Thoughts & Links for 5/9/2025

- OSRIC 3 launched. I'm thinking of going for it, and seeing if I can't tempt some of my players into trying this version of AD&D.

- Speaking of AD&D, has anyone tried to feed the DMG into, say, ChatGPT and see if it can figure out how initiative works? I'm curious, but also lazy.

- I've been too busy for Battle Brothers. I am looking at trying some quality-of-life mods, like sped up overland movement and stopping on sighting enemy groups . . . but I've never done mods before so I'm putting that off until I have a little more time to unwind any damage I do if I mess up.

Weekly Roundup 12/27/2024

Friday roundup.

- Does a game need something "heavy" to be sustainable? Interesting post and even more interesting comments.

The Fiction Becomes the System for Advancement; Or, Something Needs to be Heavy

- Yet another tiny buried rule - determining if your character is keen-eared in AD&D.

How to Read the AD&D Rules: Keen-eared individuals

If you want to check the rule at home, it's on pg. 60. So is the answer to the question posed in the post, too. Like surprise, this is one of those cases where a 1 is good, a 2 better, and a 3+ sucks. Freaking Gary Gygax, man.

- Game is Sunday. Last game of 2024!

Random Thoughts & Links for 5/31/2024

- Want the Battle of Five Armies in 15mm?

The price keeps dropping. From $7995 in 2/23 to $5995 now.

Where is the floor for that thing? It started at almost $13K.

- This Death Race game makes me want to play Car Wars. Not enough to deal with my loophole-loving friends, though.

- Permanent monster paralysis in D&D?

- I made a ruling for my DF game by email, which I'll post about tomorrow.

The Brotherhood Complex, organized opposition, and the DMG

The Brotherhood Complex was the site of a full TPK in my Felltower campaign. Literally no one escaped that fight. The PCs ran into organized foes, beat them up a bit, and then lost against a regrouped foe.

Part of this I can credit to Gary Gygax. I was hugely influenced by the DMG as a young gamer. It's one of the two first books I owned - the Fiend Folio and The Dungeonmasters Guide. One section I read over and over was MONSTERS AND ORGANIZATION, DMG p. 104-105.

That outlines a number of scenarios - PCs versus undead in a dungeon crypt, against giant ants in a lair, against humanoids, against a town, against a bandit camp, and against a fortress.

They're all great stuff. Let me quote extensively to show you what I mean:

SITUATION 1 (Sl) is where encounter occurs for the first time, and while the party inflicts casualties upon the monsters, victory is denied; the party then leaves with its wounded, regroups, and returns one full week later to finish the job. SITUATION 2 (S2) is where the party, rested, healed, and ready for action, has now re-encountered the monsters in question. In both situations the response of the monsters concerned will be detailed so you can use the examples in handling actual play.

(SNIP)

EXAMPLE VI: The party discovers a fortress and attacks.

s1. Guards will instantly sound a warning to alert the place. Alarms will be sounded from several places within the fortress. Leaders will move to hold the place, or expel invaders, with great vigor. Spell casters will be likely to have specific stations and assigned duties - such as casting fireballs, lighting bolts, flame strikes, cloudkills, dispel magics, and like spells. Defenders are out to KILL, not deal stupidly or gently with, attackers, and they will typically ask no quarter, nor give any. In like fashion, traps within the fortress will be lethal. As action continues, commanders will assess the party's strengths, weaknesses, defense, and attack modes and counter appropriately. If the party is within the fortress, possible entry points and escape routes will be sealed off. When the attackers pull back, it is very likely that they will be counterattacked, or at least harassed. Additionally, members of the force of the stronghold will track the party continually as long as they are within striking distance of the fortress.

S2. The fortress will most likely have replaced all losses and have rein- forcements in addition. An ambush might be laid for the attackers when they approach. A sally force will be ready to fall upon the attackers (preferably when engaged in front so as to strike the flank or rear). Siege machinery, oil, missiles, etc. will be ready and in good supply. Repairs to defenses will be made as thoroughly as time and materials permitted. Weak areas will have been blocked off, isolated, and trapped as well as possible under the circumstances. Leaders will be nearby to take immediate charge. Spell casters might be disguised as guards, or hidden near guard posts, in order to surprise attackers. Any retreat by the attackers will be followed up by a hot pursuit.

How to Defend Your Lair is a good, modern version of the same.

I absolutely run my foes this way, with the bit about S2 from the bandit camp as well - sometimes, they're just gone. But if they're there, they act like the above. They are fighting hard and intelligently. They won't sit in clumps and let you clear them room by room. They won't let you just rest, recoup, and attack again without a response.

