We had a great game of Dungeon Fantasy tonight in Felltower. I'm sad why we had a game of Felltower - I was looking forward to Gamma Terra a lot and I'm sad our GM couldn't make it.
That out of the way, we had:
- a fight versus criminally underused rat swarms.
- a lesson on why you don't want Crushrooms to hit you.
- the orcs turning the PC's weapons against them.
- flaming orcs.
- long hikes due to indecision.
- exploration on the level discovered a few sessions back.
- discovery of a pair of gates!
- discovery of a campaign tie-in.
- a one-on-one duel between Vryce and a sword-spirit.
- giggling demons.
- flaming Mo.
- the Lord of Spite's sense of humor is revealed again.
- Hjalmarr displays the mapping skills that made Vikings legendary.
Much fun was had. I'll write a summary tomorrow.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Keep watching the dungeon! (Emergency game session)
We were scheduled for Gamma Terra today, but non-gaming events conspired to take out our GM's availability today. We found out only yesterday, when he did.
So we're going to play Felltower one more time this year.
Lucky for me, I was ready. While a megadungeon doesn't require a lot of between-session prep, it does require some. Generally when I know there is a long break coming up I:
- Take apart the box of materials to sort out what needs to stay and what needs to go.
- Open up and empty out the Plano counter and marker trays.
- Take all of the mini trays out of the transport case for re-organization
- Leave all of the rumors, re-stocking, etc. until the very last minute.
For some bizarre reasons I didn't do any of this. Instead, I:
- Did all of the rumors, restocking, and so on immediately after the session (apparently, based on the dated notes).
- Left all of the minis and trays as-is.
The true upside of a megadungeon is this "moments away from ready to play" aspect. So I'm basically ready to go.
Had I not been, though, I had some options - rush the rest of the prep for some testing we planned to do, pull out some pre-prepped D&D5 or retro-clone or Basic D&D stuff to run for a change of pace, maybe play some Munchkin or Ogre (it's a bear to lug, but it's fun to play once it's there), something of that sort.
But no, given a choice of Felltower vs. anything else, Felltower always wins the vote.
What's the plan?
"Rah! Rah! Rah! We're going to smash the orcs!"
So we're going to play Felltower one more time this year.
Lucky for me, I was ready. While a megadungeon doesn't require a lot of between-session prep, it does require some. Generally when I know there is a long break coming up I:
- Take apart the box of materials to sort out what needs to stay and what needs to go.
- Open up and empty out the Plano counter and marker trays.
- Take all of the mini trays out of the transport case for re-organization
- Leave all of the rumors, re-stocking, etc. until the very last minute.
For some bizarre reasons I didn't do any of this. Instead, I:
- Did all of the rumors, restocking, and so on immediately after the session (apparently, based on the dated notes).
- Left all of the minis and trays as-is.
The true upside of a megadungeon is this "moments away from ready to play" aspect. So I'm basically ready to go.
Had I not been, though, I had some options - rush the rest of the prep for some testing we planned to do, pull out some pre-prepped D&D5 or retro-clone or Basic D&D stuff to run for a change of pace, maybe play some Munchkin or Ogre (it's a bear to lug, but it's fun to play once it's there), something of that sort.
But no, given a choice of Felltower vs. anything else, Felltower always wins the vote.
What's the plan?
"Rah! Rah! Rah! We're going to smash the orcs!"
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Next Stop: Toys for Tots dropoff
I picked these up to donate them to Toys for Tots.
I passed on some other options like Basic Fantasy or GURPS Lite or Swords & Wizardry, because I can't include the stuff you need to play. I can't figure out how to give a pair of books + dice and ensure they all go together. I'd love to be able to get a boxed set made and put my own choices of material in it and shrinkwrap and give that out.
So the D&D Starter Set and this copy of Ogre Objective 218 will have to do. Hopefully, they get some boy or girl into tabletop gaming. I'm not the kind to set up and run games to teach people - this is my hobby, I like to do it in peace and quiet - but I'm happy to provide materials as a gift!
I passed on some other options like Basic Fantasy or GURPS Lite or Swords & Wizardry, because I can't include the stuff you need to play. I can't figure out how to give a pair of books + dice and ensure they all go together. I'd love to be able to get a boxed set made and put my own choices of material in it and shrinkwrap and give that out.
So the D&D Starter Set and this copy of Ogre Objective 218 will have to do. Hopefully, they get some boy or girl into tabletop gaming. I'm not the kind to set up and run games to teach people - this is my hobby, I like to do it in peace and quiet - but I'm happy to provide materials as a gift!
Friday, December 9, 2016
Review: H2 The Mines of Bloodstone
This is one of my occasional looks back on old gaming items I picked up and/or played back in the day.
For my consolidated list of reviews, please see my reviews page.
by Michael Dobson and Douglas Niles
Released 1986 by TSR
48 pages + cover and pull-out map.
