I made Jeffro's Top 10 RPG Blogs of 2014 list.
The Top Gaming Blogs of 2014
I'm in some interesting company, for sure - all blogs I read (most of them), or have read (The Tao of D&D) in the past. Most of them I read every post that comes up, and some of them (especially Delta's D&D) I've spent way too much time combing through back pages reading old stuff I'd missed before I started blogging myself.
What makes me grin is that I write my stuff on this blog, primarily, because I want to write these things down somewhere. A good part of it is me talking to my future self at games* I like putting this stuff out there in case others find it helpful or useful. It's a mix of stuff I just wanted to set down on paper, modules I wanted to stick up for, and musings and posts I want to keep track of** so I don't have to comb forums and emails and hand-written notes to find them.
(Interesting, my first post is a pretty good explanation of what my blog has been for the past 3+ years. I've stayed on target.)
But for all of that, it's gratifying. With luck what I turn out this year will be perceived as being as useful, informative, and interesting to Jeffro and his blog readers as it was this year.
So thanks to Jeffro, his readers, and all of mine as well. Now go comb through that list and see what is useful for you, and your game, on those other blogs. It'll be well worth the time.
Now all we need is a badge like my Newbie Blogger Award!
* I look stuff up on my blog during game. How much is a 4-point spellstone? It's a click away.
** Like this one.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Review: The Basic Fantasy Field Guide
For a complete list of my reviews, click my reviews page.
Compiled by Chris Gonnerman
88 pages (84 with content, including the title page)
Available free in PDF here.
This book is a monster supplement for Basic Fantasy-Roleplaying (review). What you get here is basically 180+ monsters for the game. Some are new and unique, and others are either riffs off of monsters from AD&D, etc. and still more just stats for animals and generic monster types overlooked in the BFRPG core book. If you're either playing that game, or a B/X compatible rule set (Labyrinth Lord, actual B/X D&D, etc.) or are conversant in B/X D&D's rules, this can be useful to you.
There is plenty to love in here. Want normal animals? Done. Want mind flayers-types for you game? Done. More eye monsters? Done. Themed sets of monsters (like the Nazgorians, or faerie), complete with common traits? Done and done. That last bit is especially good - all of the faerie types seem to have the same special abilities, so it's very clear that they are of a type (or at least of a category.) That kind of unified definition of terms of art and categories of rules helps speed things up a lot in play, even if it means a few book referrals when you're writing such a book. Good stuff.
Demons and devils are here, too, as infernals. The conversions are well done. However the downside of a no-aligment game is that "infernals" - that is, devil and demons and whatnot - are all put together. So you get excellent conversions of both types, but the overlap between similar types becomes clear (imps and quasits) and the differences between, say, devil's attack immunities and demon's attack immunities, becomes a little more odd. It might have been useful to sort them into two different bunches, with an organized class of infernals with common traits (devils) and a disorganized class of wild infernals (demons), each with a distinct group name. Either that, or go the whole way and change them from the originals and unify the special abilities and weaknesses.
Some of the monsters are very cool. Others seem a little . . . "annoyed GM did it" instead of "mad wizard did it." Like the flying, fire-breathing owlbear variant, or the many-jokes-in-one giant shrieking tarantella spider. Others are very cool but have pretty unimpressive names. For example, the Cadaver is a nasty and interesting undead being with a name that doesn't evoke much except possible confusion. Are we fighting in a morgue? Heck, it's an undead with cleric abilities, make it "Death priest" or "Corpse Minister" or something. If I use it, expect to hear "Corpse Minister" come up in my game summaries.
Most of the monsters have a very good text description of what they look like. Some, not so much. This is kind-of forgivable with, say, the remorhaz, or ones that have a picture.
But others, it's just not clear. The remorhaz tells me the size, but not much else. If I didn't have another monster book to look in, I wouldn't know what it is or looks like . . . fine for me with my giant monster book collection, but it puts a moment of hesitation in recommending this book to a new gamer who doesn't come with built-in knowledge of what a remorhaz is or what an otyugh is shaped like. That I do means I don't even need the description given, so it's either too much or too little. Similarly, some monsters lack just a tiny bit of vital information. The giant mosquito is clearly big. But how big? 1d+1 can swarm you, so not too big - but it never says. I can make a guess, but like I often say, if I'm using someone else's material I don't want to guess what was meant.
Overall, though, it's very good material in a free electronic form or very cheap physical form. It's a good addition to any GM's bookshelf of monster books. Like all of the other BFRPG supplements, you get a lot more value than you pay for. Recommended.
Compiled by Chris Gonnerman
88 pages (84 with content, including the title page)
Available free in PDF here.
This book is a monster supplement for Basic Fantasy-Roleplaying (review). What you get here is basically 180+ monsters for the game. Some are new and unique, and others are either riffs off of monsters from AD&D, etc. and still more just stats for animals and generic monster types overlooked in the BFRPG core book. If you're either playing that game, or a B/X compatible rule set (Labyrinth Lord, actual B/X D&D, etc.) or are conversant in B/X D&D's rules, this can be useful to you.
There is plenty to love in here. Want normal animals? Done. Want mind flayers-types for you game? Done. More eye monsters? Done. Themed sets of monsters (like the Nazgorians, or faerie), complete with common traits? Done and done. That last bit is especially good - all of the faerie types seem to have the same special abilities, so it's very clear that they are of a type (or at least of a category.) That kind of unified definition of terms of art and categories of rules helps speed things up a lot in play, even if it means a few book referrals when you're writing such a book. Good stuff.
