I just heard from Tenkar that Jim Ward passed away.
My second post here, back in August 2011, was a repost from my non-gaming blog, talking about Jim Ward and his games. I never got to play with him, but things he wrote and games he helped develop gave me a lot of joy.
I've posted about him enough that he had his own label - in case you want to traipse through the posts I put up with his name on them.
Showing posts with label Jim Ward. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Ward. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Jim Ward on Converting D&D and Met Alpha (The Dragon #18)
So you want to bring your D&D guys to Metamorphosis Alpha, or vice-versa? Jim Ward had some suggestions in The Dragon #18.
I have great respect for James Ward and his works. But man . . . reading this article made me away of a lot of lessons about what not to do when making rulings and conversions. I think looking back, it's easy to see where a different approach to rules application would be a better long-term solution to the problem at hand.
Let's start with something good.
I like this approach, to a degree. It's a good basic idea - those unused to magic can't resist it well. And (you'll see later), D&D characters won't have much resistance to radiation. I think a blanket "no saving throw" leaves out things that should warrant a save - versus a fireball or lightning bolt spell, say, which aren't much different than any other attack form in a mutants-shooting-lasers-from-eyes kind of world.
But it's a good start.
Takeaway: You can make for a clear distinction with a flat ruling, but you can also make it a little more nuanced so the underlying logic adds verisimilitude even if it costs a little simplicity.
I don't feel the same about this next bit.
Ouch.
Fighters? Fine, get bonuses at high levels.
Magic-users? Fine, get bonuses at high levels.
Bards? Fine, get bonuses at high levels.
Clerics? Get nothing, out of personal spite.
Monks? Get their level halved for . . . combat, presumably. MA species are so damn quick that Monks have trouble defending against them or attacking them. No one else does.
Thieves? Lose their best offensive ability, because appparantly unlike any species in D&D worlds, MA mutants are wary of back shots. All of them are.
The issue here? It lacks an even-handed approach. Not that all classes need to be treated equally, but rather that the underlying logic must be applied equally. Here, it is not. Clerics get nothing, just because. Thieves lose out on a major ability because of a shaky rationale. You simply cannot gain a bonus to backstab anything in Metamorphosis Alpha, even though creatures that live in a world with characters with the ability to attack from behind do not. In other worlds, thieves are only able to backstab because their targets are suckers. And unlike the logic of specific familiarity breeding resistance, here specific familiarity breeds weakness.
The same logic that cuts monks in half for combat purposes is not applied to other classes. Fighters are unaffected, even though the "extreme quickness of the MA species" should apply right back to them. Monks haven't, for some reason, learned to hit quick targets, but fighters have. So has everyone else - no one else suffers a combat penalty from the "extreme quickness" of the MA creatures.
A consistent ruling would leave Monks alone. Some creatures might ignore backstabs . . . but they should be few and far between and have an in-game logic beyond their familarity with being attacked from behind as if it's less novel on a radiation-warped spaceship than in a world full of magic and invisible foes.
And if some classes get a bonus at high levels, it seems reasonable that others should, too, if only to help preserve their niche protection in a game built on niche protection.
Takeaway for me? Be fair, overall, and enforce logical evenly.
Ooh, that seems fair. Magic-users become unable to use spells, period. Presumably forever - how do you recover from de-evolution? It doesn't say. And even scrolls are "spells of [a] type" so you're basically just a weak fighter, now. Fighters lose a level or two, which sucks, but spectres and vampires do that, too. Clerics lose spells permanently - so even the gods cannot overcome De-evolution. DEVO would be proud.
A better approach would be to allow for a way to fix such things, without just leaving it to "Wish" spells. Also, it's probably better, as above, to make the effect logically flat. If "de-evolution" reduces you to a previous version of yourself, then everyone should lose levels. Or turn into apes. It shouldn't affect classes in such widely different (and differently harsh) ways.
Takeway: Again, applying logic and game effects consistently seems to be the best approach.
Overall, I liked the article - and Jim Ward is just as harsh back (poor Iron Golems get it badly here). Logically, though, different effects for the same situation and explanation on different classes that otherwise should be in similar states seems like a bad idea. It's not a best practice you'd expect to see carried forward.
Still fun reading fodder, though, and a situation I plan to game out with different rules.
Finally, I just need to get this in here:
Emphasis mine - see, people tell me there was "always" a clear distinction between "player" and "character." Here we see them used one sentence after another to mean "character." Just saying.
Guidelines for Mixing Campaigns:
Androids, Wizards, Several
Mutants, and Liberal Doses of
Imagination, Well Blended
by James M. Ward
I have great respect for James Ward and his works. But man . . . reading this article made me away of a lot of lessons about what not to do when making rulings and conversions. I think looking back, it's easy to see where a different approach to rules application would be a better long-term solution to the problem at hand.
Let's start with something good.
Magic and its effects are immense on the starship. Those MA crea-
tures have no resistance to magic so they take full effect without a sav-
ing throw.
I like this approach, to a degree. It's a good basic idea - those unused to magic can't resist it well. And (you'll see later), D&D characters won't have much resistance to radiation. I think a blanket "no saving throw" leaves out things that should warrant a save - versus a fireball or lightning bolt spell, say, which aren't much different than any other attack form in a mutants-shooting-lasers-from-eyes kind of world.
But it's a good start.
Takeaway: You can make for a clear distinction with a flat ruling, but you can also make it a little more nuanced so the underlying logic adds verisimilitude even if it costs a little simplicity.
I don't feel the same about this next bit.
There are many ways to handle the different D&D character
classes. For every two levels over the tenth a fighter has, allow a plus
one to hit with any weapon. Magic users over the tenth level should
have a plus per level to figure out any type of technical item. Since
clerics get their spells renewed everyday (and I never liked them any-
way) they don’t need any special powers or plusses. Bards over the
tenth level act like Singing Vines. Monks on the other hand are at one-
half their normal level because of the extreme quickness of the MA species.
Thieves don’t have their special attack bonus when attacking
the backs of mutants (everyone is always trying to zap them from be-
hind).
Ouch.
Fighters? Fine, get bonuses at high levels.
Magic-users? Fine, get bonuses at high levels.
Bards? Fine, get bonuses at high levels.
Clerics? Get nothing, out of personal spite.
Monks? Get their level halved for . . . combat, presumably. MA species are so damn quick that Monks have trouble defending against them or attacking them. No one else does.
Thieves? Lose their best offensive ability, because appparantly unlike any species in D&D worlds, MA mutants are wary of back shots. All of them are.
The issue here? It lacks an even-handed approach. Not that all classes need to be treated equally, but rather that the underlying logic must be applied equally. Here, it is not. Clerics get nothing, just because. Thieves lose out on a major ability because of a shaky rationale. You simply cannot gain a bonus to backstab anything in Metamorphosis Alpha, even though creatures that live in a world with characters with the ability to attack from behind do not. In other worlds, thieves are only able to backstab because their targets are suckers. And unlike the logic of specific familiarity breeding resistance, here specific familiarity breeds weakness.