$4.99 in PDF
H2 The Mines of Bloodstone is the middle part in the high-level, dungeons-and-Battlesystem combination Bloodstone adventure series. It is preceded by H1 Bloodstone Pass and followed by H3 The Bloodstone Wars and eventually by the infamous H4 Throne of Bloodstone, for levels 18-100. I'll get to those soon.
The adventure takes place after the victory of the PCs over an army of evil-led bandits in H1 Bloodstone Pass. Here they PCs need to deal with the remnants of the evil they defeated, and with a a new wellspring of evil. They need to find its source - it's pretty obviously the mines - and destroy it. Since it's aimed at 14-18th level characters, and it's a Battlesystem module, this means powerful evil with army-sized groups of minions.
There are some very usable bits to this adventure. However, there is a lot of just boring, repetitive material. Lots of rooms that are basically boxed text, GM text, monster, treasure. On the plus side, there isn't a lot of wasted to text to vanilla encounters. On the minus side, a lot of encounters feel like vanilla encounters. Just HP to whittle down, nothing to gain or lose by doing anything but that. They're generally just big numbers - 20, 30, 40, even 100 to 150 of something to fight. They'll provide useful attrition to a high-level party, but they aren't interesting in an of themselves. A lot of it seems to be solving the problem of "How do you challenge high level guys?" with "Add a 0 to the end of the number encountered and give them all magic weapons or make them immune to their normal weakness."
There is a lot of save-or-die and clued encounters with deadly threats. Many of these seem a little overdone, though. There is a chance at contracting a magical disease, there is no save if you come in contact, it's game-ending, and the module states that "only a wish, maybe" can fix it. Seems a bit harsh. Most of these challenges, however, can be detected with good play, and a cautious and thorough group of experienced players should be able to handle them.
There are some excellent set-piece encounters, such as the one near the bottom of the initial mines. The source of evil in the mines - Orcus, as is totally obvious from the cover - is shielded by an army and a series of tests. The "tests" are rooms that challenge specific aspects of characters. Some are very interesting. Others are just plain mechanical - make some saving throws, move on. Still more are just nasty fights.
The final set-piece is well done, and it's not overdone with boxed text or "cut-scene" aspects. It's just a straight-up race against time, with the usual module conceit of having the clock start only after the PCs arrive.
The army is dealt with either by sneaking around (good luck, they use a massive amount of continuous magic to prevent that) or recruiting allies and fighting a set-piece battle. The latter is what's strongly pushed - again, the H-series is a Battlesystem series. So if you want to fight in a huge battle in a giant cavern in the Underdark, this is for you. It's kind of odd, actually, that Underdark armies aren't fighting skirmishes and raids and occasional invasions but fight in ranked formations over roads and rises (albeit roofed ones). It feels like a bit of a failure of imagination to just swap in "mushrooms" for "forest" and deep dwellers for surface dwellers.
Little niggles? The entrances to the mines are 15' wide unless the map says otherwise. The map has squares with no scale. So are they 15' squares or 10' or something else? There is a shaft from the upper area of the isometric map to the lower level, but it's not clear where it actually connects.
Bigger niggles? The treasures match the monsters in terms of vanilla. Many of them just have big dollops of treasure - a quarter-million here, and an assortment of gold, platinum, gems, and magic items here. There are a lot of magic items handed out. I'm not sure if this is to make up for the very magic-poor pregens (and the magic-poor PCs, if you follow H1 and H2's setup, which is "you lost it all and are refugees.") The treasure is generally vanilla - "8,000 pp, 15,000 gp, several expensive necklaces worth a total of 10,000 gp [. . . ]" Okay, I like simple and direct, but everything is big round numbers and no detail.
There is also some deliberate silliness that falls flat. The halfling village? It's paved with a corkscrewing road of yellow bricks that curls to the center of town. Sigh. And while a lady in a lake handing out swords is very Arthurian, it's just odd - why is that lake in an evil-ridden dungeon? Probably because they want to make sure someone has one of those swords.
What bothered me the most about this adventure was the rules changes - or maybe they're just errors. The Pregens are a perfect example. The 16th ranger is specialized in the bow, double-specialized in the longsword, and specialized in the throwing axe. That violates the rules in Unearthed Arcana, p. 18, or at least tosses the part about "one weapon" and choosing that one weapon at character generation. The bard is double-specialized in the longsword and dagger and throwing dagger - that's 9 proficiency slots right there, but as a former 8th level fighter he only has 6 - his other classes give him some, but specialization is a fighter ability so that's pretty bogus. If these were deliberate changes for high-level play, it might fly (although it wouldn't be a great idea based on my own experience) - but it's not stated, it's just done. They're designed like rules lawyers parsed out the wording to get the most bonuses they could. The same characters are in H1, but lack all of this, and simply follow the rules as written. In H3, this would continue.