Demons and devils are here, too, as infernals. The conversions are well done. However the downside of a no-aligment game is that "infernals" - that is, devil and demons and whatnot - are all put together. So you get excellent conversions of both types, but the overlap between similar types becomes clear (imps and quasits) and the differences between, say, devil's attack immunities and demon's attack immunities, becomes a little more odd. It might have been useful to sort them into two different bunches, with an organized class of infernals with common traits (devils) and a disorganized class of wild infernals (demons), each with a distinct group name. Either that, or go the whole way and change them from the originals and unify the special abilities and weaknesses.
Some of the monsters are very cool. Others seem a little . . . "annoyed GM did it" instead of "mad wizard did it." Like the flying, fire-breathing owlbear variant, or the many-jokes-in-one giant shrieking tarantella spider. Others are very cool but have pretty unimpressive names. For example, the Cadaver is a nasty and interesting undead being with a name that doesn't evoke much except possible confusion. Are we fighting in a morgue? Heck, it's an undead with cleric abilities, make it "Death priest" or "Corpse Minister" or something. If I use it, expect to hear "Corpse Minister" come up in my game summaries.
Most of the monsters have a very good text description of what they look like. Some, not so much. This is kind-of forgivable with, say, the remorhaz, or ones that have a picture.
But others, it's just not clear. The remorhaz tells me the size, but not much else. If I didn't have another monster book to look in, I wouldn't know what it is or looks like . . . fine for me with my giant monster book collection, but it puts a moment of hesitation in recommending this book to a new gamer who doesn't come with built-in knowledge of what a remorhaz is or what an otyugh is shaped like. That I do means I don't even need the description given, so it's either too much or too little. Similarly, some monsters lack just a tiny bit of vital information. The giant mosquito is clearly big. But how big? 1d+1 can swarm you, so not too big - but it never says. I can make a guess, but like I often say, if I'm using someone else's material I don't want to guess what was meant.
Overall, though, it's very good material in a free electronic form or very cheap physical form. It's a good addition to any GM's bookshelf of monster books. Like all of the other BFRPG supplements, you get a lot more value than you pay for. Recommended.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Cold Day Painting
I had some extra time off today, thanks to getting a nasty cold. Concentrating on something helped, but it was hard to do anything really mentally productive. So I did some painting and let my hands just go. Here are the figures I worked on that I can show:
Those are:
- two Elizabethan swashbucklers from Wargames Foundry
- four skeleton archers and three spearmen (all Reaper Bones)
- a RE-11 Reptiliads-line Rogue War Turtle (RAFM)
- a 100 Kingdoms Wuxia Warrior on a flying base.
I also painted some other guys, but they aren't display-ready yet or I prefer to keep them under wraps until they debut in my game.
Why green for that swashbuckler? No idea. He was half-painted green when I pulled him out of my half-painted pile. So I just kept going.
I didn't pain my new WF orcs yet, because I need to prime them and I only have spray primer. Grey or black, grey or black, I can't decide yet. "Lucky" for me, I don't have to, because it'll be freezing and snowing or wet for a while yet.
Those are:
- two Elizabethan swashbucklers from Wargames Foundry
- four skeleton archers and three spearmen (all Reaper Bones)
- a RE-11 Reptiliads-line Rogue War Turtle (RAFM)
- a 100 Kingdoms Wuxia Warrior on a flying base.
I also painted some other guys, but they aren't display-ready yet or I prefer to keep them under wraps until they debut in my game.
Why green for that swashbuckler? No idea. He was half-painted green when I pulled him out of my half-painted pile. So I just kept going.
I didn't pain my new WF orcs yet, because I need to prime them and I only have spray primer. Grey or black, grey or black, I can't decide yet. "Lucky" for me, I don't have to, because it'll be freezing and snowing or wet for a while yet.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
DF Session 52, Felltower 43 - Cloaker's End
December 7th, 2014
Weather: Cold, sunny.
Characters: (approximate net point total)
Al Murik, dwarven cleric (258 points)
Dryst, halfling wizard (374 points)*
Father Keef, human initiate (125 points, NPC)
Red Raggi, human berserker (?? points, NPC)
Vryce, human knight (454 points)
Gort of the Shining Force, dwarf adventurer (unknown point total, NPC)
Antonios, Demitrios, Leonatios of Meepos, human spearmen (unknown point totals, NPCs)
Melchior the Malevolent, human necromancer (approximately 130 points, NPC)
* Joined late.
Still in town:
Asher Crest-Fallen, human holy warrior (250 points)
Bern Brambleberry, gnome artificer (265 points)
Mark Strawngmussel, human laborer (62 points, NPC)
Borriz, dwarven knight (308 points)
Chuck Morris, human martial artist (303 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (372 points)
Galoob Jah, goblin thief (256 points)
Honus Honusson, human barbarian (302 points)
We started as usual, in Stericksburg. The group gathered rumors, restocked, and otherwise made plans. Vryce made up for his terrible rumor-gathering last time with a record 7-rumor haul. A few were especially interesting - he heard the cone-hatted cultists had raided the orcs and came but battered but alive, that some people stole corpses from the pauper's cemetery and brought them up to Felltower, and that the orcs have grabbed prisoners from the slums north of the river. A couple other rumors said there is a way into the center of the world under Felltower, and that there is a "world ocean" that everything floats on and that Felltower has the way down to it.