The same logic that cuts monks in half for combat purposes is not applied to other classes. Fighters are unaffected, even though the "extreme quickness of the MA species" should apply right back to them. Monks haven't, for some reason, learned to hit quick targets, but fighters have. So has everyone else - no one else suffers a combat penalty from the "extreme quickness" of the MA creatures.
A consistent ruling would leave Monks alone. Some creatures might ignore backstabs . . . but they should be few and far between and have an in-game logic beyond their familarity with being attacked from behind as if it's less novel on a radiation-warped spaceship than in a world full of magic and invisible foes.
And if some classes get a bonus at high levels, it seems reasonable that others should, too, if only to help preserve their niche protection in a game built on niche protection.
Takeaway for me? Be fair, overall, and enforce logical evenly.
If any of you are wondering what possible harm De-evolu-
tion could do to a non-mutant let me list a few things. In magic users it
could take away all the ability to use spells of any type. Fighters could
lose a level or two of experience for every attack. Clerics could lose one
level of spells forever starting from their lowest level. Normal humans
could be transformed into cro-magnon man or even apes (but a few
have argued that this skips several generations of evolution).
Ooh, that seems fair. Magic-users become unable to use spells, period. Presumably forever - how do you recover from de-evolution? It doesn't say. And even scrolls are "spells of [a] type" so you're basically just a weak fighter, now. Fighters lose a level or two, which sucks, but spectres and vampires do that, too. Clerics lose spells permanently - so even the gods cannot overcome De-evolution. DEVO would be proud.
A better approach would be to allow for a way to fix such things, without just leaving it to "Wish" spells. Also, it's probably better, as above, to make the effect logically flat. If "de-evolution" reduces you to a previous version of yourself, then everyone should lose levels. Or turn into apes. It shouldn't affect classes in such widely different (and differently harsh) ways.
Takeway: Again, applying logic and game effects consistently seems to be the best approach.
Overall, I liked the article - and Jim Ward is just as harsh back (poor Iron Golems get it badly here). Logically, though, different effects for the same situation and explanation on different classes that otherwise should be in similar states seems like a bad idea. It's not a best practice you'd expect to see carried forward.
Still fun reading fodder, though, and a situation I plan to game out with different rules.
Finally, I just need to get this in here:
That covers all the character abilities for both sides except for
Radiation Resistance. The D&D player has had no former generations
to give them immunity so they have a resistance of 3.
Emphasis mine - see, people tell me there was "always" a clear distinction between "player" and "character." Here we see them used one sentence after another to mean "character." Just saying.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Metamorphosis Alpha PDF now cheaper & Kickstarter
Post-apocalypse alert!
Jim Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha is only $3.99 in PDF from RPGNow. It's been almost twice as much, and it seems to be a price change instead of a sale.
There is a Collector's Edition Kickstarter, too, if you need new adventures, or a hardback edition including the old stuff from The Dragon. Me, I'll settle for the PDF. I already had read a ratty old copy (literally, a copy) about 15 years back. It's nice to finally have a real, official copy of the book. I've been meaning to get one, and the price drop pushed me over the edge. It's not like I'll run it, and $3.99 is a good price to pay for a read of the original game. Warning: the typeface is tiny printed out.
I'm actually more of a 1st edition Gamma World fan, although I really liked 2nd edition as well. I still have copies of those, and multiples of 2nd edition, but if they come out in PDF I'll surely let people know. Meanwhile, here's the collection, minus the duplicates and the newly-printed PDF of Metamorphosis Alpha:
I may have to dig that stuff out again and have another go at our "Mutants and Mayhem" campaign. Possibly merged with my "multiple PCs" approach from my pirates game. Or just have everyone roll up some poor foolish DFers and then dump them into my Mutants and Mayhem game.
Jim Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha is only $3.99 in PDF from RPGNow. It's been almost twice as much, and it seems to be a price change instead of a sale.
There is a Collector's Edition Kickstarter, too, if you need new adventures, or a hardback edition including the old stuff from The Dragon. Me, I'll settle for the PDF. I already had read a ratty old copy (literally, a copy) about 15 years back. It's nice to finally have a real, official copy of the book. I've been meaning to get one, and the price drop pushed me over the edge. It's not like I'll run it, and $3.99 is a good price to pay for a read of the original game. Warning: the typeface is tiny printed out.
I'm actually more of a 1st edition Gamma World fan, although I really liked 2nd edition as well. I still have copies of those, and multiples of 2nd edition, but if they come out in PDF I'll surely let people know. Meanwhile, here's the collection, minus the duplicates and the newly-printed PDF of Metamorphosis Alpha:
I may have to dig that stuff out again and have another go at our "Mutants and Mayhem" campaign. Possibly merged with my "multiple PCs" approach from my pirates game. Or just have everyone roll up some poor foolish DFers and then dump them into my Mutants and Mayhem game.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Poisoning the Monsters
If you're going into a hole in the ground full of monsters to kill them, why aren't you using poison?
Those paragons of us-against-the-world ruthlessness did it:
That's just one example from those books - poisoned dart-shooters show up in Shadows Linger, too, and arrow poison in the Books of the South.
But what about in games?
I've heard a lot of arguments against it, some of which Jim Ward discusses here, while endorsing its use:
My players seems to agree with him. One of the two scouts has every single one of his arrows poisoned. Venom has come up in discussions of tactics. The real death-dealers skip it, only because they mostly don't need it to kill the monsters they most often fight, making it less cost effective.
But old-school AD&D pretty much stomped on poison use, and presented those objections raised in Mr. Ward's piece.
Still more can be found in the 1st edition PHB, 1st edition DMG, and even later D&D books like the 3.0 DMG. While the 1st edition DMG is a bit more generous than the others - it says assassins use poison "just as any other character classes" - but it still limits it a lot. It's got a lot of the same limitations on poison.
These are notably absent in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1, which makes poison a straight-up option on the equipment list, and the only benefit from being skilled in Poisons skill is the ability to use poison more effectively. Otherwise, it's assumed it is ready (and fairly straightforward) to use. Rolemaster had plenty of nasty, nasty things you could use on weapons, although mostly people were too busy lopping off limbs to pay money for poisons in my games.
But what about the objections in the AD&D books?
Some I don't buy, or buy only partly:
The poison will dry up and/or lose its effectiveness. Sure, maybe it will. So why not store it in breakable containers? If you say there aren't easy to transport but also easy to break containers, well, flaming oil is right out, too, potentially. So are pots of green slime and other sneaky tactics. Or just put it on before you enter the dungeon and stab something pretty quickly.
