure that’s been on pause for 6-7 months now. It was a nice warm, sunny December afternoon when we gathered in an old victorian near Koreatown, had some French pastries, mulled wine, smudged little brown books, lead minis, and the old mint green character sheets.

The party spent the session traversing a catwalk suspended over a large viscous, sparkling underground sea thousands of feet below. The ceiling of the cavern is covered in phosphorescent fungus. In the distance the ceramic city of Wiggin’s Drop hangs from the ceiling.

The party met their first Syndaens – the all-female caste of laborers who tend to the fungus fields on the ceiling of Wiggin’s Rent cavern. The party stumbled upon a mature 8’ tall Syndaen, Naias, and her two 4’ tall clones. The triad was fighting insectoid Harvester monsters on the ceiling. Syndaens wield boomerangs to protect themselves while working the fungus fields. The party decided to join the fight against the Harvesters, afterwards making friends with the Syndaen triad.

It turns out the Syndaen’s were on a quest to extract a mythical male of their race from an ancient and isolated ceiling shrine overtaken long by foul goblins. (I love goblins.) The party joined up to help the Syndaen’s on their quest, and the session ended as the group found a back entrance to the shrine where a wall had been damaged.

I resumed using a DM screen for this session, which is something I've been trying to get away from for a while. I’m still undecided about DM screens. I feel like they put up a psychological barrier between the DM and players, but on the other hand they’re really good for hiding maps and queued-up minis.

An awkward subject came up after the session. Several other folks have expressed interest in joining in this game, but we were all concerned it might be problematic for the group to get too big, both in terms of too many players slowing the game down, and also in terms of the increased difficulty of organizing lots of different people with challenging schedules. We were talking about capping the group at six players... It's sad to exclude fun and interesting people though... Need to think on this more...

Here’s what it looks like when someone casts a difficult spell:

Black Dunes of Mars

A mind-blowing photo from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. I love Mars.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Obviously I haven't been posting much lately. A glass of water got spilled on my computer at home, so I was out of action for a while. On top of that I've been unusually busy with work. I may not be posting much until after the holidays.

Picturing Our Star

The surface of the sun. From the NASA APOD website - one of my daily reads...

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU CLICK THE PHOTO TO ENLARGE

Spicules: Jets on the Sun

Credit: K. Reardon (Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, INAF) IBIS, DST, NSO Explanation: Imagine a pipe as wide as a state and as long as the Earth. Now imagine that this pipe is filled with hot gas moving 50,000 kilometers per hour. Further imagine that this pipe is not made of metal but a transparent magnetic field. You are envisioning just one of thousands of young spicules on the active Sun. Pictured above is one of the highest resolution image yet of these enigmatic solar flux tubes. Spicules line the above frame of solar active region 11092 that crossed the Sun last month, but are particularly evident converging on the sunspot on the lower left. Time-sequenced images have recently shown that spicules last about five minutes, starting out as tall tubes of rapidly rising gas but eventually fading as the gas peaks and falls back down to the Sun. What determines the creation and dynamics of spicules remains a topic of active research.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG: Playtest and Chat with Joe Goodman

Remember the good old days, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics don't waste your time with long-winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPCs who aren't meant to be killed. Each adventure is 100% good, solid dungeon crawl, with the monsters you know, the traps you fear, and the secret doors you know are there somewhere. - Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics Website

Me on the left and Joseph Goodman DMing. 

Photo by Phil McCrum.

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to sit in on a playtest of Goodman Game’s upcoming RPG Dungeon Crawl Classics. The game was run by Joseph Goodman himself, and was organized by the Dead Gamers’ Society meetup. Before and after the game I had a chance to chat with Joe about the game a little bit. Sooo… here I’ll try to lay out the scoop on DCC.

WHY PUBLISH ANOTHER D&D-LIKE FANTASY RPG?
I asked Joe point blank why he wanted to be the publisher of yet another D&D-ish FRPG, and how he thought it would fit into the current market which is already filled with a confusing plethora of retroclones, quasiclones, semiclones, etc. His idea is that DCC will be aimed at D&D 3e / d20 players who want a more simplified version of the out-of-print systems they enjoy. All of the feats, skills, etc. have been stripped out of DCC to provide a lean and easy FRPG. Joe said Goodman Games would probably not be specifically targeting the retrogamer crowd with DCC. I must say, though, the game felt and looked a lot like AD&D – Joe even said he is commissioning some of the classic TSR illustrators like Easley and Otus to do art for the game. He estimates the game will be formally released in about a year.