Once they'd stocked up, the PCs gathered up some volunteers and headed out.
Knowing they had only Al as a good-eyed scout, they took their time and camped out for 30 minutes outside the dragon's cave mouth and watched the area. Nothing showed up, so they moved in. No more recent signs of the orcs were found, and they decided the orcs may have decided not to take over that section of tunnels especially in light of the blockades they saw last time.
They moved into the caves, and started to systematically try to tie off some sections of their map and find treasure and monsters they may have missed. It wasn't long before they came to one of the pairs of double doors. They decided to try this pair. Lacking servants, they had Melchior order his zombie - the big, hulking one they'd let him make out of the leader of the crazies - try the door. Bad move, it turned out. There was a zap noise and a flash of light, and the zombie was scorched and let out a howl and ran. It took off full speed, ignoring Melchior's frantic commands. Raggi stopped Melchior from chasing it into the twisty tunnels. They figured they'd find it later, perhaps, but didn't want to try and chase after it.
Beyond the doors was a corridor and a silver-studded door at the end. They closed the doors and moved out, not wanting to try the inner door.
They continued exploring, and found an area they'd bypassed several times. This time they headed in, and found a room strewn with bits of broken bones and skulls and occasional weaponry. There was also a blind cul-de-sac, and they started to advance on that. As they did, two many-armed round things with pink skin, bright red eyes, and nasty claws and mouth that split its torso in half came rolling out at them. As they closed, the Holy Continual Light spells the PCs were using for light began to wink out. Gort and Al both identified them as Devil Maws, and Al said they needed magical weapons to put them down. Reverend Al threw his throwing axe at the lead one, and it snatched it out of the air. Then they attacked in melee, spinning around and dealing multiple clawing attacks before closing to bite. Vryce was in good form, though, and chopped one clean through the moment it got near him. The next one got closer and hit him multiple times but he was able to back off and parry them all. Gort slashed it as Vryce backed clear, and even as Raggi ran up Vryce was able to cut it down.
Down a few light stones, and without time to replace them all, Vryce took one of the Meeposian brother's stones and Al made Raggi a new one. In the meantime, they searched - nothing special, only more skulls, more bones, and more broken gear. Everything was clearly broken as much as it could be, mostly like it was smashed against walls or snapped by strong claws. Demons, they decided, like to break stuff.
More exploration down previously unchecked tunnels found them in a square-ish cave with pointed corners. It smelled of ozone and sulfur, and an ape crouched in the corner. It seemed dazed, and responded a little sluggishly. Al threw his axe at it and hit - no demon, it seemed to just be another flesh-eating ape. Wounded, it charged, but Vryce cut it into multiple pieces.
Further exploration told them nothing else about the room, but they felt like the ape must have been summoned - it clearly didn't live here, there was no sign it was there long, and the sulfur and ozone was a further clue something had happened. Melchior confirmed there was magic used in this room, either strong enough or recent enough or often enough to trip his Magery-enhanced senses.
From there they explored more, connecting up more map areas. They eventually came to another pair of double doors (new, for sure) but left them alone after marking them down.
They then found "the demon-ape room" and fought a pair of phase serpents. It took some doing, but they managed to chop them up without getting hit in return.
From there, they explored through the gargoyle's lair but weren't bothered by them. Past there, they meet the "behir" (as they call the 12-legged wyrm) and spoke to it for a while. It was disappointed they didn't have food. They told it the apes it told them about were demons, and couldn't be eaten. It tried to get them to bring it more food, and without agreeing either to do so or refusing to do so they managed to back off and leave the thing alone.
They found another cube from from here, and marked it with a 6.
After that, they found the room where they'd fought the cloakers and "trogs". They walked in, and immediately something started to blubber and spit and chitter and gibber - and spat corrosive spittle at Vryce. There was a gibbering mouther on the ceiling. Vryce got nailed, and the spittle blew a hole clean through his armor and wounded him pretty solidly. With his helmet on, he couldn't pick it out on the ceiling. Al and Gort yelled its location to him, and Al threw his axe at the mouther (but it dodged it). It spat again, wounding Gort, even as it kept gibbering. Raggi and Vryce charged, Gort advanced, and Al moved to cover the flank while putting Strengthen Will on Vryce. Vryce moved up and the mouther attacked him, biting him many times. Again, though, Vryce was able to dodged back and parry away the five or six bites that landed on him. Raggi, though, just ran up and stopped cold, as the PCs heard and felt a low moaning just as the edge of the hearing.
A cloaker had moved out of a side passage to attack. Its moans had paralyzed Raggi. Gort yelled, "Cloak monster! I fought one, once, in a room much like this one."
In the meantime Vryce chopped the mouther and killed it outright in a single massive blow, causing it to explode. Vryce took no damage from the blast, Raggi a small amount, and Gort none. But the shrapnel (razor-sharp armor-piercing teeth, mostly) punched a hole in Vryce's leg armor and wounded Raggi more as well.