The Brotherhood Complex is such a place. The deeper levels of Felltower - with the "Gith," are the same. The orcs, same. They want to fight and win, and you can't gobble them up little by little without risk. It might take a decisive win and immediately followup; what makes that win decisive depends on their center of gravity and their interests.

The PCs can absolutely smash the place . . . but it's not a "beginner" dungeon anymore. It's not a quick side trip. If it will be done it will take something more than a series of tentative delves. It's not that kind of place anymore.

A few thoughts on PCs Making Magic Items vs. Buying Magic Items

This post is almost entirely in the context of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. It's influenced by my current game's actual play, but also in light of the way my original game - AD&D - treated acquisition of magic items.

In standard DF and DFRPG, PCs cannot make magic items. That's exclusively something NPCs do. They can buy magic items in town - and quite a broad array of them, even using just DF1 or Adventurers for a list.

What are the implications of PCs being able to buy magic items?

PCs buying magic items:

- has a loot cost, primarily cash but also selling found items that don't match your preferences to fund the creation of one that does.

- no time cost; time to enchant is a delay on receiving but doesn't take the PCs out of play.

- limits on what you can buy can seem arbitrary but can be tied to in-game social abilities (Status, Wealth, Social Stigma, etc.)

- no template limit on purchases.

Cash found in a dungeon, and things exchanged for cash, can be swapped into magic items of whatever sort the PCs need unless the GM puts on specific limits or creates sale item lists. PCs just delve, spend, repeat. Time delays on purchased items can be imposed but the time limits are on the item, not the PC.

What about making items?

PCs making magic items:

- has a loot cost, some cash but also finding the "right" ingredients, if required (either as baseline rules or color.)

- has a time cost, because time spent enchanting is time not spent delving.

- if the loot cost is primarily finding ingredients, this can have a neutral effect on selling found items.

- limits on what you can make can seem arbitrary but are more easily tied to in-game magic/knowledge abilities.

- template limits.

If you take an AD&D-style enchantment approach, you're going to need a lot of monster bits and specific gems to make things go. Even a GURPS Magic approach will have some specific requirements on design and ingredients. Cash alone will usually suffice but may not for all things. There will also likely be time costs - if it takes 100 days to make a magic items, you're out of play for 100 days. What templates and abilities you need to enchant are likely to limit item access. Bards and wizards may be able to make items, clerics some other items, but most other templates might be out of luck. Or maybe not, if you allow shamanistic barbarina practices, fighters to hone steel so well that it becomes enchanted, or thieves to go through certain rituals to make magic keys and dead man's candles and so on.

All of them come with time out of play, definite needs to find ingredients before you can just go get the custom magic widget of your dreams, and in-game advantgae or skill acquisition.

It might be that to make money less of a way to get custom magic items, and make found items more important, you might benefit from letting PCs make the items. It seems a little counterintuitive but the thoughts above point that way.

I need to spend a bit more time noodling this over. Maybe the future of magic items in Felltower is PC made?

Barrier Peaks!

Over on Wayne's Books there is the first post on a playthrough of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

I played it, in parts, in elementary school . . . and I want to see how someone gives it justice in a modern playthrough. We certainly didn't back then, although I did a pretty good job coloring in some of the black and white pictures in the module on my original copy. Heh.

Wayne's S2/S4/WG4 Playthroughs

I follow Wayne's Book's T2K blog . . . but I totally missed him doing playthroughs of three of my favorite old-school AD&D modules using D&D5.

Here is the first post for each of them:

S2 White Plume Mountain

WG4 Lost Temple of Tharizdun

S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

Each of of those three modules was hugely influential on me. How I run the bad guys in a coordinated fashion, and have real buried weirdness in hidden spots? WG4. How I make crazy magic items? S2, which I've also run for some of my current group. And for a direct lift of one level for my own game? S4.

Great stuff. I spent my free time reading through these today.

Arden Vul Bundle of Holding

If you want a megadungeon to just buy and run . . . this one is on sale at Bundle of Holding:

$25 for a full megadungeon complete with .png maps for uploading to a VTT seems pretty good. I hadn't really heard of this dungeon before, but I'll thinking of giving it a look. If I can get 4-5 useful ideas out of it, that's worth the price to me. There is a free preview if you want to check it out first, and the maps are always free.

Year in Gaming 2023

Here we are at the end of 2023. How was it for gaming for me?