The wizard has sage abilities in magic, legends and lore, and magic item identification - just free throw-ins. The module literally assumes he (and apparently your PCs, too) identifies all magic items on sight - a room's treasure with items that are new in Unearthed Arcana actually says this:
"(These last four magical items are from Unearthed Arcana. Describe them in ordinary terms - "two potion bottles, a rod and a set of bracers" - and let the players discover their properties." (p. 27)
Yes, describe them in ordinary terms and let the players discover their properties - that's how we do it for all items, not just ones from new books. Aargh!
There are two new monsters - the steeder, a spider-steed with an uninspired name (Spider + Steed - Spid = Steeder?) that's mostly added to have cavalry with a special ability, and an underground-boring menace, the stone-eater. The stone-eater is listed as having 30-100 HD, which just feels a little excessive for 1st edition AD&D.
How is it for GURPS?
Adaptable, but it places so much emphasis on very large fights (12 of these, 150 of those, 24 of these attacking by surprise at range) that don't do well with a more lethal combat system. Still, conceptually it's sound and could be adapted to a solid adventure.
Overall: I don't love this adventure. It's bare-bones enough that a GM could do a lot with it, and it wouldn't get in the way of a good group and a good GM. It's got everything you need to run the game. It hands out a lot of magical treasure, simply piles on foes, and doesn't give you a lot to work with in many situations. It's just uninspired where other high-end adventures (WG6 Isle of the Ape, D3 Vault of the Drow, Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits) are more exciting and interesting. I'd play it or run it, but the GM and group need to bring more to it. And leave the advice on magic item identification and the pregens at home.
For my consolidated list of reviews, please see my reviews page.
by Michael Dobson and Douglas Niles
Released 1986 by TSR
48 pages + cover and pull-out map.
$4.99 in PDF
H2 The Mines of Bloodstone is the middle part in the high-level, dungeons-and-Battlesystem combination Bloodstone adventure series. It is preceded by H1 Bloodstone Pass and followed by H3 The Bloodstone Wars and eventually by the infamous H4 Throne of Bloodstone, for levels 18-100. I'll get to those soon.
The adventure takes place after the victory of the PCs over an army of evil-led bandits in H1 Bloodstone Pass. Here they PCs need to deal with the remnants of the evil they defeated, and with a a new wellspring of evil. They need to find its source - it's pretty obviously the mines - and destroy it. Since it's aimed at 14-18th level characters, and it's a Battlesystem module, this means powerful evil with army-sized groups of minions.
There are some very usable bits to this adventure. However, there is a lot of just boring, repetitive material. Lots of rooms that are basically boxed text, GM text, monster, treasure. On the plus side, there isn't a lot of wasted to text to vanilla encounters. On the minus side, a lot of encounters feel like vanilla encounters. Just HP to whittle down, nothing to gain or lose by doing anything but that. They're generally just big numbers - 20, 30, 40, even 100 to 150 of something to fight. They'll provide useful attrition to a high-level party, but they aren't interesting in an of themselves. A lot of it seems to be solving the problem of "How do you challenge high level guys?" with "Add a 0 to the end of the number encountered and give them all magic weapons or make them immune to their normal weakness."
There is a lot of save-or-die and clued encounters with deadly threats. Many of these seem a little overdone, though. There is a chance at contracting a magical disease, there is no save if you come in contact, it's game-ending, and the module states that "only a wish, maybe" can fix it. Seems a bit harsh. Most of these challenges, however, can be detected with good play, and a cautious and thorough group of experienced players should be able to handle them.
There are some excellent set-piece encounters, such as the one near the bottom of the initial mines. The source of evil in the mines - Orcus, as is totally obvious from the cover - is shielded by an army and a series of tests. The "tests" are rooms that challenge specific aspects of characters. Some are very interesting. Others are just plain mechanical - make some saving throws, move on. Still more are just nasty fights.
The final set-piece is well done, and it's not overdone with boxed text or "cut-scene" aspects. It's just a straight-up race against time, with the usual module conceit of having the clock start only after the PCs arrive.
The army is dealt with either by sneaking around (good luck, they use a massive amount of continuous magic to prevent that) or recruiting allies and fighting a set-piece battle. The latter is what's strongly pushed - again, the H-series is a Battlesystem series. So if you want to fight in a huge battle in a giant cavern in the Underdark, this is for you. It's kind of odd, actually, that Underdark armies aren't fighting skirmishes and raids and occasional invasions but fight in ranked formations over roads and rises (albeit roofed ones). It feels like a bit of a failure of imagination to just swap in "mushrooms" for "forest" and deep dwellers for surface dwellers.
Little niggles? The entrances to the mines are 15' wide unless the map says otherwise. The map has squares with no scale. So are they 15' squares or 10' or something else? There is a shaft from the upper area of the isometric map to the lower level, but it's not clear where it actually connects.
Bigger niggles? The treasures match the monsters in terms of vanilla. Many of them just have big dollops of treasure - a quarter-million here, and an assortment of gold, platinum, gems, and magic items here. There are a lot of magic items handed out. I'm not sure if this is to make up for the very magic-poor pregens (and the magic-poor PCs, if you follow H1 and H2's setup, which is "you lost it all and are refugees.") The treasure is generally vanilla - "8,000 pp, 15,000 gp, several expensive necklaces worth a total of 10,000 gp [. . . ]" Okay, I like simple and direct, but everything is big round numbers and no detail.