The cloaker tried its paralytic moan on Vryce, but despite a stunning 9-point margin of success on its roll, Vryce made his roll by 10 thanks to Al's spell and his mind shield headband. Melchior chucked a fireball at the cloaker as Vryce moved up, and hit it (with a 3!) and hurt it badly. As it tried to back off, Al boosted his own Will and Vryce attacked. He landed a solid set of blows and knocked the cloaker out of the air. Before it could recover, Vryce hit it again. Melchior hit it with another, smaller fireball, and then Vryce chopped it a few more times, just as Dryst showed up and Al removed the paralysis from Raggi.
They made sure the cloaker was dead (to Vryce, battle is over when the foe is down, but monster battles are over when he's sure it's really dead) and searched the room. Nothing - and no sign of the two other cloakers they saw.
From there they headed in the room the "trogs" had come from, back last time they were here. The room turned out to have three very large erupting slimes on the walls. Dryst knew a surprising amount about them (Naturalist roll of a 3) so the players knew they'd need to protect against ranged, melee, and poison. So they did, and used a mix of fireballs, a Flaming Weapon spell on Vryce's sword, and missile and poison protection magic to deal with them. They were mostly torched before they could do anything, but one got a glob of itself onto Vryce's leg. Dryst decided to "help" Vryce by whacking him with a 4d Flame Jet. He botched it (an 18 to hit) and his Vryce's foot and almost crippled it, and set Vryce on fire. Vryce dropped down to roll out the flames and Dryst moved the jet up his leg, scorching off the slime but also burning Vryce's leg even more.
The slimes were toasted, but Al needed to jump in and heal Vryce after Dryst's gallant "assistance."
With Dryst around, they had him use Seek Earth to try to find gold (didn't work) and silver (above, far enough to be in the orc territory, perhaps.) This would be a dry run, they figured, but they better get something out of it in terms of information.
So from there, the PCs explored more, finding the stairs up, the statue room, and a room full of broken stalactites and stalagmites and broken bits of stone (not piercers, though, they checked) and connections between their map ends. That meant, basically, they made a "circle" out of the map - going either way out of the entrance they use, they can come all the way back around to the entrance again.
Time was running low, so they headed out.
Notes:
- No profit, at all, but they did get some mapping done, find a couple of (new?) double doors, and kill off some potentially annoying monsters. They also discovered a "new" cube-shaped room, which in fact they'd found before but couldn't place on their map once they started coming in from the dragon's cave. Not a bad session.
- No profit mean less than the max XP, but they explored a lot and beat up some monsters, so I didn't dock them anything beyond "no profit."
- Vryce got MVP, after he and Al ruled out Dryst and then couldn't decide between them . . . so they rolled dice and Vryce got the high roll. Whatever, it's their decision.
- Poor Melchior is down a zombie and got nothing out of it. He wasn't pleased, but he took the risks and didn't complain about it. He needs another zombie. Unfortunately, the ape would have been pricey and Vryce cut it apart, and the other monsters were just unsuitable (and, again, diced into pieces.)
- They've decided there are at least 5, probably 6-7, and possibly as many as 9 doors into some central area.
- The devil maws are based on what I think the Chainmail abyssal maw minis I have should be in GURPS. Which is to say, nasty albeit fragile, like most summoned monsters are. Fun, though, and obviously there will be more of them. As I said to my players, in this game they will fight a) everything I have minis for, b) everything I have homemade counters for, and c) everything else. Doesn't narrow it down much, I'll admit that.
Not sure if we'll get another game in this year, but we will try. And I'm not sure yet where they'd go. It's winter in the area so going overland at the orcs will only get harder each session until Spring comes and warms it all up. We will see what they want to deal with next.
Weather: Cold, sunny.
Characters: (approximate net point total)
Al Murik, dwarven cleric (258 points)
Dryst, halfling wizard (374 points)*
Father Keef, human initiate (125 points, NPC)
Red Raggi, human berserker (?? points, NPC)
Vryce, human knight (454 points)
Gort of the Shining Force, dwarf adventurer (unknown point total, NPC)
Antonios, Demitrios, Leonatios of Meepos, human spearmen (unknown point totals, NPCs)
Melchior the Malevolent, human necromancer (approximately 130 points, NPC)
* Joined late.
Still in town:
Asher Crest-Fallen, human holy warrior (250 points)
Bern Brambleberry, gnome artificer (265 points)
Mark Strawngmussel, human laborer (62 points, NPC)
Borriz, dwarven knight (308 points)
Chuck Morris, human martial artist (303 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (372 points)
Galoob Jah, goblin thief (256 points)
Honus Honusson, human barbarian (302 points)
We started as usual, in Stericksburg. The group gathered rumors, restocked, and otherwise made plans. Vryce made up for his terrible rumor-gathering last time with a record 7-rumor haul. A few were especially interesting - he heard the cone-hatted cultists had raided the orcs and came but battered but alive, that some people stole corpses from the pauper's cemetery and brought them up to Felltower, and that the orcs have grabbed prisoners from the slums north of the river. A couple other rumors said there is a way into the center of the world under Felltower, and that there is a "world ocean" that everything floats on and that Felltower has the way down to it.
Once they'd stocked up, the PCs gathered up some volunteers and headed out.