You can also take a leaf from The Wild Geese, and put breakable containers of venom (cyanide, in the movie) behind arrowheads. There is some suggestion that's how venom-using hunters do it. Maybe Gary Gygax was right and it'll dry out and won't stick to blades . . . but mixing up a sticky version might help, or alternate delivery methods can be used.
People will attack you. Seriously? The whole "hue and cry for the watch and then attack" bit is pretty funny. Joe the Blacksmith will attack the hulking barbarian because he was a poisoned sword? Yeah . . . that seems pretty smart. Your hirelings will jump you in the dungeon? Why?
The assassins guild will attack you? Why again? Competition? They want people to know if you die from poisoned wounds, they did it? Again, I can see them limiting sales to members, assuming there is even an assassin's guild, but what about the alchemist's guild? They might have something you can use as poison. Even merely biological agents - things that will putrefy wounds - or agents that will poison food - are useful against monsters. Does anyone mind if you put out poison food to kill basilisks or wipe out giant rats?
People will besmirch your honor. You have me here. They will, and they should, if you're using it in fair fights. I bet people don't describe "exterminating orcs" as a fair fight issue, or killing umber hulks as an issue of honor. But maybe they do, and you're sensitive to that. Well, honor has costs as well as benefits. Being a murder hobo does sometimes have advantages. Even more so, I bet they'd have an issue with the way you surprise attacked the orcs with a rank of hirelings behind you, the way you call those hirelings "meatshields," or the way you throw flaming oil and fireballs into rooms full of bandits because it's better than facing them one-on-one, or slit throats of Sleep spell victims, or use magical chemical agents (cloudkill in D&D, stench in GURPS). Look, most adventurers don't fight fair in the first place, so poison isn't a fairness issue. It's a social acceptance issue. You might be limited in appropriate targets, but I bet no one will complain if you use poison on predatory monsters.
You might cut yourself with your own weapon. Does this happen a lot? I mean, are you normally assumed to be slicing yourself with your blade on a regular basis? I'm pretty clumsy and I slice myself with my kitchen knife about, oh, once or twice a year. But my Broadsword-18 warrior might poison himself? My 9th level lord is has a 5% chance of poisoning himself (that's the 3.0 rule)? I just have trouble with this. Sure, blow a roll badly enough and hit yourself and you have a poison weapon? Sucks to be you. But it shouldn't be more dangerous to use than, say, a flaming sword or a vorpal blade.
It's a dangerous substance, but so are a lot of substances. Plus an insinuative poison - one that needs an open wound - isn't likely to also be a contact agent, so it's not necessarily automatically unsafe to get a little on you (assuming you wipe it off). Contact venom is more dangerous, but also less likely for use - against furry or scaled monsters, or armored men, contact venom isn't so helpful. Gas or blood agents are more easily delivered, and while gas is tricky (too easy to expose yourself to it) blood agents should be a little safer to handle with the usual adventurer gear of heavy gloves and suits of armor.
You need to know how to use it. I buy this, partially. You do need to know how to use it effectively. If you're just putting it on yourself with no expertise, you're likely to either use too much (and waste it), too little (and waste it), or put it on incorrectly (minimizing the effectiveness of the dose). The more readily available pre-measured doses and simple delivery systems are, the less of an issue this needs to be. And if magical elixirs come in perfectly pre-measured doses, it's not unreasonable venoms wouldn't come that way, too.
It's not fun/it makes the game too easy/it takes away from assassins. Basically the meta-game issues. The not fun part I sort-of get. Shoot it, it's going to die from the ounces of cobra venom you just delivered, so close the door and slink off for an hour and come back. Not the most fun.
The others, no so much. Too easy? Sure, if you have a ready supply of cheap save-or-die venom. So don't do that. The best venom in the book in Dungeon Fantasy 1 that is close to "save-or-die," Bladeblack, costs $1000 a dose - that's the entire starting funds for a PC for one dose. You might get some and use it, but not without some thought. The weakest is $20 a dose, and it's not a bad deal except it does very little damage and it's easy to resist. Worth adding but it's no game breaker. The "it takes away from assassins" bit is a bit more fair - but DF deals with this by making assassins more effective with venom. They can use their Poisons skill to put multiple doses on a single weapon so they take effect all at once. That alone makes it worth more - $80 worth of "Monster Drool" can hurt even a tough monster with strong resistance - and gives the assassin an edge. Not only that, but a lack of instant save-or-die venoms plus stronger monsters (in other words the important targets) means that the ones you most want to poison (dragons, et al) are the hardest to dispatch with poison.
The argument for poisons is pretty simple:
Hunting monsters is dangerous, you need every edge you can get. Yes, it is, and you do. If it's possible to get poison, why not use it? If you can get an effective venom that will hurt monsters you fight and aid your chances of success, and your character doesn't have some limitation that prevents it (Code of Honor, a Vow, or say, being a Paladin), think about putting some money into poisons. Heck, Jim Ward did it. He's pretty old school, isn't he?
Those paragons of us-against-the-world ruthlessness did it:
"Elmo, pick some good halbardier and crossbowmen. Quarrels to be poisoned."
- The Captain, in Glen Cook's The Black Company
That's just one example from those books - poisoned dart-shooters show up in Shadows Linger, too, and arrow poison in the Books of the South.
But what about in games?
I've heard a lot of arguments against it, some of which Jim Ward discusses here, while endorsing its use:
"Then there is the poison on the dagger trick, which every judge is always trying
to stop. I have been told that poisons evaporate, poisons exposed to the air lose
their effectiveness, or the most used of all, in your area there is no poison strong
enough to kill the things you want. I suggest to all you players and especially the
magic users that can use only daggers, that any amount of money and effort
spent in the procuring of a really effective poison is worth it. I spent over 90,000
gold and haven't regretted a copper piece of it."
- James M. Ward, "NOTES FROM A SEMI-SUCCESSFUL D&D PLAYER," The Dragon #13
My players seems to agree with him. One of the two scouts has every single one of his arrows poisoned. Venom has come up in discussions of tactics. The real death-dealers skip it, only because they mostly don't need it to kill the monsters they most often fight, making it less cost effective.
But old-school AD&D pretty much stomped on poison use, and presented those objections raised in Mr. Ward's piece.
Still more can be found in the 1st edition PHB, 1st edition DMG, and even later D&D books like the 3.0 DMG. While the 1st edition DMG is a bit more generous than the others - it says assassins use poison "just as any other character classes" - but it still limits it a lot. It's got a lot of the same limitations on poison.
These are notably absent in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1, which makes poison a straight-up option on the equipment list, and the only benefit from being skilled in Poisons skill is the ability to use poison more effectively. Otherwise, it's assumed it is ready (and fairly straightforward) to use. Rolemaster had plenty of nasty, nasty things you could use on weapons, although mostly people were too busy lopping off limbs to pay money for poisons in my games.