THE DEEPER MOTIVATION BEHIND DCC: APPENDIX N...?!?!
According to Joe, his personal motivation behind DCC is to offer an RPG that can, as closely as possible, emulate all of the books presented in the Appendix N of the original AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. Joe said he is systematically reading every book in Appendix N in order to formulate the game mechanics for DCC. One specific example of this is turning. Joe replaced the traditional cleric’s turn undead ability with a more general turn unholy in order to more closely mirror turning as envisioned Poul Anderson and Lord Dunsany. Another example is the totally revamped magic system where the success and/or side-effects of spellcasting can be unpredictable:


SPELLCASTING MECHANICS
From my playtest experience, it seems like the biggest difference between DCC and other similar RPGs lies in the spellcasting mechanics. Vancian memorization has been done away with and spellcasters have access to any of the spells appropriate to their level. When casting, however, the player must roll a d20 to gauge how successful the spell is. For example, a cleric needs a minimum roll of eleven (including modifiers) for a spell to work at all. The higher the roll, the better the spell works – and, yes, in the rulebook each spell is presented as a page-long table of effects-by-die-roll. The clever mechanic here is that at the beginning of a session the spellcaster starts with a positive roll modifier (e.g. my cleric started with a +4). Each time a spell is cast the modifier is decreased by one, so spells become less and less likely to be effective as more spells are cast. This turned out to be a cool system that was really fun to play. In fact, I might try to steal part of this system for clerics in my own home game!

I didn’t play a wizard, so I’m not totally clear on the specific mechanics for the class, but each spell cast by a wizard has potentially nasty side-effects that must be assessed at each casting. At one point in our game, for instance, a wizard cast a spell, rolled on the side-effect chart, and discovered he had to cut off a pound of his own flesh to sacrifice to a demon. The player decided to carve off one of his buttocks for this purpose. This is weird and grisly stuff… Hardcore self-mutilation. I found it to be kind of shocking, actually. I did notice that the wizard players started getting a little exasperated as the game went on, but I thought it was cool.

VARIOUS MINOR RULES NITTY GRITTY
DCC has ascending armor class as in d20; Six abilities (3d6 down-the-line): Strength, Agility, Stamina, Personaility, Intelligence, and Luck. Luck points can be burned to influence die rolls, but may then result in other negative modifiers as the game progresses. I wasn't clear on how saving throws worked - I just rolled when Joe told me to. A natural 1 or 20 during combat results in a roll on either a fumble or crit table of dramatic effects. The game has the typical FRPG classes (warrior, thief, wizard, cleric), each with its own specialized character sheet.

My cleric character inherited from an earlier session. 

Note the spell tracking box in the lower right.

HOW WAS THE PLAYTEST?
Joe took us through a scenario called something along the lines of Castle of the Emerald Wizard. I think he was surprised how our group "won" the module in less than 2 hours. The adventure pretty much lived up to the DCC blurb at the top of the post. Based on the portion we mapped, it seemed to be a Type B Linear Dungeon, with a series of guardian monster battles leading to a climax at the end where you fight with the boss (The Emerald Wizard), rescue the prisoners, and march away with pockets full of gems. It was a little disappointing that there were no talking NPCs, no cool items or treasures (beyond gems), and no interesting mysteries. The only way the monsters interacted with the players was to fight-to-the-death. I was also surprised that Joe read room descriptions verbatim off of paper printouts - I've never seen an experienced DM do this before. All-in-all this adventure felt like a railroaded chain of combat encounters, which isn't really my preferred gaming style. We won the module fairly quickly by magically bypassing the main path to get to the end. [UPDATE: Red Joe's comments on this HERE]