Knowing they had only Al as a good-eyed scout, they took their time and camped out for 30 minutes outside the dragon's cave mouth and watched the area. Nothing showed up, so they moved in. No more recent signs of the orcs were found, and they decided the orcs may have decided not to take over that section of tunnels especially in light of the blockades they saw last time.
They moved into the caves, and started to systematically try to tie off some sections of their map and find treasure and monsters they may have missed. It wasn't long before they came to one of the pairs of double doors. They decided to try this pair. Lacking servants, they had Melchior order his zombie - the big, hulking one they'd let him make out of the leader of the crazies - try the door. Bad move, it turned out. There was a zap noise and a flash of light, and the zombie was scorched and let out a howl and ran. It took off full speed, ignoring Melchior's frantic commands. Raggi stopped Melchior from chasing it into the twisty tunnels. They figured they'd find it later, perhaps, but didn't want to try and chase after it.
Beyond the doors was a corridor and a silver-studded door at the end. They closed the doors and moved out, not wanting to try the inner door.
They continued exploring, and found an area they'd bypassed several times. This time they headed in, and found a room strewn with bits of broken bones and skulls and occasional weaponry. There was also a blind cul-de-sac, and they started to advance on that. As they did, two many-armed round things with pink skin, bright red eyes, and nasty claws and mouth that split its torso in half came rolling out at them. As they closed, the Holy Continual Light spells the PCs were using for light began to wink out. Gort and Al both identified them as Devil Maws, and Al said they needed magical weapons to put them down. Reverend Al threw his throwing axe at the lead one, and it snatched it out of the air. Then they attacked in melee, spinning around and dealing multiple clawing attacks before closing to bite. Vryce was in good form, though, and chopped one clean through the moment it got near him. The next one got closer and hit him multiple times but he was able to back off and parry them all. Gort slashed it as Vryce backed clear, and even as Raggi ran up Vryce was able to cut it down.
Down a few light stones, and without time to replace them all, Vryce took one of the Meeposian brother's stones and Al made Raggi a new one. In the meantime, they searched - nothing special, only more skulls, more bones, and more broken gear. Everything was clearly broken as much as it could be, mostly like it was smashed against walls or snapped by strong claws. Demons, they decided, like to break stuff.
More exploration down previously unchecked tunnels found them in a square-ish cave with pointed corners. It smelled of ozone and sulfur, and an ape crouched in the corner. It seemed dazed, and responded a little sluggishly. Al threw his axe at it and hit - no demon, it seemed to just be another flesh-eating ape. Wounded, it charged, but Vryce cut it into multiple pieces.
Further exploration told them nothing else about the room, but they felt like the ape must have been summoned - it clearly didn't live here, there was no sign it was there long, and the sulfur and ozone was a further clue something had happened. Melchior confirmed there was magic used in this room, either strong enough or recent enough or often enough to trip his Magery-enhanced senses.
From there they explored more, connecting up more map areas. They eventually came to another pair of double doors (new, for sure) but left them alone after marking them down.
They then found "the demon-ape room" and fought a pair of phase serpents. It took some doing, but they managed to chop them up without getting hit in return.
From there, they explored through the gargoyle's lair but weren't bothered by them. Past there, they meet the "behir" (as they call the 12-legged wyrm) and spoke to it for a while. It was disappointed they didn't have food. They told it the apes it told them about were demons, and couldn't be eaten. It tried to get them to bring it more food, and without agreeing either to do so or refusing to do so they managed to back off and leave the thing alone.
They found another cube from from here, and marked it with a 6.
After that, they found the room where they'd fought the cloakers and "trogs". They walked in, and immediately something started to blubber and spit and chitter and gibber - and spat corrosive spittle at Vryce. There was a gibbering mouther on the ceiling. Vryce got nailed, and the spittle blew a hole clean through his armor and wounded him pretty solidly. With his helmet on, he couldn't pick it out on the ceiling. Al and Gort yelled its location to him, and Al threw his axe at the mouther (but it dodged it). It spat again, wounding Gort, even as it kept gibbering. Raggi and Vryce charged, Gort advanced, and Al moved to cover the flank while putting Strengthen Will on Vryce. Vryce moved up and the mouther attacked him, biting him many times. Again, though, Vryce was able to dodged back and parry away the five or six bites that landed on him. Raggi, though, just ran up and stopped cold, as the PCs heard and felt a low moaning just as the edge of the hearing.
A cloaker had moved out of a side passage to attack. Its moans had paralyzed Raggi. Gort yelled, "Cloak monster! I fought one, once, in a room much like this one."
In the meantime Vryce chopped the mouther and killed it outright in a single massive blow, causing it to explode. Vryce took no damage from the blast, Raggi a small amount, and Gort none. But the shrapnel (razor-sharp armor-piercing teeth, mostly) punched a hole in Vryce's leg armor and wounded Raggi more as well.
The cloaker tried its paralytic moan on Vryce, but despite a stunning 9-point margin of success on its roll, Vryce made his roll by 10 thanks to Al's spell and his mind shield headband. Melchior chucked a fireball at the cloaker as Vryce moved up, and hit it (with a 3!) and hurt it badly. As it tried to back off, Al boosted his own Will and Vryce attacked. He landed a solid set of blows and knocked the cloaker out of the air. Before it could recover, Vryce hit it again. Melchior hit it with another, smaller fireball, and then Vryce chopped it a few more times, just as Dryst showed up and Al removed the paralysis from Raggi.