But what about the objections in the AD&D books?
Some I don't buy, or buy only partly:
The poison will dry up and/or lose its effectiveness. Sure, maybe it will. So why not store it in breakable containers? If you say there aren't easy to transport but also easy to break containers, well, flaming oil is right out, too, potentially. So are pots of green slime and other sneaky tactics. Or just put it on before you enter the dungeon and stab something pretty quickly.
You can also take a leaf from The Wild Geese, and put breakable containers of venom (cyanide, in the movie) behind arrowheads. There is some suggestion that's how venom-using hunters do it. Maybe Gary Gygax was right and it'll dry out and won't stick to blades . . . but mixing up a sticky version might help, or alternate delivery methods can be used.
People will attack you. Seriously? The whole "hue and cry for the watch and then attack" bit is pretty funny. Joe the Blacksmith will attack the hulking barbarian because he was a poisoned sword? Yeah . . . that seems pretty smart. Your hirelings will jump you in the dungeon? Why?
The assassins guild will attack you? Why again? Competition? They want people to know if you die from poisoned wounds, they did it? Again, I can see them limiting sales to members, assuming there is even an assassin's guild, but what about the alchemist's guild? They might have something you can use as poison. Even merely biological agents - things that will putrefy wounds - or agents that will poison food - are useful against monsters. Does anyone mind if you put out poison food to kill basilisks or wipe out giant rats?
People will besmirch your honor. You have me here. They will, and they should, if you're using it in fair fights. I bet people don't describe "exterminating orcs" as a fair fight issue, or killing umber hulks as an issue of honor. But maybe they do, and you're sensitive to that. Well, honor has costs as well as benefits. Being a murder hobo does sometimes have advantages. Even more so, I bet they'd have an issue with the way you surprise attacked the orcs with a rank of hirelings behind you, the way you call those hirelings "meatshields," or the way you throw flaming oil and fireballs into rooms full of bandits because it's better than facing them one-on-one, or slit throats of Sleep spell victims, or use magical chemical agents (cloudkill in D&D, stench in GURPS). Look, most adventurers don't fight fair in the first place, so poison isn't a fairness issue. It's a social acceptance issue. You might be limited in appropriate targets, but I bet no one will complain if you use poison on predatory monsters.
You might cut yourself with your own weapon. Does this happen a lot? I mean, are you normally assumed to be slicing yourself with your blade on a regular basis? I'm pretty clumsy and I slice myself with my kitchen knife about, oh, once or twice a year. But my Broadsword-18 warrior might poison himself? My 9th level lord is has a 5% chance of poisoning himself (that's the 3.0 rule)? I just have trouble with this. Sure, blow a roll badly enough and hit yourself and you have a poison weapon? Sucks to be you. But it shouldn't be more dangerous to use than, say, a flaming sword or a vorpal blade.
It's a dangerous substance, but so are a lot of substances. Plus an insinuative poison - one that needs an open wound - isn't likely to also be a contact agent, so it's not necessarily automatically unsafe to get a little on you (assuming you wipe it off). Contact venom is more dangerous, but also less likely for use - against furry or scaled monsters, or armored men, contact venom isn't so helpful. Gas or blood agents are more easily delivered, and while gas is tricky (too easy to expose yourself to it) blood agents should be a little safer to handle with the usual adventurer gear of heavy gloves and suits of armor.
You need to know how to use it. I buy this, partially. You do need to know how to use it effectively. If you're just putting it on yourself with no expertise, you're likely to either use too much (and waste it), too little (and waste it), or put it on incorrectly (minimizing the effectiveness of the dose). The more readily available pre-measured doses and simple delivery systems are, the less of an issue this needs to be. And if magical elixirs come in perfectly pre-measured doses, it's not unreasonable venoms wouldn't come that way, too.
It's not fun/it makes the game too easy/it takes away from assassins. Basically the meta-game issues. The not fun part I sort-of get. Shoot it, it's going to die from the ounces of cobra venom you just delivered, so close the door and slink off for an hour and come back. Not the most fun.
The others, no so much. Too easy? Sure, if you have a ready supply of cheap save-or-die venom. So don't do that. The best venom in the book in Dungeon Fantasy 1 that is close to "save-or-die," Bladeblack, costs $1000 a dose - that's the entire starting funds for a PC for one dose. You might get some and use it, but not without some thought. The weakest is $20 a dose, and it's not a bad deal except it does very little damage and it's easy to resist. Worth adding but it's no game breaker. The "it takes away from assassins" bit is a bit more fair - but DF deals with this by making assassins more effective with venom. They can use their Poisons skill to put multiple doses on a single weapon so they take effect all at once. That alone makes it worth more - $80 worth of "Monster Drool" can hurt even a tough monster with strong resistance - and gives the assassin an edge. Not only that, but a lack of instant save-or-die venoms plus stronger monsters (in other words the important targets) means that the ones you most want to poison (dragons, et al) are the hardest to dispatch with poison.
The argument for poisons is pretty simple:
Hunting monsters is dangerous, you need every edge you can get. Yes, it is, and you do. If it's possible to get poison, why not use it? If you can get an effective venom that will hurt monsters you fight and aid your chances of success, and your character doesn't have some limitation that prevents it (Code of Honor, a Vow, or say, being a Paladin), think about putting some money into poisons. Heck, Jim Ward did it. He's pretty old school, isn't he?
Sunday, December 4, 2011
DF Game, Session 5 - Honus Solo
Honus's player couldn't make it last session, but he was in town this weekend. No one else could make it, so he ended up going on a solo trek. Not foolish enough to either brave the caves of chaos or the cold mire, he headed out to investigate the massacred merchants and then to hunt down some owlbears.
Keep in mind that I've scaled up the map of the Keep on the Borderlands and changed it significantly. So if details and distances don't match, it's probably because squares became 1/2 mile instead of 100 yards, and I re-routed the road, expanded the swamp, and added or moved encounters.
Saturday, December 4th, 2011
Characters: (approximate net point total)
Honus Honusson, human barbarian (260 points)
Honus returned from his last trip to the caves, mourned his lost brother Volos, and headed out camping and fishing like he usually does. After a week and a few days he headed back, only to find he'd missed his friends who already left for the caves.
So Honus bought himself 10 days of rations and headed out at dawn on a brisk day to investigate the massacre. Carefully approaching the site off the trail and with the sun to his side instead of his back, he snuck up on the spot. He found where the attacker - singular - lay in ambush. A humanoid of honusian proportions (Honus is 7' and a lean 285) with cloven hooves, stinking of cattle, and covered with brown cow-like hair had found a dip in the ground almost 30 yards from the trail. It had rushed out, killing the two mercenaries with the merchants before they moved more than a step or two, then the older merchant, and then ran down the fleeing mule and young merchant, killing them one after the other.