The session was a lot of fun and I had a great time, but I think running sessions like this kind of undersells DCC. This is clearly a robust and exciting ruleset with its own unique flavor deriving from the interesting spellcasting mechanics. Given that Joe sees DCC as an Appendix N emulator, I don’t completely understand why he chose to run the type of adventure he did. When Joe was name dropping Poul Anderson and Lord Dunsany before the game I was getting pretty excited, but the experience he delivered was more like an 80s Nintendo game or AD&D as run by a 13 year old in 1983 (not that there's anything wrong with this, mind you). And I'm sure Joe would make no apology for this, based on the promotional blurb at the beginning of this post. I think, however, that this approach is what led one of the players to give a kind of back-handed compliment after the game "Well, I think this would be a great system for running quick one shots!" I actually felt DCC was much better than this. The novel magic system in DCC gave the game an unpredictable and sinister feeling that really was evocative of weird mid-century fantasy fiction. I suspect I'll pick up a copy of DCC when it's published, if only for the magic system, although I predict the whole game will be quite good - possibly outstanding.

Well, Joe knows the market much better than I do, so hopefully his strategy of marketing DCC to alienated d20 players as an engine for running combat-chain dungeon adventures works. There's a lot more to DCC than that, though, and it would be nice to see the game enjoyed by Appendix N fans who would appreciate it. No matter how good the game is, however, I predict it might be hard to get more literary-minded FRPG gamers to give the game a whirl with a name like Dungeon Crawl Classics.

New Photos: Cloud Tunnels of Venus

Enjoy these new photos from the European Space Agency's Venus Express. They depict a great gas vortex tunnel at Venus' south pole. These creepy photos are highly inspirational for my Labyrinth Lord Penelion Campaign (currently on baby hiatus), where the PCs were last seen dangling from a rope in a haunted cloud mine...

Heavy Metalpocalypse in the Gamma World - Awesome Illustration and Session Recap

At the SoCal Mini-Con III I ran a session of first edition Gamma World. The game was set thousands of years in the future in a verdant and primeval post-apocalypse where few “humans” remain. For this session players were members of a mutant heavy metal band – traveling "Mohijrim" mystics moving from town to town, overseeing auspicious occasions such as births, weddings, funerals, harvests, etc. Metal Mohijrim seek to fulfill the sacraments of the Lords of Metal: intercourse, inebriation, and providing high quality musical performances to needy populations.

Player Troy Z. drew this highly accurate illustration of the climax of the game! Read recap below!

The PC's band Tipton Scrotus (note that Child-Eyes wants to call the band Van Tipton):

CLICK HERE TO SEE CHARACTER SHEETS.

Mamlish and Child-Eyes Tipton: Young heavy metal magic users. Their mother Minerva was the greatest guitar shred master of her generation. They learned the magical arts from their gentle wizard dad! They seek to avenge the murder of their parents and restore dignity to the Tipton clan! Drums and vocals, respectively.

Charva Chynex: New age bass-o-maniac. Can bend light and turn invisible!

Battus Scrotus: Joker ape-man with gigantic scrotum. When he squeezes his scrotum a paralyzing musk sprays forth form his urethra. Expert at electronic guitar.

Timetrius Finster: This mystery freakus can turn invisible! He bears the battery-powered mini-amp the whole band must share.

Doktor Vernix: Some say he’s crazy, some say he’s just a simple fool. Whatever they say, he’s one of the best keytar synth players in the Gamma World! He also has cryonic powers and telekinesis! And epilepsy!

Giggleface Gynander: S/he is a gay spirited drum player (Tipton Scrotus has two drummers like the Butthole Surfers did in their heyday) with the power of pyro!

The Set-Up:
The PCs are part of the once proud Tipton clan of metal masters. Their parents and mentors were slain, the ancient family instruments were stolen, and now the band seeks to recover the instruments, avenge the deaths of their elders, and return the Tipton dynasty to its rightful stature!