They made sure the cloaker was dead (to Vryce, battle is over when the foe is down, but monster battles are over when he's sure it's really dead) and searched the room. Nothing - and no sign of the two other cloakers they saw.
From there they headed in the room the "trogs" had come from, back last time they were here. The room turned out to have three very large erupting slimes on the walls. Dryst knew a surprising amount about them (Naturalist roll of a 3) so the players knew they'd need to protect against ranged, melee, and poison. So they did, and used a mix of fireballs, a Flaming Weapon spell on Vryce's sword, and missile and poison protection magic to deal with them. They were mostly torched before they could do anything, but one got a glob of itself onto Vryce's leg. Dryst decided to "help" Vryce by whacking him with a 4d Flame Jet. He botched it (an 18 to hit) and his Vryce's foot and almost crippled it, and set Vryce on fire. Vryce dropped down to roll out the flames and Dryst moved the jet up his leg, scorching off the slime but also burning Vryce's leg even more.
The slimes were toasted, but Al needed to jump in and heal Vryce after Dryst's gallant "assistance."
With Dryst around, they had him use Seek Earth to try to find gold (didn't work) and silver (above, far enough to be in the orc territory, perhaps.) This would be a dry run, they figured, but they better get something out of it in terms of information.
So from there, the PCs explored more, finding the stairs up, the statue room, and a room full of broken stalactites and stalagmites and broken bits of stone (not piercers, though, they checked) and connections between their map ends. That meant, basically, they made a "circle" out of the map - going either way out of the entrance they use, they can come all the way back around to the entrance again.
Time was running low, so they headed out.
Notes:
- No profit, at all, but they did get some mapping done, find a couple of (new?) double doors, and kill off some potentially annoying monsters. They also discovered a "new" cube-shaped room, which in fact they'd found before but couldn't place on their map once they started coming in from the dragon's cave. Not a bad session.
- No profit mean less than the max XP, but they explored a lot and beat up some monsters, so I didn't dock them anything beyond "no profit."
- Vryce got MVP, after he and Al ruled out Dryst and then couldn't decide between them . . . so they rolled dice and Vryce got the high roll. Whatever, it's their decision.
- Poor Melchior is down a zombie and got nothing out of it. He wasn't pleased, but he took the risks and didn't complain about it. He needs another zombie. Unfortunately, the ape would have been pricey and Vryce cut it apart, and the other monsters were just unsuitable (and, again, diced into pieces.)
- They've decided there are at least 5, probably 6-7, and possibly as many as 9 doors into some central area.
- The devil maws are based on what I think the Chainmail abyssal maw minis I have should be in GURPS. Which is to say, nasty albeit fragile, like most summoned monsters are. Fun, though, and obviously there will be more of them. As I said to my players, in this game they will fight a) everything I have minis for, b) everything I have homemade counters for, and c) everything else. Doesn't narrow it down much, I'll admit that.
Not sure if we'll get another game in this year, but we will try. And I'm not sure yet where they'd go. It's winter in the area so going overland at the orcs will only get harder each session until Spring comes and warms it all up. We will see what they want to deal with next.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Wargames Factory Orcs: First 3 Figures
Over the course of the day I assembled three figures from my new Wargames Factory orcs box.
My goal with these was:
- make three usable figures for my game.
- only use parts from one sprue, just so I have an idea of the limitations on my assortment.
- try to make them look good, but not at the cost of being in very breakable poses.
That axe guy will get a shield from my bits box pretty soon. I wanted a picture with just the Wargames Factory stuff, and the crescent-shaped shield is . . . yeah, I don't like those. I can't find a way to position them on the arm that looks safe and useful.
As you can see, I'm basing them on square 20mm bases, because I have a metric ton of them and no use for them. Giving them a slightly smaller footprint will make it easier to deploy them in bunches on a battlemat. The white is glue - Elmer's glue-all. I turn the bases upside down, glue to minis down to the slotta ridge (at least, for these guys) and then fill in the base with glue. It'll dry and settle, giving a solid connecting for the mini to the base. Then I'll fill it with basing materials and cement that down, too, with watery glue. Having a flat base makes it easier to deal with levitated figures in a game.
So far . . . I'm okay with these guys. Not really excited, though.
- the no-socket flat mesh connections means fairly weak connections. I see breakage in the future for these guys. For the next batch, I'll go back to pinning them. I already scored the surfaces to get a rough surface to glue, which experience has shown me will work better. And I'm using the right kind of plastic glue. Still, they aren't very strong connections.
- I see the "reversible" nature of the torsos, and on a couple it doesn't look great. This is a feature I could do without.
- The arm positions are a bit odd, although it might be my choice of arms.
- The weapons are really attractive, and the right size. I think I might need to clip the morningstars and make them drape down like they aren't being actively swung, just to keep them intact during travel to and from game.
- The arm-to-shoulder connections and neck-to-shoulder connections are especially odd. I can fix that in the future with some filing, but I was hoping for an out-of-the-box smooth connection.
Overall, these guys seem like a good addition to my orc pool, but maybe a bit odd looking and/or fragile. I see them getting deployed when I don't have a metal figure that fits the bill. I'm going to take the opportunity to give them the rarer weapons in my collection - and fit them out with leftover GW weapons to do so. In the future I'll just clip all of the legs, torsos, heads, etc. into one box and make some more interesting mixes, too.