The bodies were long gone but not the bloodstains and prints on the rough dirt road, which Honus easily read (Honus criticalled Tracking twice, once cleanly and once due to bonuses.) There were marks from where the mule had been dragged, three copper coins overlooked by looted and the patrol that found them, and a broken knife tip. Honus decided to carefully follow the drag marks and what he decided must be a minotaur. Not the Lord of the Maze, though, as he had been thoroughly killed.
Honus tracked the marks to the edge of the woods. As soon as he entered the woods he found where the mule sat for a couple days, and drag marks off to the side. There he found an owlbear, bent over the dead mule and eating. Honus snuck on it with Stealth and the owlbear (unbeknownst to Honus's player) rolled a freaking 18 on hearing, so it wasn't noticing anything as it tucked in. Honus snuck up to cover 15 yards away, aimed his bow and fired at the vitals (15 skill, +1 AOA (Determined), +3 Acc, +2 aiming, +2 size modifier, -3 vitals, net 18 skill!) and hit but rolled a paltry 4 damage. It was enough to wound the owlbear seriously and send it crashing away through the brush. Honus pursued, but slowly. This cautious approach saved him.
See, owlbears aren't stupid. They aren't smart like men but they are smarter than the average bear. Wounded and angry, the owlbear led Honus on a merry chase. It headed back towards its den, but after a few miles of pursuit it stopped to wait for Honus. He spotted it, half-crouched behind a large fallen tree trunk, between two tight clumps of trees - one uphill and one downhill, near the stump of the fallen tree. He took aim, but suddenly the owlbear reared, roared/hooted, and crashed into the uphill stand's cover. Honus missed (it Dodged). Honus advanced to the log but although he could see the owlbear over it, a short distance away and waiting, he couldn't shoot his longbow over it. So he started to go around the downhill side. The owlbear rushed up and slammed the fallen tree and shoved hard, then turned and ran. A pair of (mated) wolverines, nesting temporarily in it, rushed out at the interloper - Honus! They attacked furiously but were no match for Honus. He got a few cuts from teeth but otherwise was unharmed. He smashed one to death with the Flail of the Gales and then kicked the other one off his foot and over the log. When it ran back he killed it, too. Then he stopped and skinned them. As he finished, he heard humanoids approaching. He hid and watched as three goblins, bearing bows and spears and sticks impaled with foxes, squirrels, muskrats, and more squirrels, stopped at the game trail and muttered in goblin and common about the blood trail they saw (from the owlbear). Honus waited until they left and started in on the pursuit.
He followed the owlbear's trail (blood and paw prints) and found it had crashed off the trail through a bush. He followed, watching the ground carefully - which again paid off. The owlbear had stepped directly across an old, rusted, but functional saw-toothed animal trap - monster size. The owlbear clearly tried to lead him onto it. He avoided it, checking for secondary traps, which was unnecessary but a good idea.
He kept on pursuing, passing up another game trail to follow the blood marks of the owlbear. Suddenly he came over a rise and spotted it, and it charged. He engaged it with shield and morningstar. They duked it out for a few seconds, Honus getting slashed with a claw (and disabling the paw in return) and then bitten with the beak. He pounded the owlbear with his morningstar until it dropped senseless. He quickly cut the arteries around its groin and bled it out, then spent the afternoon cleaning it, cutting out choice bits of meat (heart, paw meat, etc.) and skinning it. He ended up with a the fur and a skull and plenty of meat to eat when darkness began to creep up. So he headed up the trail where more owlbear prints were - and found its cave den.
He lit his helmet lamp and looked in - two baby owlbears, little guys all of 300 pounds or so. Honus tossed some dried meat down, and when one scampered out, he whacked it with his morningstar! The fight was brief - both attacked but he took them in turn and killed them in short order. Then he bled them, skinned them, and camped out. He hung the adult's hide over the "doorway" and lit a fire, and had roast owlbear for dinner. He also looted the place. Amidst remnants of prior meals (aka people) he found a book on wilderness survival, a load of fox furs, some coins, some gems, on a nicely made kilt. He took the lot.
Honus slept in the cave, woken occasionally by the sounds of critters taking bits of his abandoned owlbear kill. In the morning, he breakfasted on more owlbear and headed out, carrying a few hundred pounds of extra stuff! He avoided the game trails, and any real encounters. He had to scare off a bear at one point, and avoid a trapper's fox lines, and found a skinned fox a little later. But in the end he got back to the keep. He disposed of his loot (getting serious coin for his 3 owlbear pelts, actually) and settled in to rest and recover from his wounds.
Notes:
Fun session, and interesting too. Barbarians are ideally suited to solo wilderness adventures, something no other of the party could do. But even so, I was rolling 2d+lots cutting attacks for that owlbear, and one or two better rolls and Honus would have been owlbear food. His caution helped immensely, and saved him from "extra" damage from the wolverines or bear trap, too. But again the game is set to "lethal" so death was right there waiting for him. Good play and clever uses of his skills, plus a stubborn refusal to stop checking his rear, his flanks, and his visibility, kept him alive.
Plus now the group has some clues about that massacre . . .
Thanks to Jim Ward, who had some of these tactics used by the owlbear in an encounter in the Book of Lairs, and I shamelessly stole them.
Keep in mind that I've scaled up the map of the Keep on the Borderlands and changed it significantly. So if details and distances don't match, it's probably because squares became 1/2 mile instead of 100 yards, and I re-routed the road, expanded the swamp, and added or moved encounters.
Saturday, December 4th, 2011
Characters: (approximate net point total)
Honus Honusson, human barbarian (260 points)
Honus returned from his last trip to the caves, mourned his lost brother Volos, and headed out camping and fishing like he usually does. After a week and a few days he headed back, only to find he'd missed his friends who already left for the caves.
So Honus bought himself 10 days of rations and headed out at dawn on a brisk day to investigate the massacre. Carefully approaching the site off the trail and with the sun to his side instead of his back, he snuck up on the spot. He found where the attacker - singular - lay in ambush. A humanoid of honusian proportions (Honus is 7' and a lean 285) with cloven hooves, stinking of cattle, and covered with brown cow-like hair had found a dip in the ground almost 30 yards from the trail. It had rushed out, killing the two mercenaries with the merchants before they moved more than a step or two, then the older merchant, and then ran down the fleeing mule and young merchant, killing them one after the other.
The bodies were long gone but not the bloodstains and prints on the rough dirt road, which Honus easily read (Honus criticalled Tracking twice, once cleanly and once due to bonuses.) There were marks from where the mule had been dragged, three copper coins overlooked by looted and the patrol that found them, and a broken knife tip. Honus decided to carefully follow the drag marks and what he decided must be a minotaur. Not the Lord of the Maze, though, as he had been thoroughly killed.