As the game opened the band was down to its last domar, and all they had were crap instruments – coffee can bass, broken acoustic guitar, barely functioning Casio keyboard. They were little more than a pathetic jug band of the apocalypse. While traveling in the northern city of Yeshmiri they found this note posted:

The guitar in the picture was the Gibson once owned by their metal master Mother Minerva. The band headed north to Dyson's Camp - a town of wolf people in a forest if gigantic redwood trees - to find Zygotus. The band arrived a day before the big Zygotus equinox concert was to occur. The PCs spent some time fucking around with the wolf guards, then headed to the inn to pick up wolf babes, play some jug band metal, and maybe score some coke. They ended up putting on a show, befriending some wolf lasses and earning some baksheesh and rounds of fortified pine ale. In one stage antic, rascally Battus Scrotus paralyzed Doktor Vernix on stage with urethra musk emanating from the hole of his broken Samick electroacoustic guitar. After the show Scrotus “rented out” the paralyzed Doktor to the highest bidder for a few minutes of physical pleasure (as the band often does to make ends meet, they said). The taker was huge, almost genetically pure wolf named Lee Loup. (The Rainbow/Dio song “Run with the Wolf” came up). Overall, the band endeared itself to a small portion of the town’s population and was able to get fed, sheltered, and somewhat wasted. The only one who got laid that night, however, was the paralyzed simpleton Doktor Vernix.

The next day the band left the limits of Dyson’s Camp to explore a potential Zygotus encampment. They indeed found evidence of Zygotus, including some guitar strings and Honda Goldwing tracks, but no evil heavy metal bastards. Instead of following the motorcycle tracks, however, the players went back to Dyson's Camp. They decided their strategy was going to be to confront Zygotus on stage at the big equinox festival of the wolves. This surprised me as the GM, because it seemed foolish and dangerous in the extreme. But it turned out to be purely awesome!

With the help of a groupie the band befriended in the inn the evening before, the band talked the stage manager into letting Tipton Scrotus play a few songs on stage before Zygotus’ arrival. Once on stage the band started into rock n’ roll action rounds, where each round is ~4min - the length of a typical rock ‘n roll song (eg. Metallica’s Orion would take 2 rounds). The band worked to entertain more and more of the crowd before Zygotus arrived – the goal being to turn at least 50% of the crowd into cheering fans before the enemy arrived. They were able to do this through their (admittedly lackluster) charisma, musical ability, and some gammatronic pyrokinetic hijinx. Toward the end of their set they broke into a two-round power ballad with vocalist Child-Eyes Tipton (played by blogger Brunomac, by the way) singing about evil that befell the Tipton clan, and how Zygotus possessed the Gibson relic that was rightfully theirs! Zygotus arrived backstage at this point and were furious! Child-Eyes flipped them a magically bioluminescent middle finger and a heavy metal battle royale ensued…

Metalpocalyptic Showdown! Tipton Scrotus vs. Zygotus!

This next scene – the climax of the game - was purely rad. It is one of those moments that makes GMing worth the pain and humiliation of explaining to your normal friends what your hobbies are.

When Zygotus arrived Doktor Vernix used his molecular understanding mutation to determine that the evil heavy metal band was actually a bunch of androids and their leader, Larbchuck, was a cyborg. At that point Zygotus took to the stage and most rudely started pushing Tipton Scrotus around in an attempt to halt their rock.  Of course, some serious violence commenced – but Tipton Scrotus NEVER STOPPED ROCKING. The whole battle took place while Tipton Scrtous were playing an epic prog-metal composition. All of the android bandmembers of Zygotus had laser cannons hidden under their scalps / wigs, and I assumed most of the PCs would be quickly incinerated at this point - ending the game tragically. But the Lords of Metal were truly with Tipton Scrotus for this battle, because I kept rolling crap, 3… 7… 5…, for the robot attacks.  Once I even rolled a 1 and the Zygotus bass player ended up shooting himself with his own damn laser beam. The android leather daddies were complete buffoons, apparently! Meanwhile Larbchuck, the screaming cyborg lead guitarist of Zygotus, was gearing up to shoot liquid-light radiation beams from his eyes. Charva Chynex (played by blogger Nick B.!) used his light manipulation powers to defuse the beam. Then Mamlish the Metal Wizard cast an ajna Radionic Fireball spell and melted the cyborg’s face off (see illustration) to reveal to the people of Dyson’s Camp that Zygotus were not authentic Mohijrim – they were computronic purveyors of False Metal.

During the battle Doktor Vernix tried for several rounds to telekinese the Gibson guitar from Larbchuck’s hand, and failed. Finally he rolled a white-hot 20 (as shown in the illustration) and was able to float the Gibson out of the hands of the cyborg into the hands of Battus Scrotus in the middle of Scrotus’ left-hand tapping guitar solo. With his right hand, Scrotus then grabbed his electric cricket bat, rolled a sweet sweet natural 20 and knocked Larbchuck’s head off, sending it flying over the audience.