Not a bad investment for the verisimilitude of my game and the minis I deploy, overall, but it could have been better. So far, let's call it a 3 out of 5 for quality, 4 out of 5 for value.
My goal with these was:
- make three usable figures for my game.
- only use parts from one sprue, just so I have an idea of the limitations on my assortment.
- try to make them look good, but not at the cost of being in very breakable poses.
That axe guy will get a shield from my bits box pretty soon. I wanted a picture with just the Wargames Factory stuff, and the crescent-shaped shield is . . . yeah, I don't like those. I can't find a way to position them on the arm that looks safe and useful.
As you can see, I'm basing them on square 20mm bases, because I have a metric ton of them and no use for them. Giving them a slightly smaller footprint will make it easier to deploy them in bunches on a battlemat. The white is glue - Elmer's glue-all. I turn the bases upside down, glue to minis down to the slotta ridge (at least, for these guys) and then fill in the base with glue. It'll dry and settle, giving a solid connecting for the mini to the base. Then I'll fill it with basing materials and cement that down, too, with watery glue. Having a flat base makes it easier to deal with levitated figures in a game.
So far . . . I'm okay with these guys. Not really excited, though.
- the no-socket flat mesh connections means fairly weak connections. I see breakage in the future for these guys. For the next batch, I'll go back to pinning them. I already scored the surfaces to get a rough surface to glue, which experience has shown me will work better. And I'm using the right kind of plastic glue. Still, they aren't very strong connections.
- I see the "reversible" nature of the torsos, and on a couple it doesn't look great. This is a feature I could do without.
- The arm positions are a bit odd, although it might be my choice of arms.
- The weapons are really attractive, and the right size. I think I might need to clip the morningstars and make them drape down like they aren't being actively swung, just to keep them intact during travel to and from game.
- The arm-to-shoulder connections and neck-to-shoulder connections are especially odd. I can fix that in the future with some filing, but I was hoping for an out-of-the-box smooth connection.
Overall, these guys seem like a good addition to my orc pool, but maybe a bit odd looking and/or fragile. I see them getting deployed when I don't have a metal figure that fits the bill. I'm going to take the opportunity to give them the rarer weapons in my collection - and fit them out with leftover GW weapons to do so. In the future I'll just clip all of the legs, torsos, heads, etc. into one box and make some more interesting mixes, too.
Not a bad investment for the verisimilitude of my game and the minis I deploy, overall, but it could have been better. So far, let's call it a 3 out of 5 for quality, 4 out of 5 for value.
Wargames Factory Orcs: First Impressions
I got these guys yesterday. On sale over the Thanksgiving holiday, with shipping, it was 50% off for 24 build-it-yourself orcs. Not bad.
The pros:
- lots of heads! 7 different heads I can use, with different features, so I can make them all GW-y or LOTR-y or something different.
- arms to hold weapons, not arms holding weapons. This means I have two polearms, a flail, a bow, four swords, and two axes per sprue, x8, minus the ones I use. So I have a lot of weapons I could use for other minis or as battlefield litter.
- Only two shields, though, per sprue, and one is a moon-shaped one it would be suicide to carry. So I'll need to dig into my bits box for shields.
The cons:
- 8 sprues, all alike. Three legs, three torsos. The box says "reversible torsos" but I can't see what they mean - the "front" looks clear to me on them. Maybe that'll change as I assemble them.
- No bases. Okay, That's fine, I have a lot of GW bases I can use. But bases would have been nice. They have an integral base, much like old Airfix 1/72 scale soldiers do, but my experience is bases like that tip a lot in play.
- Very open hand grips on the hands, so the hands don't look like they'll close around weapons. A bit more "C" and less "U" would have been nice.
Overall, I feel like I got a good deal here, and I am happy to expand my orc collection by 24. That I can easily add, say, 8 archers or some more flail users or - combined with bits from my various GW sets - maces, hammers, etc. is a good thing. I think I can get these guys assembled pretty quickly, or at least most of them (I might leave a few in pieces in case I need a custom mini later). Then I'll quickly paint them up to my tabletop standard and deploy them.
I'm glad I got these, so far, and I'll post more pictures as they come together. It's not like there is any surprise value in my DF game to orcs, or that my players would be worried. They already know I've got piles of orcs. This just adds some variety to my orcs!
The pros:
- lots of heads! 7 different heads I can use, with different features, so I can make them all GW-y or LOTR-y or something different.
- arms to hold weapons, not arms holding weapons. This means I have two polearms, a flail, a bow, four swords, and two axes per sprue, x8, minus the ones I use. So I have a lot of weapons I could use for other minis or as battlefield litter.
- Only two shields, though, per sprue, and one is a moon-shaped one it would be suicide to carry. So I'll need to dig into my bits box for shields.
The cons:
- 8 sprues, all alike. Three legs, three torsos. The box says "reversible torsos" but I can't see what they mean - the "front" looks clear to me on them. Maybe that'll change as I assemble them.
- No bases. Okay, That's fine, I have a lot of GW bases I can use. But bases would have been nice. They have an integral base, much like old Airfix 1/72 scale soldiers do, but my experience is bases like that tip a lot in play.
- Very open hand grips on the hands, so the hands don't look like they'll close around weapons. A bit more "C" and less "U" would have been nice.