Honus tracked the marks to the edge of the woods. As soon as he entered the woods he found where the mule sat for a couple days, and drag marks off to the side. There he found an owlbear, bent over the dead mule and eating. Honus snuck on it with Stealth and the owlbear (unbeknownst to Honus's player) rolled a freaking 18 on hearing, so it wasn't noticing anything as it tucked in. Honus snuck up to cover 15 yards away, aimed his bow and fired at the vitals (15 skill, +1 AOA (Determined), +3 Acc, +2 aiming, +2 size modifier, -3 vitals, net 18 skill!) and hit but rolled a paltry 4 damage. It was enough to wound the owlbear seriously and send it crashing away through the brush. Honus pursued, but slowly. This cautious approach saved him.
See, owlbears aren't stupid. They aren't smart like men but they are smarter than the average bear. Wounded and angry, the owlbear led Honus on a merry chase. It headed back towards its den, but after a few miles of pursuit it stopped to wait for Honus. He spotted it, half-crouched behind a large fallen tree trunk, between two tight clumps of trees - one uphill and one downhill, near the stump of the fallen tree. He took aim, but suddenly the owlbear reared, roared/hooted, and crashed into the uphill stand's cover. Honus missed (it Dodged). Honus advanced to the log but although he could see the owlbear over it, a short distance away and waiting, he couldn't shoot his longbow over it. So he started to go around the downhill side. The owlbear rushed up and slammed the fallen tree and shoved hard, then turned and ran. A pair of (mated) wolverines, nesting temporarily in it, rushed out at the interloper - Honus! They attacked furiously but were no match for Honus. He got a few cuts from teeth but otherwise was unharmed. He smashed one to death with the Flail of the Gales and then kicked the other one off his foot and over the log. When it ran back he killed it, too. Then he stopped and skinned them. As he finished, he heard humanoids approaching. He hid and watched as three goblins, bearing bows and spears and sticks impaled with foxes, squirrels, muskrats, and more squirrels, stopped at the game trail and muttered in goblin and common about the blood trail they saw (from the owlbear). Honus waited until they left and started in on the pursuit.
He followed the owlbear's trail (blood and paw prints) and found it had crashed off the trail through a bush. He followed, watching the ground carefully - which again paid off. The owlbear had stepped directly across an old, rusted, but functional saw-toothed animal trap - monster size. The owlbear clearly tried to lead him onto it. He avoided it, checking for secondary traps, which was unnecessary but a good idea.
He kept on pursuing, passing up another game trail to follow the blood marks of the owlbear. Suddenly he came over a rise and spotted it, and it charged. He engaged it with shield and morningstar. They duked it out for a few seconds, Honus getting slashed with a claw (and disabling the paw in return) and then bitten with the beak. He pounded the owlbear with his morningstar until it dropped senseless. He quickly cut the arteries around its groin and bled it out, then spent the afternoon cleaning it, cutting out choice bits of meat (heart, paw meat, etc.) and skinning it. He ended up with a the fur and a skull and plenty of meat to eat when darkness began to creep up. So he headed up the trail where more owlbear prints were - and found its cave den.
He lit his helmet lamp and looked in - two baby owlbears, little guys all of 300 pounds or so. Honus tossed some dried meat down, and when one scampered out, he whacked it with his morningstar! The fight was brief - both attacked but he took them in turn and killed them in short order. Then he bled them, skinned them, and camped out. He hung the adult's hide over the "doorway" and lit a fire, and had roast owlbear for dinner. He also looted the place. Amidst remnants of prior meals (aka people) he found a book on wilderness survival, a load of fox furs, some coins, some gems, on a nicely made kilt. He took the lot.
Honus slept in the cave, woken occasionally by the sounds of critters taking bits of his abandoned owlbear kill. In the morning, he breakfasted on more owlbear and headed out, carrying a few hundred pounds of extra stuff! He avoided the game trails, and any real encounters. He had to scare off a bear at one point, and avoid a trapper's fox lines, and found a skinned fox a little later. But in the end he got back to the keep. He disposed of his loot (getting serious coin for his 3 owlbear pelts, actually) and settled in to rest and recover from his wounds.
Notes:
Fun session, and interesting too. Barbarians are ideally suited to solo wilderness adventures, something no other of the party could do. But even so, I was rolling 2d+lots cutting attacks for that owlbear, and one or two better rolls and Honus would have been owlbear food. His caution helped immensely, and saved him from "extra" damage from the wolverines or bear trap, too. But again the game is set to "lethal" so death was right there waiting for him. Good play and clever uses of his skills, plus a stubborn refusal to stop checking his rear, his flanks, and his visibility, kept him alive.
Plus now the group has some clues about that massacre . . .
Thanks to Jim Ward, who had some of these tactics used by the owlbear in an encounter in the Book of Lairs, and I shamelessly stole them.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Review: Castle Arcania
Right about now, you are either saying "Oh yeah, I remember those!" or "What the hell is Castle Arcania? Wasn't that for SuperNES?" But it's one of my favorite pieces of gaming material, from a real oddity of a series, and oddly influential on me.
Back when I played one-on-one with my cousin (gaming had become uncool compared to Motley Crue and sports for my other players), I ran a wizard names Neves. Got him up to level 11 or 12, IIRC, and then we decided to just bump ourselves up to the high teens so we could try out the really cool high-level stuff. Yeah, yeah, GM PC, playing alongside, yadda yadda yadda. We had fun, my cousin with his two PCs (one a cleric, the other . . . I forget, a fighter I think) and me with Neves. I kept using Neves as an NPC in my later games, too.
(Also see gamebooks.org for a description of this product.)
Castle Arcania is from the short-lived "1on1 Adventure Gamebooks" series, which also had some book about a robot and a space hero. It's kind of a mashup between Choose Your Own Adventure books, D&D, and a head-to-head boardgame.
There are two books - one each for Neves, "An Ancient and Powerful Wizard," and for Eric Sunsword, "Legendary Knight of the Northern Marches." Neves is a Neutral wizard, Eric is a Lawful Good fighter. The story is as follows - Neves wants to marry the beautiful princess Mara, so he can have eternal happiness (and eternal youth, all the better). Eric and Mara love each other, so you can see how this doesn't fit into their plans. So Neves busts into the castle, tosses some spells around, kidnaps her, and flees with his allies to the ruins of Castle Arcania, a handy castle-and-dungeon. Eric gives chase.
Low on spells after the big dustup at the castle, Neves's goal is to find enough magical items and allies in the dungeon to trash Eric in a heads-up fight, or get Eric killed by its inhabitants. Either way, with Eric out of the way he can Charm his princess and marry her. Yay, evil! (Er, neutral!) Eric's goal is to rescue her.