Lots of other kooky stuff happened, but nobody reads long session reports so I won’t bother relating it all to you… Needless to say it was a super fun game for me to GM and the players said they liked it too. For me the first part of the game where the band was cavorting about with the locals was a tad slow for my taste, but some of the players said they really loved it.  “Town & Tavern” preludes simply appeal to some people and not to others – it’s been that way since 1974, I’m sure. I think for future con sessions, however, I might plan better to downplay Town & Tavern action so players can get to the exploration and violence more quickly. Damn, I had tons of other material - NPCs and localities - for this adventure the players never touched.

One stylistic element I experimented with for this game was giving a longer background color spiel than I usually do for one-shots. I spent 10-15 minutes describing the world, context, heavy metal traditions, etc. I personally like hearing GMs give colorful and creative intros, but I also know at a con game there can be a risk of turning off players with short attention spans. I think it turned out okay this time, but I never got direct feedback from the players about it.

Anyway, the game was cool. Maybe I’ll run a follow up at Orccon in February. I’m skipping out on Gateway this year because of the new baby.

PS: Click here to read Brunomac's recap of the session.

Pictures From SoCal Mini-Con III

Yesterday was the SoCal Mini-Con III in Anaheim, California. Everything seemed to go perfectly great and everyone I talked to had a blast. Special thanks to Bedivere for arranging the event!

There were six games and over 30 people total:

• Tavis Allison running OD&D
• Trent Foster running AD&D
• Joe Goodman running Dungeon Crawl Classics
• Telecenter running Swords and Wizardry
• Cyclopeatron (me!) running Gamma World
• Brunomac running OD&D

I was able to get  few pictures of the Mini-Con. Also, special thanks are due to David B. for the Gamma World pics. I tried my best to attach names to people in the pictures, but I couldn't remember everyone's name. Please let me know if I got your name wrong and I'll correct it. Sadly, I wasn't able to get pictures of Telecanter's or Brunomac's games...

 TAVIS ALLISON'S OD&D GAME:

 (Clockwise from far left: Jeff, Tavis, Nick Bielik, Kirk 'Telecanter', Alexey 'Monk', Javi, Staples, Chris 'Staples', Mobad Deathprong)

(Left to Right: Javi, Chris 'Staples', Mobad Deathprong)

TRENT FOSTER'S AD&D GAME:

(Clockwise from far left: Bedivere, son of Wheggi, Wheggi, Chris 'Cimmerian', T. Foster, Thorkhammer, The Shaman, Jeff, Rick?, Gary?)

 (Clockwise from left: T. Foster, Thorkhammer, The Shaman, Jeff, Rick?)

JOE GOODMAN'S DUNGEON CRAWL CLASSICS:

(DM: Joe Goodman, Guy in Hat: Louis)

CYCLOPEATRON'S GAMMA WORLD:

(Clockwise from left: Troy, Bob 'Cyclopeatron', Banjo Chris, Nick Bielik (blocked from view), Jorshus playing air keytar!)

(From left: Troy, David, Bob)

(Can't remember what I was gesticulating about, exactly...)

Dendriton Tube

The party has been traveling for days, trying to reach the exit of Dendriton Tube. This is the view looking back down The Tube. In the distance you can see the starrily luminescent underground sea over fifty leagues down. Note the party's camp on the left wall.

WyrdCon: I Was LARPing With Larry Niven. What Did YOU Do Last Weekend?

Last weekend was the first ever WyrdCon, which was totally devoted to LARPing. Until last weekend I was almost completely ignorant of the LARP scene – I had never LARPed before, and, while I’ve been curious to try, it has never really been high on my list of priorities. When I learned that WyrdCon was going to be literally a few blocks from my house I decided it would be a perfect opportunity to give it a shot. I participated to some degree in four LARP games. The games I was involved with represented a pretty wide spectrum of LARP styles and I think offered a good glimpse into the genre. Here’s a rundown of the different sessions I participated in, and how I would personally categorize them :

Starship Valkyrie – AWESOME STYLE: This was one of the most amazing gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time! Starship Valkyrie was a highly intense simulation of being a crewmember of a starship. I really felt like I was part of the bridge crew on an episode of Star Trek or BSG!