There is also some deliberate silliness that falls flat. The halfling village? It's paved with a corkscrewing road of yellow bricks that curls to the center of town. Sigh. And while a lady in a lake handing out swords is very Arthurian, it's just odd - why is that lake in an evil-ridden dungeon? Probably because they want to make sure someone has one of those swords.
What bothered me the most about this adventure was the rules changes - or maybe they're just errors. The Pregens are a perfect example. The 16th ranger is specialized in the bow, double-specialized in the longsword, and specialized in the throwing axe. That violates the rules in Unearthed Arcana, p. 18, or at least tosses the part about "one weapon" and choosing that one weapon at character generation. The bard is double-specialized in the longsword and dagger and throwing dagger - that's 9 proficiency slots right there, but as a former 8th level fighter he only has 6 - his other classes give him some, but specialization is a fighter ability so that's pretty bogus. If these were deliberate changes for high-level play, it might fly (although it wouldn't be a great idea based on my own experience) - but it's not stated, it's just done. They're designed like rules lawyers parsed out the wording to get the most bonuses they could. The same characters are in H1, but lack all of this, and simply follow the rules as written. In H3, this would continue.
The wizard has sage abilities in magic, legends and lore, and magic item identification - just free throw-ins. The module literally assumes he (and apparently your PCs, too) identifies all magic items on sight - a room's treasure with items that are new in Unearthed Arcana actually says this:
"(These last four magical items are from Unearthed Arcana. Describe them in ordinary terms - "two potion bottles, a rod and a set of bracers" - and let the players discover their properties." (p. 27)
Yes, describe them in ordinary terms and let the players discover their properties - that's how we do it for all items, not just ones from new books. Aargh!
There are two new monsters - the steeder, a spider-steed with an uninspired name (Spider + Steed - Spid = Steeder?) that's mostly added to have cavalry with a special ability, and an underground-boring menace, the stone-eater. The stone-eater is listed as having 30-100 HD, which just feels a little excessive for 1st edition AD&D.
How is it for GURPS?
Adaptable, but it places so much emphasis on very large fights (12 of these, 150 of those, 24 of these attacking by surprise at range) that don't do well with a more lethal combat system. Still, conceptually it's sound and could be adapted to a solid adventure.
Overall: I don't love this adventure. It's bare-bones enough that a GM could do a lot with it, and it wouldn't get in the way of a good group and a good GM. It's got everything you need to run the game. It hands out a lot of magical treasure, simply piles on foes, and doesn't give you a lot to work with in many situations. It's just uninspired where other high-end adventures (WG6 Isle of the Ape, D3 Vault of the Drow, Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits) are more exciting and interesting. I'd play it or run it, but the GM and group need to bring more to it. And leave the advice on magic item identification and the pregens at home.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Lighter Combat for a Test Run
So I have this GURPS stuff I want to try out in Actual Play, but I don't have a lot of time to do it. Nor do I want to toss the Felltower PC pool at the problem - they wouldn't fit.
My regular gamers and I are going to do a mini-session to try it out, and I expect combat. But I also know even with throwaway characters, there is a hard-coded tendency in many players to maximize their options. Make this this action on this turn is the best possible thing to do for now, for later, and for their friends around them.
That's not conducive to fast combats.
Here is what I'm going to do to keep things lightning fast:
Use my Simple Combat Rules with the exceptions below:
- No Retreats. As simple at that - none, not at all, never, you roll against the defenses on your sheet.
- No Reach. Either you're in melee, or you aren't, or you're in Close Combat, or you aren't. You can't Wait and strike and backpedal with your rapier to keep a foe at bay. If you can reach him, he can reach you, and yes, he can engage in close combat. You can leave close combat, but you're still in an abstract space where he can reach you if he wants.
- No Map. I might plunk down a map for visualizing the area, but it won't matter in combat. My players have a tendency to use their minis anyway to do grouping, then subtly start using range, then use Retreat, etc. Not here - no minis, just an abstract brawl. And thus:
- No Facing. You can't flank that guy, he's got no flank.
- Largely basic rules only. So no multiple Blocks, no Long Weapons in Close Combat. I'll probably allow Committed Attack and Defensive Attack, and allow trading in attacks to get a Feint (a typical Rapid Strike move) but that's it.
That seems workable - if you can't try to leverage the map, leverage reach, leverage Retreat for defenses and spacing, or worry about placement and facing due to worries about Close Combat, you really don't have anything to do on your turn except choose a foe and attack - or not. That and passing over people not ready to go should speed things up. I hope so - my goal is to try something not purely tied to combat, and thus slow, careful, tactical combat with minis and the fun that that is just would be an impediment not a help. We'd miss the forest for the trees.