Running Dungeon Fantasy

Due to a TPK, this year was pretty odd for me - I actually got to play in a DF Felltower adjacent campaign GMed by one of my regular players, Vic.

So I GMed less sessions overall, but the net amount of DF Felltower-connected play wasn't as low as this seems. 2022 featured only 13 sessions for comparison to me GMing 12 this year - about one every 4 weeks.

Session 178, Brotherhood Complex 2 - Iron Knights
Session 179, Brotherhood Complex 3, Part I
Session 180, Brotherhood Complex 3 - Part II
Session 181, Brotherhood Complex 4, Part I
Session 182, Brotherhood Complex 4, Part II - Demon Grunts & Torturers
Session 183, Brotherhood Complex 5 - Gnolls (Part I)
Session 184, Brotherhood Complex 5 - Gnolls (Part II)
Session 185, Felltower 125 - Return to Felltower
Session 186, Felltower 125 - Return to Felltower Part II - Gnolls & A Level Too Far?
Session 187, Felltower 125 - Fighting the Werewolves
Session 188, Felltower 126 - Werewolf Loot & Crystal Gazing
Session 189, Felltower 127 - Quick Delve

It was great getting back to Felltower.

We added a couple of players, though - Doug and Kevin joined us. We didn't really lose anyone although Galen's player Mike only played in a session or two. Doug and Kevin have been excellent additions and have added a different approach to delving and character generation.

The Forge has been excellent, and Foundry is getting better and better. Still odd sometimes, and still lots of little issues, but overall I feel much more comfortable with it.

Playing RPGs

With our TPK in Session 184, caused by Ye Olde Let's Camp in This Dead End Tactic, we needed to reboot the party again. I didn't want to create yet another starting area, and Felltower isn't a great place for newbies anymore, after endless bottom feeding by high point guys cleaned out anything that wasn't a rat, an ooze, or a gargoyle from the upper levels. So Vic offered to run some games . . . and I suggested we port the characters from there back to Felltower.

We did that. It was a good experience - I'd never co-GMed anything like that before.

I played most of the sessions, missing only one because I didn't want to stay up all night in Japan to game from there.

Felltower Adjacent - Session 1
Felltower Adjacent - Session 2
Felltower Adjacent - Session 3
Felltower Adjacent - Session 5 - Scaring & Murdering Hobgoblins
Felltower Adjacent Session 6 - Traps & Temples of Orcus

There were 6 sessions and I played 5 of them, as you can see above. All in all, then, there were 18 sessions of Felltower-connected games run in 2023, and I played only 17 of them despite it being the campaign I initiated. Heh. Goes with my "our game" idea - Felltower is "mine" and I didn't even play all the sessions.*

AD&D

Another year with no AD&D. I expect this coming one will be the same, although I'm going to try otherwise. I expect the ship has sailed and no one wants to play AD&D anymore. I'm the only one who mentions it.

Other Games & Gaming

I was able to play some other games this year:

Board Games:

Fire in the Lake - simply beautiful, and amazing to play. Every turn feels like a dilemma.
Panzer Blitz - fun, but I'd actually rather play early-war scenarios, like 41-42.

Video games:

GTA 3: Vice City
Borderlands 2 (not so much of it, this year, but I still fired it up a few times)
Pathfinder: Kingmaker (running both my evil monk, and a Lawful Good Paladin aimed at getting the "best" ending)
Planescape: Torment enhanced edition (beautiful, and such a good game)
Fantasy General (almost finished it)
War in the East (played a couple of short scenarios)

I bought, but haven't yet played, Grand Tactician: The American Civil War.

Writing

I started work on a big project with Doug Cole, but SJG ended up putting it on hold for a while. Oh well.

I wrote a few other little things but without Pyramid, they don't have a home, but I like them too much to not try to find a way to turn them into a profit.

Overall, not a bad year in gaming. I'd like to get to 20+ sessions in 2024.





* I still shake my head over the hostile reaction I got in the comments on that one.

When Orcus isn't enough, add friends?

This post over on Old School FRP Tumblr caught my eye:

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

They're actually the four horsemen of Orcus.

Just eyeballing them vs. AD&D 1st edition's Orcus . . . I'm pretty sure they're a very serious threat to him. He's got 85% magic resistance and excellent combat abilities . . . but a 23rd level magic-user and everyone with weapons that can hurt him, even the summoned minotaurs . . .

Good thing they're Chaotic Evil, like him, so cooperation isn't likely to go very far.