Both Neves and Eric have a posse of allies, each with their own special abilities, magic items, spells, and so on. Neves gets a gladiator bodyguard, a dark elf (not a drow), a female thief, and a kobold chief mercenary. Eric gets an amazon warrior and a reformed gentleman thief, each more powerful than any of Neves's allies. You can find more allies in the book (some monsters will fight you, others will join you if you play it correctly) and acquire more magic items. Some monsters will automatically ally with Neves and attack Eric, and vice-versa. In repeated play, you'll know which ones . . . so you can seek out allies or hunt down potential allies for your opponent. The whole time you need to avoid death at the hands of monsters, traps, and special encounters.
You play the game by alternating turns, reading an entry and following the text to know what to do - gain an ally, fight a monster, get a special result. You go back and forth, until eventually you end up face to face with your opponent and fight one another.
James M. Ward put in some nice touches. Eric's book tells you Castle Arcania was ruined in the past. Neves's book tells you that you helped trash Castle Arcania in the past. Heh. Some of your allies and your opponents allies have a nasty history, too, and preferentially attack each other even when you want them to all gang up on the name character. He also managed to make Eric Sunsword not-lame, which is tough for a LG goodie-goodie rescuing his chaste bride-to-be. He's tough and driven, and fun to play in his own right, and not just a foil for "I get to be a bad guy for once!" Neves.
How combat works is that the attacker (whoever goes first, and the text just tells you that) calls out a number 1-20, and the other player calls out one from 1-20, and you compare the results on a table. In actual play, you'd have enough combats that people would know which numbers you needed to make the other player's choice suck. So we almost immediately switched to using opposed D20 rolls, which made the game immediately more awesome. Anyway, you cross-reference numbers and get a result - hit, miss, double-damage hit, or a special result that depends on the character who gets that result. The specials can do cool stuff for you or bad stuff to you. Otherwise your weapons do a flat amount of damage, and monster attacks do the same, and you mark off HP as you take damage. You run the monsters when your opponent fights. When you eventually meet for the showdown, you just follow the same rules to kill each other head to head. They work fine in actual play both against monsters and PvP.
The game can get a little unbalanced, though. I distinctly remember playing one side (I think I was Neves), hoarding up a bunch of killer one-shot items, tracking down Eric, and wasting him in short order. Eric's player (my cousin) had suffered fairly badly in the dungeon and wasn't fully up to a fight and I was lavishly equipped. That was annoying, and I could understand my cousin's frustration with the results. Similarly, you can play Eric and load up. The game does reward you for holding onto the good stuff until the climactic battle, but then again so do most games.
So what can I do with these books?
You can play them straight up - which is wicked fun. Or you can steal the living hell out of Jim Ward's unique monsters, odd magic items, and fun traps. Some of these items are pretty bland ("wand of lightning bolts"), some are lame ("Heart Throb" is not a good name for a bow, sorry), and some are very cool indeed (I liked the mace "Armor Ruin" and its odd light-eating drawback), and just beg to be converted into your favorite game system and used. For D&D and retroclones, this is easy, because the books are basically D&D without slavish following of the rulebooks.
If you don't play a D&D clone . . . I've said this before, you better know how to convert from it or just steal ideas.
Rating:
Content: 5 out of 5. A complete game in two little books. Replay value is pretty high, because fights can turn out differently, you can switch up the sides, you can easily modify the resolution system with dice, etc.
Presentation: 5 out of 5. Aside from a need to flip around to your character sheets, the books are very easy to use. The illustrations range from acceptable to excellent and always match the text. The books are easy to read and pretty durable, too.
Overall: These books are a lot of fun, and there seem to be some reasonably priced copies on Amazon.com and eBay. I'd play them again, anytime, and I thought they were very cleverly done. Plenty of (illustrated) monsters to steal, too! Check them out if you can! Recommended.
Back when I played one-on-one with my cousin (gaming had become uncool compared to Motley Crue and sports for my other players), I ran a wizard names Neves. Got him up to level 11 or 12, IIRC, and then we decided to just bump ourselves up to the high teens so we could try out the really cool high-level stuff. Yeah, yeah, GM PC, playing alongside, yadda yadda yadda. We had fun, my cousin with his two PCs (one a cleric, the other . . . I forget, a fighter I think) and me with Neves. I kept using Neves as an NPC in my later games, too.
(Also see gamebooks.org for a description of this product.)
Castle Arcania is from the short-lived "1on1 Adventure Gamebooks" series, which also had some book about a robot and a space hero. It's kind of a mashup between Choose Your Own Adventure books, D&D, and a head-to-head boardgame.
There are two books - one each for Neves, "An Ancient and Powerful Wizard," and for Eric Sunsword, "Legendary Knight of the Northern Marches." Neves is a Neutral wizard, Eric is a Lawful Good fighter. The story is as follows - Neves wants to marry the beautiful princess Mara, so he can have eternal happiness (and eternal youth, all the better). Eric and Mara love each other, so you can see how this doesn't fit into their plans. So Neves busts into the castle, tosses some spells around, kidnaps her, and flees with his allies to the ruins of Castle Arcania, a handy castle-and-dungeon. Eric gives chase.
Low on spells after the big dustup at the castle, Neves's goal is to find enough magical items and allies in the dungeon to trash Eric in a heads-up fight, or get Eric killed by its inhabitants. Either way, with Eric out of the way he can Charm his princess and marry her. Yay, evil! (Er, neutral!) Eric's goal is to rescue her.
Both Neves and Eric have a posse of allies, each with their own special abilities, magic items, spells, and so on. Neves gets a gladiator bodyguard, a dark elf (not a drow), a female thief, and a kobold chief mercenary. Eric gets an amazon warrior and a reformed gentleman thief, each more powerful than any of Neves's allies. You can find more allies in the book (some monsters will fight you, others will join you if you play it correctly) and acquire more magic items. Some monsters will automatically ally with Neves and attack Eric, and vice-versa. In repeated play, you'll know which ones . . . so you can seek out allies or hunt down potential allies for your opponent. The whole time you need to avoid death at the hands of monsters, traps, and special encounters.
You play the game by alternating turns, reading an entry and following the text to know what to do - gain an ally, fight a monster, get a special result. You go back and forth, until eventually you end up face to face with your opponent and fight one another.
James M. Ward put in some nice touches. Eric's book tells you Castle Arcania was ruined in the past. Neves's book tells you that you helped trash Castle Arcania in the past. Heh. Some of your allies and your opponents allies have a nasty history, too, and preferentially attack each other even when you want them to all gang up on the name character. He also managed to make Eric Sunsword not-lame, which is tough for a LG goodie-goodie rescuing his chaste bride-to-be. He's tough and driven, and fun to play in his own right, and not just a foil for "I get to be a bad guy for once!" Neves.