We'll see how it goes. I suspect "No Retreat" is going to be cringebait for many people, but hey, you're never going to need to worry about when to use that +3 Dodge . . .
My regular gamers and I are going to do a mini-session to try it out, and I expect combat. But I also know even with throwaway characters, there is a hard-coded tendency in many players to maximize their options. Make this this action on this turn is the best possible thing to do for now, for later, and for their friends around them.
That's not conducive to fast combats.
Here is what I'm going to do to keep things lightning fast:
Use my Simple Combat Rules with the exceptions below:
- No Retreats. As simple at that - none, not at all, never, you roll against the defenses on your sheet.
- No Reach. Either you're in melee, or you aren't, or you're in Close Combat, or you aren't. You can't Wait and strike and backpedal with your rapier to keep a foe at bay. If you can reach him, he can reach you, and yes, he can engage in close combat. You can leave close combat, but you're still in an abstract space where he can reach you if he wants.
- No Map. I might plunk down a map for visualizing the area, but it won't matter in combat. My players have a tendency to use their minis anyway to do grouping, then subtly start using range, then use Retreat, etc. Not here - no minis, just an abstract brawl. And thus:
- No Facing. You can't flank that guy, he's got no flank.
- Largely basic rules only. So no multiple Blocks, no Long Weapons in Close Combat. I'll probably allow Committed Attack and Defensive Attack, and allow trading in attacks to get a Feint (a typical Rapid Strike move) but that's it.
That seems workable - if you can't try to leverage the map, leverage reach, leverage Retreat for defenses and spacing, or worry about placement and facing due to worries about Close Combat, you really don't have anything to do on your turn except choose a foe and attack - or not. That and passing over people not ready to go should speed things up. I hope so - my goal is to try something not purely tied to combat, and thus slow, careful, tactical combat with minis and the fun that that is just would be an impediment not a help. We'd miss the forest for the trees.
We'll see how it goes. I suspect "No Retreat" is going to be cringebait for many people, but hey, you're never going to need to worry about when to use that +3 Dodge . . .
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Review: H1 Bloodstone Pass
Here is another review of an old adventure from my collection.
For more, see my reviews page.
by Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson
TSR 1985
$4.99 in PDF
Bloodstone Pass was the first adventure module written specifically for the Battlesystem rules system. If you don't know Battlesystem, it was a mass combat system for AD&D, with counters representing from 1:1 (heroes) to 10:1 (fodder-types) figures per counter. It basically let you play out tabletop-wargame style battles that were fully compatible with the AD&D rules, just by adding a few abstractions and stats to deal with masses of troops at once. The boxed set came with some battles, but H1 Bloodstone Pass came out with a campaign.
It is set in the Forgotten Realms, between Vaasa and Damara. To be strictly accurate, it's set in a pass between those lands, but it doesn't mention the Forgotten Realms. I've never been clear if those were always part of the canonical setting and just preceded it, or were added in to accommodate these lands. The module treats them largely as names.
The adventure setup is one that screams out for pre-gens: the PCs are refugees from war. They've lost the majority of their hard-won magic items, all but a few coins in their pockets, and all of their holdings, henchmen, hirelings, followers, and titles. They're destitute, or at least as destitute as high-level adventurers with a couple of choice magic items can be - opportunity knocks. I say pregens because I've rarely met a player willing to accept "you've lost everything and you're starting over" gracefully.
The PCs get caught up in a Seven Samurai-esque situation. After a place-setting encounter with a traveling menagerie that needs assistance, the PCs get recruited for 5 silver a day (that's 1/4 of a gp) to come help a village fight bandits.
The bandits turn out to be the spearhead of an evil army with appropriately high-level backing. The village naturally has a cast of characters, a beautiful woman to romance, an aging leader to impress, a stern cleric to wear down into friendship, and so on. Most of them seem to come right out of central casting, but here it adds rather than detracts. If you're going to be wandering heroes on the rebound recruited by a village for a pittance to fight evil, don't you want the rest of the staples of the fiction?
The adventure has a series of encounters that can lead to conflict or alliance, profit or loss, and determine how much the village can draw on nearby communities for aid. They're pretty interesting, but also a bit obvious. Players willing to take small chances and be heroic will do fine. Players unwilling to take risks and suspicious of traps at every turn will be safer but lose out.
The actual Battlesystem battles are interesting - they escalate believably, and include at least one challenging battle that really takes advantage of the enemy's magic and the weakness of the good side. It all functions on a timeline, giving the PCs a limited time to organize the army, build defenses, deal with challenges within the village (and roleplay them out, naturally), recruit allies, and so on. It's a tight schedule, and the picklist of things to do adds up to more time than the PCs will have.
The enemy forces are pretty straightforward, but include plenty of mid-to-high level heroes and leaders for the PCs to tangle with. They neither feel overwhelmingly powerful nor too weak to challenge high-level PCs.