It's interesting when you beef up a powerful unique monster with a coterie of allies who are also seriously powerful. I think in a way it diminishes the main monster, though. Instead of Orcus being a boss fight you can just have, there is this other layer of guys you have to get through first. So now it's a bit of an extended encounter. It can be another excuse to push off a fight like that later and later in a campaign. Put it off long enough, and you won't ever get to the big demon. And if it goes from "very tough encounter" to "campaign culimation" than they can't have 85 HP and go down in a 10 round melee. You need them to have hundreds of HP, piles of allies, more powers than can be handled . . . and the PCs need to escalate to match.

I've been trying to front load the scary stuff and even then it's tough to get people to engage. So while I like the idea here, I worry that it's just another way for the PCs and the GM to back off from using the cool unique monster that is Orcus.

Last Wills for PCs?

Back in the day, our character sheets for AD&D were from TSR. Most of them had a little section on the back for a "Last Will."

We used them then, even though we had a pretty low-lethality game compared to how I do things now. In campaigns, it was rare for a PC to die. In our early games, it was more common, but I never saw a will successfully used to transfer anything to a new guy. Playing much of my very early days (and more here) in elementary school was not conducive to such play.

I'm curious how people have had this work out in their games. I don't use it in DF, mostly because I game with actual lawyers and managers who do long-term risk mitigation strategies in play already. My head hurts considering how they'd angle this. And it would be one more thing to keep track of. But color me curious . . . who wills the wills?

Random Thoughts and Links for 1/13/2023

Random stuff for Friday.

- Here is a Fairy Tale version of Japan based on the literal prefecture names. New Lagoon - aka Niigata - is my other home. I lived in Turtle Ricefields in New Lagoon. It's hot and wet in the summer and freezing cold and snowy in the winter.

Anyway, good stuff. I need to move back permanently soon.

- The simplicity that is AD&D known spells! My first AD&D character - Goldleaf the elf, a F/M-U/T, used this rule to learn 5 spells. That was the only time we ever used it. I don't even need "we" there, as the guys who taught me to play had me do that and I never DMed, or played with a DM who used, that rule. It's not that it is complicated, it's just not really something that any later materials assumed mattered and it sure didn't maximum enjoyment of your gaming experience. It's a nice concept, and maybe people play by it and love it . . . we never saw the need.

- I had to re-up for Forge today. $47.99 for the year of hosting is well worth it. I don't regret a penny of it. The one time we needed support it was provided quickly and effectively with no bother. I highly recommend them as a VTT host.

Year in Gaming 2022

Here we are at the end of 2022. How was it for gaming for me?


Running Dungeon Fantasy

We had only 13 sessions of DF this past year, from session 145 - session 162. That's down from 20 - I think - last year. It was a lowsy year for gaming.

Session 165, Felltower 118 - Beyond the Repelling Doors
Session 166, Felltower 120 - Draugr Do-or-Die (Part I)
Session 167, Felltower 120 - Draugr Do-or-Die (Part II)
Session 168, Felltower 120 - Draugr Do-or-Die (Part III)
Session 169, Felltower 121 - Second GFS - Part I
Session 170, Felltower 121 - Second GFS - Part II
Session 171, Felltower 121 - Second GFS - Part III
Session 172, Felltower 122 - Desmond Takes Command & Stirges
Session 173 (Part I), Felltower 121 - Second GFS - Part IV
     Interlude: Prisoners of the Masters
Session 173 (Part II), Felltower 123 - Dungeons & Dwarves
Session 174, Felltower 124 - Mission for the Masters
Session 175, Felltower 124 - Mission for the Masters II
Session 176, Felltower 124 - Mission for the Masters III - Beholder
Session 177, Brotherhood Complex 1 - Tricks, Traps, and Triger


Our player pool dropped, too. We had only seven players this year, down from ten. All regulars, no new people. But Galen's player hasn't played since 2021, along with a couple others. Some can't seem to handle Foundry, and I can't handle Roll20 anymore. I'm not sure I need new people, but I do need to get some of my players back.

A good chunk of the game was in Felltower - all of it except the last session. No gates. A little deeper exploration. And a number of sessions centered on the ill-fated delve that led to the capture of the PCs, and the consequences. That derailed a lot - it took a while to get people together to play it, a long time to resolve, and then we had a few sessions of trying to satisfy the Masters's needs but they ended in a TPK.

Oddly TPKs don't seem to dissuade anyone from playing. Which is good, although if everyone threw up their hands and say no more Felltower aka DF on Hard Mode I'd just run something else.