Picture a large open penthouse suite in the Hilton transformed into the interior of a starship. There was a bridge area with a huge plexiglass hexmap/star chart and console stations for navigation, ship weapons, scanners, and communications. For communications there was a large flat-screen TV with a Skype connection to another hotel room where some players were on another disabled starship. In other parts of the main suite were consoles for things like sick-bay, engineering, science labs, etc. There was also a table set up in one corner to handle off-ship starfighter battles using a referee-run card-game mechanic designed by the GM. The GM had obviously put a ton of time into designing this game and hand-building the console stations, most of which had electronic timers and card-slots with damage and repair information, etc. Each player received a tiny booklet with a description of their character, including what they were skilled in and what consoles they were able to operate. I counted around 25 players, 3 NPCs, 2 assistant GMs, and 1 main GM.

The game mechanics were brilliant. At its core it played a lot like a cooperative boardgame (eg. Pandemic, Space Alert, or Shadows Over Camelot). Different players and/or teams had different assigned duties, and were forced to self-assemble into functional crews based on their expertise. The game was very intense as we were trying to deal with emergencies as the captain, a player, was trying to collect information and decide what commands to give in light of time and resource limitations. At one point we sent an away team to another disabled starship in another hotel room, and stayed in contact using the Skype connection. One of the best parts about the game is that it didn't REQUIRE people to take on goofy characters or accents - you could pretty much just be yourself and get into the game as a simulation.

It was beautiful! I'm dying to play again! I'm kicking myself because I didn't bring my camera to the session - I had no idea it was going to be as cool as it was! The GM / designer was a fellow called  Christian Brown who is associated with Enigma Live Game Lab, which sprung out of the UCLA sci-fi society. After the game I contacted Christian to see if he'd want to run a game for some of us later this summer. He said YES! Awesome! We're tentatively aiming for an August game here in Orange County - any of you blog readers who might be interested in joining in let me know!

Vampire: The Masquerade – RPG Style: I’m embarrassed to admit I’d never played Vampire before, despite it being one of the most popular and influential RPGs of the last 20 years. Although I’m personally not into the gothic vampire aesthetic too much, I really wanted to try this game. What better chance than to play in a session refereed by the original designer himself – Mark Rein-Hagen? Joining a nighttime game run by the designer was both awesome and horrible. It was awesome because he spent forever talking about the complex background of the game and helping us design characters. It was horrible because he spent forever talking about the complex background of the game and helping us design characters. I was really surprised he didn’t come prepared with pregens, a level-one no-no for con game referees. It was almost two hours before we actually got to start playing the game. After about 30 minutes of actual playing my companions were totally overwhelmed and burned out, so we skipped out of the game early.

I would like to say that I thought it was a great experience, however. Rein-Hagen was an excellent storyteller and narrator, and the players were very intensely into the game. If my companions had not wanted to leave, I would have stayed all night to play. The game system was definitely more like a traditional RPG, where everyone had a character sheet with different ability scores and specializations. Conflicts were resolved with a combination of ability point comparisons and spending, and paper/rock/scissors.

Another cool note about this session was that Larry Niven sat in on the first part of the game! Since I was a kid he’s been one of my favorite sci-fi authors. He was basically silent the whole time – he seems like a pretty quiet guy – but it was awesome to meet the man. I couldn’t resist weakening into a compliment-slathering fanboy and getting a picture with him…

Pieces of Hate – Combat LARP: This was basically a bunch of people in costumes hitting each other with foam swords. It was good goofy fun, even if the roleplaying and story elements of the game were paper thin. We started in a dark room that was set up like the deck of a sailing ship. NPCs portraying water and wind elementals were running around the outside of the deck trying to hit us with foam weapons and bags of rice (spells), and all of us PCs were trying to reach over the side walls of the ship to do the same to them. Eventually the ship “landed” and we transferred to another room with a cavern set up where our party battled a bunch of kobolds, and after that, with scary magical demons pouring out of a magical strobe-light portal. This last battle took place in a pretty big ballroom, and it was fun organizing team combat maneuvers. There was a really simple rule system (NERO) covering how to score hits and keep track of hit points. It was definitely a lot of fun and a pretty good physical workout as well. I’d surely do it again, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to get into combat LARPing as a hobby or use up future convention time I could otherwise spend playing real RPGs.