The adventure came with new (and more attractive) die-cut counter sheets for Battlesystem, fold-up houses for the village, pre-filled out roster sheets. Even the pregenerated PCs come as front-and-back printed roster sheets. The module has a solid series of tables to determine the villagers as needed, and maps of specifically interesting buildings. There is also a map of the area and a map of the bad guy's camp.
Overall, the adventure is straightforward but well done. Impress the recruiters with an unrelated task, get recruited, find some allies, fight the bandits, and then fight the final battle royale. All well done.
How is it for GURPS?
This might do well with GURPS Mass Combat, if you modify it with Tactical Mass Combat, both by David Pulver. Straight-up, the intent is to play out battles. The battles aren't a backdrop for adventuring, but rather adventuring is a backdrop to war. Characters set up primarily for individual adventures, and players uninterested in winning a tabletop battle, will struggle with this regardless of system. The smaller-area largely tactical nature of GURPS spells will mean the battle is more about soldier vs. soldier than in AD&D. That will apply equally to both sides, however, and should even out.
Overall: It's a very good adventure for Battlesystem and AD&D. It does its job, and is well set up to provide a GM with all the detail needed to run the village and the war, and for the PCs to deal with the village and win that war. It's one of the better modules I ever purchased, and it's so very different from the rest.
War Stories: I played this adventure when it came out. I didn't run it, I played it solo. That might seem strange, but honestly, for Battlesystem, did I really need a DM or an opponent? I just ran both sides ruthlessly and saw who won. In my case, the PCs did, mostly because I think the field was a little slanted toward them. If you make the right choices you can make the peasant army into a pretty tough force, and if you're willing to dump magic quickly and furiously you can reduce losses pretty effectively. I really enjoyed playing out the series of battles.
The counters it came with still see action as individual orcs, peasants, swordsman, archer, etc. in my current games. I'd play this again, given a solid chance, but I'm not sure I'd run it. I don't have a group right now that seems really into playing all-day tabletop wargame after wargame.
For more, see my reviews page.
by Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson
TSR 1985
$4.99 in PDF
Bloodstone Pass was the first adventure module written specifically for the Battlesystem rules system. If you don't know Battlesystem, it was a mass combat system for AD&D, with counters representing from 1:1 (heroes) to 10:1 (fodder-types) figures per counter. It basically let you play out tabletop-wargame style battles that were fully compatible with the AD&D rules, just by adding a few abstractions and stats to deal with masses of troops at once. The boxed set came with some battles, but H1 Bloodstone Pass came out with a campaign.
It is set in the Forgotten Realms, between Vaasa and Damara. To be strictly accurate, it's set in a pass between those lands, but it doesn't mention the Forgotten Realms. I've never been clear if those were always part of the canonical setting and just preceded it, or were added in to accommodate these lands. The module treats them largely as names.
The adventure setup is one that screams out for pre-gens: the PCs are refugees from war. They've lost the majority of their hard-won magic items, all but a few coins in their pockets, and all of their holdings, henchmen, hirelings, followers, and titles. They're destitute, or at least as destitute as high-level adventurers with a couple of choice magic items can be - opportunity knocks. I say pregens because I've rarely met a player willing to accept "you've lost everything and you're starting over" gracefully.
The PCs get caught up in a Seven Samurai-esque situation. After a place-setting encounter with a traveling menagerie that needs assistance, the PCs get recruited for 5 silver a day (that's 1/4 of a gp) to come help a village fight bandits.
The bandits turn out to be the spearhead of an evil army with appropriately high-level backing. The village naturally has a cast of characters, a beautiful woman to romance, an aging leader to impress, a stern cleric to wear down into friendship, and so on. Most of them seem to come right out of central casting, but here it adds rather than detracts. If you're going to be wandering heroes on the rebound recruited by a village for a pittance to fight evil, don't you want the rest of the staples of the fiction?
The adventure has a series of encounters that can lead to conflict or alliance, profit or loss, and determine how much the village can draw on nearby communities for aid. They're pretty interesting, but also a bit obvious. Players willing to take small chances and be heroic will do fine. Players unwilling to take risks and suspicious of traps at every turn will be safer but lose out.
The actual Battlesystem battles are interesting - they escalate believably, and include at least one challenging battle that really takes advantage of the enemy's magic and the weakness of the good side. It all functions on a timeline, giving the PCs a limited time to organize the army, build defenses, deal with challenges within the village (and roleplay them out, naturally), recruit allies, and so on. It's a tight schedule, and the picklist of things to do adds up to more time than the PCs will have.
The enemy forces are pretty straightforward, but include plenty of mid-to-high level heroes and leaders for the PCs to tangle with. They neither feel overwhelmingly powerful nor too weak to challenge high-level PCs.
The adventure came with new (and more attractive) die-cut counter sheets for Battlesystem, fold-up houses for the village, pre-filled out roster sheets. Even the pregenerated PCs come as front-and-back printed roster sheets. The module has a solid series of tables to determine the villagers as needed, and maps of specifically interesting buildings. There is also a map of the area and a map of the bad guy's camp.