Foundry has been annoying, but vastly better than Roll20. I'm getting more skilled at it. I anticipate paying The Forge to host another year - it was well worth the price and their tech support - the one time we needed it - did all that we could have asked. As a former IT guy myself, I'm both understanding and very picky. I understand the issues, but I expect results. We got results.

Playing RPGs

I didn't get to play any.

AD&D

Another year with no AD&D. I expect this coming one will be the same, although I'm going to try otherwise.

Other Games & Gaming

I got my copy of Fire in the Lake. I've read the rules, but I need space to play it.

I played Pathfinder: Kingmaker and enjoyed it a great deal. I'd play it again except I need to give it a little more time before I'm properly decided what to do in it. I want to run an unarmed monk, and I'm trying to decide between good (again) or evil. Fun stuff.

I didn't really get a lot of other video game playing in.

Writing

I wrote all of one article for Pyramid for publication. I'm a lot busier with work - at my place of employment and with my own personal business. So not as much time to write . . . and not as much interest in writing what came along.

I did put my name in the ring for a possible project in 2023. We'll see if I get the gig. If so, it's GURPS, and it'll involve my usual areas of interest. That's all the hint I can give.

I am still keeping up the blog, but with more breaks than last year. Call it 319 posts this year. Not bad, although I will try to keep up daily posting more in the future. Still, it's over 11 years in and 3900 posts.




Overall, a so-so year in gaming. I will do my best to make sure the next one isn't so light on gaming as this one.

Links & Thoughts for 12/2/2022

A few things:

- I have some replies to comments from the last few days, but I don't have the time to make them at the moment. They're coming!

- I have to write out my 10x loot proposal again in a final form. We may not use them, but I answered three questions by email that are answered in the general post on the subject. So that's not a good sign for comprehension. I'll be explicit what would be what way.

It might actually be easier to cut the price of mundane items by 1/10th, actually, and it would have the same effect.

I'll only put it into practice this campaign if we get 100% of the current players to agree on it.

- I'll give these a go. The library had them both:




I need to finish this, first:



Hey, be careful of spoilers! Don't tell me how it turns out! It's looking good for the Americans at the moment!

Just kidding. It looks terrible the whole time, just like Hell in a Very Small Place. Not inevitable or inexorable, but you can see what came coming. I just need to find a copy, somehow, of The Short-Timers. I read a friend's copy but it's overpriced on the secondary market.

- Ah, AD&D. I love your ridiculous complexity. I think of it every time someone tells me GURPS is hard. Hah. I started with AD&D. I laugh at your concept of complexity! Heh.

- Jeff looks at some really old orc minis. I like them.

Random Links for 9/23/2022

Fun stuff for Friday!

Warning: Your fun may vary.

- An analysis of AD&D attribute generation methods and the character classes.

Compleat Character Creation Catalog: AD&D

- News flash! Fun is fun. Fun and Challenges

- Next solo game will be Conan and the Queen of the Black Coast. I think I need a brief break from the Picts - especially since I'd like to try my divergent path in Beyond Thunder River, as well.

- My Blackbirds RPG stuff shipped. Or got a shipping label, either way.

Power Score's look at the D&D Cartoon

Power Score is doing an episode by episode look at the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.

I watched this cartoon growing up. I didn't see all of the episodes - I just didn't get to watch Saturday morning cartoons week in and week out.

I didn't hate it, but I didn't really love it. I was the usual DM for my group and all of a sudden the DM is this weird little Yoda wannabe.

Still, I do remember episodes I really liked (episode 9, with the skeletal warrior, was one), and I watched it as long as it was on.

This look at the episodes is interesting because of that. I probably won't go back and watch the series, though . . . reading this is enough!

Part I

Part II

Episode 15

Links for 4/8/2022

Links for this week.

- I don't recall, offhand, a more systematic analysis of the purported "sweet spot" of D&D/AD&D than this one on Greyhawk Grognard. It makes a reasonable case for those levels being the ones where you have your iconic abilties but not too much power. Me, I like the high-powered stuff, but I agree that those levels are better for me than the ones below that to play at.

- Grognardia has a bit about Gygaxian Naturalism and the Ecology of the Piercer. Me, I liked the article a lot. I still do.

- This makes sense - smoothing out a hit progression table, this time for OSE. I always prefer smoothed bonuses in my games.

- D100 Terrible Things Behind that Door from Elfmaids & Octopi

Joey, Johnny, Tommy, and Dee Dee were right - You should never have opened that door!

- I like these maps of the starship Warden.

- In case you'd like to see Language Talent in action, here is a guy with roughly 8 native-level languages and around two dozen others.