Messina - Cosplay Style: I think this pretty well represented the stereotype of LARPing I've always had in my mind. It was basically a bunch of people in random costumes, including elves, steampunks, goth vampires, etc. running around, hamming it up with goofy fake accents, playing jenga, and basically having a no-holds-barred geekout party. I definitely respect this and think it’s cool and fun, but my companions and I had a hard time getting into the spirit, so we left pretty quickly.

Gamma World: Mutation Decks and Gamex Session Report

A little over a week ago I ran my Gamma World one-shot “Floating Castle of the Wasp Women” at Gamex 2010. It was cool - I had eight players sprawled over two tables, and they were a funny and animated bunch. Most of them had played Gamma World before, so running the game was a snap.

I saw my main challenge in planning the game as preserving the random weirdness that comes out of the unexpected mutation combos while keeping the game fast and easy for potential newbies. I resolved to make pregens, but deal out mutations and equipment from decks of cards.

Mutation Decks

I made two mutation decks. A green one for physical mutations and a yellow one for mental mutations. I used text recognition software to read the text directly out the first edition Gamma World rulebook, and Illustrator to lay out the cards, removing a few mutations that had really long or confusing descriptions. I put two of each of mutation in the respective decks. After each player picked out a pregen I had them roll 2 d4s, the first d4 being the number of mental mutations to draw, the second d4 being the number of physical mutations to draw. Email me if you want to make your own mutation cards - I'll send you the files.

Mutation Cards in Action

The Party

After everyone picked pregens from the pile and drew their mutation cards, we went around the table and everyone briefly described their character’s mutations while I mentioned any (very) minimal background story any character may have had. The party ended up being:

U-Gene Lev-E – 600 year old celebrity comic with stress-induced epilepsy and orangutan body.

Musculus McGee – Four-armed mouse man with a bitchin anti-grav Datsun 280ZX. The envy of the skies!

“Rascal” Smith – Mutated lil’ rascal!

Chi Chi Robertson – Tiny humanoid cheetah kitten that sprays a musk compelling victims to do the Robotics Dance uncontrollably.

Prince Spanky – Anthropomorphic canid empath, Prince of the Sky Island!

Edvard Owlet – Flying owl man with super delicate skin and regeneration powers.

El Super Mack – Mysterious invisible brainiac.

Squid Vicious – Tentacle-faced freakazoid!

The Adventure 

(SPOILER ALERT: Read no further if you might want to play this scenario.)

The game began at dawn with screaming and fire on the PC’s floating Sky Island village. The green antigravity-generating head - “Bill” the Gravitron - had been stolen away during a raid by humanoid wasp women! The players had exactly 3 hours to return the head to the island before the village crashed into the radiated wastes of earth below! The players jumped into the anti-grav 280ZX and zipped into the sky in pursuit of the wasps!

They found the wasps living in a flying medieval castle with a huge two-story wasp nest protruding from its side. Near the drawbridge of the castle, on an outcrop of rock, was a semi-truck trailer and a few tents inhabited by human servants of the wasps. The party learned that these men were psychic slaves of the Wasp Queen, and they worked to maintain and run the castle whose computer system only responds to human commands. The party found one human named Bumpy Bo Bappy who had slipped out of the wasps’ mind control and wanted desperately to leave the castle. He was willing to help the party infiltrate the castle and let the party into the castle through a service entrance on the roof (after a brief fight with some wasp soldiers).

Wasps Swarm the Castle Battlements!

To make a long story short, the castle was a flying theme hotel from pre-apocalypse Las Vegas. In one of the guest rooms the party found an imprisoned worker-caste wasp woman named Prixie who wanted to rebel against the Queen and liberate the wasp hive from its tyrannical eusociality-imposed sterility (wasp nests are almost all non-reproductive females working for the Queen). Prixie was able to produce a small amount of pheromone to turn some of her sisters against the Queen – and together with the adventure party they started an insurrection in the wasp hive! Equality for all diploids!