Overall, the adventure is straightforward but well done. Impress the recruiters with an unrelated task, get recruited, find some allies, fight the bandits, and then fight the final battle royale. All well done.
How is it for GURPS?
This might do well with GURPS Mass Combat, if you modify it with Tactical Mass Combat, both by David Pulver. Straight-up, the intent is to play out battles. The battles aren't a backdrop for adventuring, but rather adventuring is a backdrop to war. Characters set up primarily for individual adventures, and players uninterested in winning a tabletop battle, will struggle with this regardless of system. The smaller-area largely tactical nature of GURPS spells will mean the battle is more about soldier vs. soldier than in AD&D. That will apply equally to both sides, however, and should even out.
Overall: It's a very good adventure for Battlesystem and AD&D. It does its job, and is well set up to provide a GM with all the detail needed to run the village and the war, and for the PCs to deal with the village and win that war. It's one of the better modules I ever purchased, and it's so very different from the rest.
War Stories: I played this adventure when it came out. I didn't run it, I played it solo. That might seem strange, but honestly, for Battlesystem, did I really need a DM or an opponent? I just ran both sides ruthlessly and saw who won. In my case, the PCs did, mostly because I think the field was a little slanted toward them. If you make the right choices you can make the peasant army into a pretty tough force, and if you're willing to dump magic quickly and furiously you can reduce losses pretty effectively. I really enjoyed playing out the series of battles.
The counters it came with still see action as individual orcs, peasants, swordsman, archer, etc. in my current games. I'd play this again, given a solid chance, but I'm not sure I'd run it. I don't have a group right now that seems really into playing all-day tabletop wargame after wargame.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Review: DCC #73: Emirikol Was Framed!
I like to review gaming materials I enjoyed, or found useful. This is one I enjoyed reading, and I expect I'll use chunks of it in my own games.
For my consolidated list of reviews, please see my reviews page.
by Michael Curtis
20 pages
GMG5074 Goodman Games 2012
$6.99 PDF
Emirikol Was Framed is an adventure for 4th-level Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG characters. The back cover text pretty much has this covered:
"The mad wizard Emirikol is terrifying the city! Striking without reason and sending his winged apes to slaughter the populace, the famous archmage has gone too far. Now a coffer of jewels is offered to those who would dare defeat him. The ever-changing walls of his Shifting Tower are guarded by a host of diabolical traps, fiendish guardians, and unimaginable terror. Will your adventurers come out victorious…or lose their very souls in the attempt?"
I had two initial negative reactions to this adventure.
#1: It's based an iconic piece of D&D art by David A. Trampier in the DMG . . . but it goes ahead and changes that art. It's not Emirikol the Chaotic rampaging through town for some unknown reason, it's Emirikol the Chaotic rampaging through town accompanied by a bunch of crossbow-toting winged apes. So it's putting the adventure to a changed piece of art. It felt like changing the Mona Lisa smile to a fanged smirk and basing an adventure on that. No matter how good the adventure, you're trying to play off the imagery of an existing piece of art and the weight it brings to the table . . . it'll be tough to live up to at best.
#2: The title is a dead giveaway for the adventure. It doesn't spell out the plot word for word, but it may as well. Even knowing I own an adventure called "Emirikol Was Framed," or that one exists, if I introduce Emirikol as the target of some adventure, you should be looking for a frame-up. Had it been "Against Emirikol" or something like that, well, a frame-up would at least be a surprise.
After reading it, these both still hold. I'd need a name change and a partial re-skin to run this with any hope of surprise. All of that said, is a very good adventure.
The adventure starts in town, and quickly moves to the tower of Emirikol. The tower is a dangerous place to get in to, and to get around. It's an ever-changing tower outside and a dimension-ignoring mess of rooms inside. So Room A and B might connect, and B to C, but they don't always connect up and down, or fit side-to-side, or any of that. It's basically a pointcrawl, which is probably the best way to run a non-Euclidean dungeon.
The map is attractive but I had some trouble following it at first - I'd recommend printing it out and color-coding it. Mine is a hardcopy, so I'd copy mine first. But it needs some reinforcement to make it visually pop out as useful information. Clear labels of where portals go are already on the map, though, so it's not that the map is poor, just that color will make it more easily useful.
The plot is interesting, and its potential ultimate resolution(s) are also interesting. It's a good chance for adventurers to be adventurers, but also for smart players to find their own solution. There is even a well-done load-bearing monster in the adventure, so you have to be a bit careful just rampaging around if you don't like fleeing as the wizard's lair collapses behind you Hollywood style. It even has a nice setup for using several characters in a recurring fashion, if you so wish.
The magical treasures includes a very interesting magical sword. It's one of those weapons you will love to have as a player but your PC might regret having, much like the weapons of White Plume Mountain.