Grognardia & the Cold Fens

James Maliszewski took a look at the Tomb of the Lizard King:

Retrospective: Tomb of the Lizard King

That module is, largely intact, the basis of the Cold Fens area in my Felltower campaign. It's always fun to see someone take a look at something you know and used in play.

For my games, see my DF Campaign page and the Cold Fens tag.

Psionics & AD&D & that time we had 2 guys with Psionics

There are things in AD&D I never played with, and simply discarded from the start. Weapon vs. Armor Type, for example, and Weapon Speed.

There are things I played with a bit, but not too much or too long, like the aging rules and training costs. Enough to drop them but not really very long.

And there are things I played with for at least a whole campaign . . . and didn't love.

Psionics is one of those.

Unfrozen Caveman Dice Chucker put up a post about how to roll for psionics in AD&D.

Back in junior high school, I ran a campaing for three friends. They ran a fighter (a samurai, pre-Oriental Adventures), a monk, and a thief-acrobat who eventualy dual-classed to magic-users. The samurai and the thief both rolled successfully for psionics. They rolled up their abilities, and used them a bit. We never got to have any psionic vs. psionic combat, though. They fought a bunch of bullywugs in U2 Danger at Dunwater and massacred the whole bunch with a few Mind Blasts. And promptly stopped using their psionic powers after that.

This was a substantial drop in their combat ability. Having two guys with the ability to toss out Mind Blasts plus use other psionic abilities could have been huge. But they just didn't like them. They didn't use them ever again.

I think that's sufficient for me. No matter how the system looks on paper, the actual players I have that had them didn't find them actually fun. They set them aside rather than use them even when, in later sessions, they were struggling to get by. If I ever do get to run AD&D as a regular thing, psionics won't be part of it for PCs. It's just not worth the complication and they didn't prove enjoyable when we actually had them in play.

Friday Roundup 2/4/2022

- This post on raising the dead has some interesting points. I'm okay with our DF game having relatively casual resurrection - but we've lost a few PCs because they couldn't be found in time, and at least one when the player rolled a 16 vs. a "One Try" 15 or less to bring back the dead. That's sufficient for me.

But the star of the post is a comment about wishes from Geoffrey McKinney:

I'm a big proponent of wishes in A/D&D, and as a DM I am liberal in placing them in my campaigns. I treat wishes 1974 style:

Under the entry for the ring of three wishes in the 1974 D&D rules, Gary wrote: "Wishes that unfortunate adventures had never happened should be granted."

Imagine an unfortunate encounter with spectres in which half-a-dozen 8th-level adventurers are reduced to two adventurers of 2nd level each. A wish would restore four corpses and a dozen lost levels in one swoop. Of course, the wish would also make any treasure gained from the spectres reappear in the spectres' lair, along with any destroyed spectres being restored to unlife.

I am pretty stingy with what a wish can give you that you never had before. (After all, a wish in AD&D will add only one point to an ability score, which I think is reasonable in D&D as well.) But restoring stuff you lost? The wish will restore all of it when used as a reset button.

That's well worth preseving here, just in case the page or comments go away someday.

- I'm still playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I spent a couple hours clearing out a location full of wisps, gritting my teeth through every lightning attack and having to put resistance spells on over and over again, even as my fully shielded guys got taken out. It wasn't fun.

Then I found by doing that quest, I'd run out the clock on a more important one.

So I had to restore from an earlier save and do things in a new order . . . and I have to do that tooth-gritting wisp-filled annoyance-fest over again. Maybe I'll set it aside for a few days. We'll see.

- FoundryVTT is still pleasing me . . . but I found that when I create a Scene, I can't adjust the map size as far as I can tell. And the draugr crypts simply do not fit. They're much too longer for a 1 hex = 1 yard combat map. I want the whole thing done because I don't want people doing "off the map" crap, where I get the very worst of theater of the mind - people asking over and over what they can do, how close is this guy, can I retreat, etc. - with the worst of mapped combat - the analysis of every step as if each one was Operation Overlord. My players are likely to have a Cunning Plan that involves Alchemist's Fire, Create Fire, scrolls of Create Earth, cloud spells, flash, nagetteppo, and so on because they're convinced it'll make all of the difference and somehow cause the draugr to make a critical, fatal mistake (I'm not convinced, as you can see.)

Anyway, how do I make maps bigger? I'd appreciate any help!

- I'm still enjoying this series on AD&D. This time - surprise!

- Okay, back to the mapping attempts.