To complicate matters even further, a week before the adventure took place the diminutive King Helix had effected a coup, imprisoned the Queen, and was using her pheromone to control the hive. The last 1/3 of the session was a race around the hive and the castle, in the middle of an escalating wasp civil war, trying to find King Helix and the Gravitron. The party rocked it, with a totally rad invisible-quarterback Gravitron toss / teleport maneuver at the end of the game that returned Gravitron Bill to the Sky Island despite U-Gene Lev-E’s constant seizures. The party took out King Helix with a grenade, and managed to take control of the flying castle by capturing the small human boy who piloted the castle. The party had only one casualty near the end of the game. A romance blossomed between Prixie and Prince Spanky, suggesting a common future for the Sky Island and the Liberated Wasp People.

Well done, mutants!

Tricked Out Gamma World Screen Shields Cyclopeatronic Hirsuteness

Gamex 2010: Roleplaying for 20 Straight Hours

This last weekend was Gamex 2010, one of the three big gaming conventions in the Los Angeles area. Guessing from the nametag numbers, attendance was probably somewhere near 1000. It was a nice sized event with tons of board games, RPGs, and beautiful epic miniature battles. The con was 4 days, but I could only attend Sunday because of other obligations. I took full advantage of my day at the con and ended up roleplaying for about 20 hours straight, with breaks for lunch and dinner. Starting at 9am I played in a Traveller session, I refereed an afternoon session of first edition Gamma World, and I played in an 8pm-3:30am session of old school Tunnels & Trolls. Yes, a great Sunday!

This year the selection of RPG sessions was quite good, meaning that for many time slots there were multiple games I would have been keen to play in. However, seats for some of the really interesting games filled up quickly. I was even surprised and flattered to see that my afternoon Gamma World session was overbooked when I arrived Sunday morning - I had 9 players sign up for 6 slots. I was prepared for 8 players, so I was able to take the first two alternates. I lucked out and had an awesome and animated group, including some classic Gamma World fans I’d never met before – one guy even came prepared with cool minis and set-pieces! I’ll make a more detailed post on the Gamma World game shortly. (UPDATE: Read about it here!)

Running Gamma World

(photo courtesy Louis Garcia, Dead Gamers Society)

Old school RPGs were pretty well represented at Gamex this year. There was a lot of Call of Cthulhu action and Robert Lionheart ran a bunch of sessions of Classic Traveller and Tunnels & Trolls. There was also off-program Gamma World action going on Saturday and Sunday nights.

My biggest regret of the con was not getting in on any of the Dead Gamers Society sessions. There are a lot of fun and creative gamers in this group that are a blast to hang out with. Luckily they're going to schedule a game day this summer to rerun a bunch of their Gamex sessions for those that missed out this weekend.

Lionheart’s Tunnels & Trolls game was definitely one of the high points of the convention for me. Lionheart, known as spinachcat online, is quite a talent. In the T&T game he was able to relay a very deep and convincing high fantasy background, and get the players in on some exceptionally satisfying epic-level action very quickly. Lionheart’s narrative, roleplaying, and refereeing skills are all excellent. This was my first experience playing T&T, and it was really great. We played using somewhat homebrewed 4th/5th edition rules.

Yes, a great Sunday! I can’t wait for the next convention!

 Cool Mini Setup of The Boxer Rebellion 

 One Corner of the Boardgame Hall

My 16 Year Old Niece is a DM!

UPDATE (5/18): My niece set up her own blog called Dungeon Mistress to talk about her D&D campaign. Take a look!

I went to visit my mama yesterday and she passed along these clandestine photos of my 16 year old niece DMing an ALL-FEMALE D&D CAMPAIGN! This is a serious weekly campaign my niece is running, not a singleton pick-up game. My niece created the entire setting they are playing in - a world shattered by an epic historical struggle between factions of wizard-dragons. The players are trying to relearn the forgotten dragon magic to fight a horrifying zombie plague advancing from the northern tundra.

Uncle Cyclopeatron is so proud!

One of the girls in the game is working on a short video documentary about the campaign that will include the players providing in-character interviews. I'm very excited to see how this turns out - hopefully there will be some footage I can post here.

Behold these strange and rare images of high school girls in 2010 playing D&D (posted with permission of my niece):