The art is also quite good - at worst interesting and useful, at best evocative and great as player handouts. "THIS happens to you!" kind of art. Several of the more difficult-to-easily describe or better seen than heard encounters have illustrations, which helps immensely.
The adventure also has a new spell (which takes a whole page, DCC-style) and a 1/2 page table and associated rules for dealing with a fight when the PCs are spectators. Several unique-to-Emirikol's-tower monsters also exist, which could be useful elsewhere or after the adventure is played.
How is it for GURPS?
It would probably work well for GURPS. The fights generally aren't against masses of fodder, which work better in DnD clones than in GURPS. Enough detail is given to assign out stats to everything you need, and even a cursory knowledge of DnD-based systems would let you turn the various monsters and the titular wizard into GURPS stats.
Overall: As much I wish the name wasn't Plot McGivaway, and my gut reaction to the cover art vs. my own imagery of the original piece, this is good stuff. It's tight, it's fun without being purely funhouse, and the PCs have real opportunities and real danger to face. And like the DCC line in general, it's atmospheric as can be.
For my consolidated list of reviews, please see my reviews page.
by Michael Curtis
20 pages
GMG5074 Goodman Games 2012
$6.99 PDF
Emirikol Was Framed is an adventure for 4th-level Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG characters. The back cover text pretty much has this covered:
"The mad wizard Emirikol is terrifying the city! Striking without reason and sending his winged apes to slaughter the populace, the famous archmage has gone too far. Now a coffer of jewels is offered to those who would dare defeat him. The ever-changing walls of his Shifting Tower are guarded by a host of diabolical traps, fiendish guardians, and unimaginable terror. Will your adventurers come out victorious…or lose their very souls in the attempt?"
I had two initial negative reactions to this adventure.
#1: It's based an iconic piece of D&D art by David A. Trampier in the DMG . . . but it goes ahead and changes that art. It's not Emirikol the Chaotic rampaging through town for some unknown reason, it's Emirikol the Chaotic rampaging through town accompanied by a bunch of crossbow-toting winged apes. So it's putting the adventure to a changed piece of art. It felt like changing the Mona Lisa smile to a fanged smirk and basing an adventure on that. No matter how good the adventure, you're trying to play off the imagery of an existing piece of art and the weight it brings to the table . . . it'll be tough to live up to at best.
#2: The title is a dead giveaway for the adventure. It doesn't spell out the plot word for word, but it may as well. Even knowing I own an adventure called "Emirikol Was Framed," or that one exists, if I introduce Emirikol as the target of some adventure, you should be looking for a frame-up. Had it been "Against Emirikol" or something like that, well, a frame-up would at least be a surprise.
After reading it, these both still hold. I'd need a name change and a partial re-skin to run this with any hope of surprise. All of that said, is a very good adventure.
The adventure starts in town, and quickly moves to the tower of Emirikol. The tower is a dangerous place to get in to, and to get around. It's an ever-changing tower outside and a dimension-ignoring mess of rooms inside. So Room A and B might connect, and B to C, but they don't always connect up and down, or fit side-to-side, or any of that. It's basically a pointcrawl, which is probably the best way to run a non-Euclidean dungeon.
The map is attractive but I had some trouble following it at first - I'd recommend printing it out and color-coding it. Mine is a hardcopy, so I'd copy mine first. But it needs some reinforcement to make it visually pop out as useful information. Clear labels of where portals go are already on the map, though, so it's not that the map is poor, just that color will make it more easily useful.
The plot is interesting, and its potential ultimate resolution(s) are also interesting. It's a good chance for adventurers to be adventurers, but also for smart players to find their own solution. There is even a well-done load-bearing monster in the adventure, so you have to be a bit careful just rampaging around if you don't like fleeing as the wizard's lair collapses behind you Hollywood style. It even has a nice setup for using several characters in a recurring fashion, if you so wish.
The magical treasures includes a very interesting magical sword. It's one of those weapons you will love to have as a player but your PC might regret having, much like the weapons of White Plume Mountain.
The art is also quite good - at worst interesting and useful, at best evocative and great as player handouts. "THIS happens to you!" kind of art. Several of the more difficult-to-easily describe or better seen than heard encounters have illustrations, which helps immensely.
The adventure also has a new spell (which takes a whole page, DCC-style) and a 1/2 page table and associated rules for dealing with a fight when the PCs are spectators. Several unique-to-Emirikol's-tower monsters also exist, which could be useful elsewhere or after the adventure is played.
How is it for GURPS?
It would probably work well for GURPS. The fights generally aren't against masses of fodder, which work better in DnD clones than in GURPS. Enough detail is given to assign out stats to everything you need, and even a cursory knowledge of DnD-based systems would let you turn the various monsters and the titular wizard into GURPS stats.
Overall: As much I wish the name wasn't Plot McGivaway, and my gut reaction to the cover art vs. my own imagery of the original piece, this is good stuff. It's tight, it's fun without being purely funhouse, and the PCs have real opportunities and real danger to face. And like the DCC line in general, it's atmospheric as can be.
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