How combat works is that the attacker (whoever goes first, and the text just tells you that) calls out a number 1-20, and the other player calls out one from 1-20, and you compare the results on a table. In actual play, you'd have enough combats that people would know which numbers you needed to make the other player's choice suck. So we almost immediately switched to using opposed D20 rolls, which made the game immediately more awesome. Anyway, you cross-reference numbers and get a result - hit, miss, double-damage hit, or a special result that depends on the character who gets that result. The specials can do cool stuff for you or bad stuff to you. Otherwise your weapons do a flat amount of damage, and monster attacks do the same, and you mark off HP as you take damage. You run the monsters when your opponent fights. When you eventually meet for the showdown, you just follow the same rules to kill each other head to head. They work fine in actual play both against monsters and PvP.
The game can get a little unbalanced, though. I distinctly remember playing one side (I think I was Neves), hoarding up a bunch of killer one-shot items, tracking down Eric, and wasting him in short order. Eric's player (my cousin) had suffered fairly badly in the dungeon and wasn't fully up to a fight and I was lavishly equipped. That was annoying, and I could understand my cousin's frustration with the results. Similarly, you can play Eric and load up. The game does reward you for holding onto the good stuff until the climactic battle, but then again so do most games.
So what can I do with these books?
You can play them straight up - which is wicked fun. Or you can steal the living hell out of Jim Ward's unique monsters, odd magic items, and fun traps. Some of these items are pretty bland ("wand of lightning bolts"), some are lame ("Heart Throb" is not a good name for a bow, sorry), and some are very cool indeed (I liked the mace "Armor Ruin" and its odd light-eating drawback), and just beg to be converted into your favorite game system and used. For D&D and retroclones, this is easy, because the books are basically D&D without slavish following of the rulebooks.
If you don't play a D&D clone . . . I've said this before, you better know how to convert from it or just steal ideas.
Rating:
Content: 5 out of 5. A complete game in two little books. Replay value is pretty high, because fights can turn out differently, you can switch up the sides, you can easily modify the resolution system with dice, etc.
Presentation: 5 out of 5. Aside from a need to flip around to your character sheets, the books are very easy to use. The illustrations range from acceptable to excellent and always match the text. The books are easy to read and pretty durable, too.
Overall: These books are a lot of fun, and there seem to be some reasonably priced copies on Amazon.com and eBay. I'd play them again, anytime, and I thought they were very cleverly done. Plenty of (illustrated) monsters to steal, too! Check them out if you can! Recommended.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Monty Haul
(This is a re-post of something from my personal blog)
I've recently been reading through my Dragon Magazine PDF archive (GREAT product, really), getting myself ready for my upcoming DF game. Which is blatantly an excuse to use my AD&D and D&D and Rolemaster adventurers with my players. Again, since I've done that before.
What I went looking for was inspiration, and what I found the most in was the articles by James M. Ward.
He wrote the various "Monty Haul" articles. In modern parlance, a Monty Haul GM is a giveaway GM. He/she gives out ridiculous amounts of power for little danger, and makes the game basically a gimme-fest for the player(s). But James M. Ward (and "Monty") did it differently. You really want to run an Iron Golem fighter? Sure, go for it. Here's a vorpal sword for you. And a laser pistol. And the Ring of Gaxx and the Inestimable Jacinth of Beauty. What the hell, here are all of Vecna's body parts and 10 portable holes and a lifetime supply of Rings of Wishing. You'll need them.
That's right, you will. The games described are totally over the top, the enemies as close to totally unfair as you can get as saying "they automatically roll 20s to hit and maximum damage." But the players get a fair shot at beating them. If they do, the treasures are equally amazing - the unique artifacts of D&D canon, powerful items of all sorts (as mentioned, vorpal swords, laser weaponry, grenades, rings of wishing, etc.) But about half of the stories seemed to end with some variation of "we used wishes to get the hell out of there!" to save their precious high level characters.
It sounds really fun . . . and it sounds like exactly the stuff Gary Gygax wanted to expunge from the game when AD&D rolled along. It's the sort of stuff the Out on a Limb letters column responses bashed. It's explicitly spoken of as a bad thing - high level characters with almost abusive power levels against totally unfair monsters recovering ludicrous treasures.
Like I said, this is what I grew up learned was bad gaming. What Chad Underkoffler coined as "hurting wrong fun." Stuff you weren't supposed to be doing - but the people doing it seemed to be enjoying it.
James M. Ward sounds like the best sort of GM ever. The guy who gives you whatever you want but makes it never enough to do more than get by. The guy who always has something terribly awesome in store for you, game after game.
All in all, I'd have loved to play a D&D game with Gary Gygax before he died. But I think maybe a game of Metamorphosis Alpha or original D&D with James Ward would be more instructive . . .
I've recently been reading through my Dragon Magazine PDF archive (GREAT product, really), getting myself ready for my upcoming DF game. Which is blatantly an excuse to use my AD&D and D&D and Rolemaster adventurers with my players. Again, since I've done that before.
What I went looking for was inspiration, and what I found the most in was the articles by James M. Ward.
He wrote the various "Monty Haul" articles. In modern parlance, a Monty Haul GM is a giveaway GM. He/she gives out ridiculous amounts of power for little danger, and makes the game basically a gimme-fest for the player(s). But James M. Ward (and "Monty") did it differently. You really want to run an Iron Golem fighter? Sure, go for it. Here's a vorpal sword for you. And a laser pistol. And the Ring of Gaxx and the Inestimable Jacinth of Beauty. What the hell, here are all of Vecna's body parts and 10 portable holes and a lifetime supply of Rings of Wishing. You'll need them.
That's right, you will. The games described are totally over the top, the enemies as close to totally unfair as you can get as saying "they automatically roll 20s to hit and maximum damage." But the players get a fair shot at beating them. If they do, the treasures are equally amazing - the unique artifacts of D&D canon, powerful items of all sorts (as mentioned, vorpal swords, laser weaponry, grenades, rings of wishing, etc.) But about half of the stories seemed to end with some variation of "we used wishes to get the hell out of there!" to save their precious high level characters.
It sounds really fun . . . and it sounds like exactly the stuff Gary Gygax wanted to expunge from the game when AD&D rolled along. It's the sort of stuff the Out on a Limb letters column responses bashed. It's explicitly spoken of as a bad thing - high level characters with almost abusive power levels against totally unfair monsters recovering ludicrous treasures.
Like I said, this is what I grew up learned was bad gaming. What Chad Underkoffler coined as "hurting wrong fun." Stuff you weren't supposed to be doing - but the people doing it seemed to be enjoying it.
James M. Ward sounds like the best sort of GM ever. The guy who gives you whatever you want but makes it never enough to do more than get by. The guy who always has something terribly awesome in store for you, game after game.
All in all, I'd have loved to play a D&D game with Gary Gygax before he died. But I think maybe a game of Metamorphosis Alpha or original D&D with James Ward would be more instructive . . .
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