Overall, I feel like I got a good deal here, and I am happy to expand my orc collection by 24. That I can easily add, say, 8 archers or some more flail users or - combined with bits from my various GW sets - maces, hammers, etc. is a good thing. I think I can get these guys assembled pretty quickly, or at least most of them (I might leave a few in pieces in case I need a custom mini later). Then I'll quickly paint them up to my tabletop standard and deploy them.
I'm glad I got these, so far, and I'll post more pictures as they come together. It's not like there is any surprise value in my DF game to orcs, or that my players would be worried. They already know I've got piles of orcs. This just adds some variety to my orcs!
Friday, December 5, 2014
Review: A1-4 Scourge of the Slave Lords
This wraps up my review of the "Slaver's Series" - A1-4. For the individual adventures that this supermodule is adapted from, look here:
A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity
A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade
A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords
A4 In The Dungeons of the Slave Lords
There is also a special edition hardback out containing A1 - A4 plus a new adventure. I do not have that, but if ever get my hands on a copy I'll be sure to review that, too.
Speaking of reviews, if you like them, there are all linked on my reviews page.
A1-4 Scourge of the Slave Lords is one of the "supermodules" put together out of earlier adventures. This one assembles the slaver's series into a single volume.
The adventure opens with the assumption the PCs have completed T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil, and are now heroes. They're invited to a party by a noble woman, who gives them a desperate mission of mercy to go on. Naturally, as soon as they leave the manse it gets sacks by slavers and everyone carried off.
This is not a good adventure intro. Now, the PCs have two choices - complete the mission (and get punished for doing so, because this isn't a "Good" action) or give up and chase after the slavers. Instead of a mission with real meat on it - PCs getting hired by nobles and sent on their way to try and take out the slavers at minimum cost to their employers, they're guilted into the mission by the raid.
The railroading just starts there. After that, the road is strewn with clues pointing to Highport and the slave-pits of the undercity. Instead of letting the PCs make their way there, the module puts obstacles in their path in the form of slaver agents. If the PCs lose, they're tossed onto a ship and made to be slaves for a while before they are aided in an escape that puts them in Highport. If the PCs win those fights, they're automatically overwhelmed in a later fight and tossed onto a ship and made to be slaves for a while, etc.
Whenever the PCs either fail, or when the original modules would have aid from the (few) agents of the hiring lords, the PCs get bailed out by a conniving slavelord looking to overturn one of the other slavelords.
That addition actually makes a lot of sense, but the actual mechanisms of the plan (planted materials, aid to the PCs) tend to be a little obvious and overcomplicated. Basically, every chance the adventure has to give the players a lot of choices and an active mission with a plausible explanation of minimal support* the PCs get forced down a specific path. It's disappointing.
This is really too bad, because the connective tissue put before A1 and between A1-2, and 2-3 is good stuff. It makes the Drachensgrab Hills come alive, gives the Pomarj a feel of a dangerous area full of uneasy and ill-cooperating humanoids, and lets them use violence, bribery, or their wits to deal with any number of situations. One section - the Broken Rudder, an inn with lots of clues about the road ahead - are excellent set-pieces that invite good roleplayer and/or good tactics. It's just that whenever there is a chance to let the PCs find their own path the adventure chooses a ham-handed railroad.
The book also has a lot of little editing issues. These include errors, missing stats, assumptions that mix "the players have their own characters" and "the players are playing the tournament characters" that show where text was lifted without review from the originals.
The art is interesting. It's a mix of illustrations from the original modules and many new ones. The new ones seem like illustrations done over pictures, which a mix of photo-realism and clearly drawn elements. Overall, I'm not a fan of most of it. Even more oddly the picture of the slave lords changes the sex of several of the members (Lamonsten and Neralas become women) and the half-orc looks . . . just odd.
Overall, this isn't one I can recommend. For all the good, useful, and fun stuff in here, it's not one you would really want to run for a party. It is too much railroading for no good purpose, especially the set-up slave raid and the even-worse automatic capture to get the players into Highport.
War Stories
For all my complaints, you'd expect I would have never run this.
But I did.
I ran it with AD&D for an Unearthed Arcana-era group. They never made it as far as Highport before the game broke up, although I didn't enslave them. I was actually kind of surprised to be reminded the module calls for that - I don't know if I was planning to use that or not. I didn't use it, though.
I later ran bits of this with my 3rd edition GURPS group back in the mid-90s. I moved the lot to the Forgotten Realms, put a slave ring outpost in the sewers under Waterdeep, and let the PCs at it. They took the slavers out and found clues leading to The Broken Rudder. They went there and had an epic fight, with several PC deaths and lots of NPC casualties. From there they found the clues to Highport and headed there. Once there, they went into A1 and never came back out. Well, some did, as slaves, and the campaign changes radically as half of the players dropped out.
At that point, I knew this was a bad railroad, so I wasn't planning on any forced slaver or deus ex machina assistance from NPCs. Had the PCs made it out of A1, they'd have had a chance to deal with A2 or A3 (they had enough clues in A1 to skip ahead) and go from there.
Like I said above, the expansion material is uniformly good. It's just how it's put together as a railroad is bad. If I were to run this, I'd get rid of Dame Gold (unless I just wanted to give the PCs an additional, personal reason to go), get rid of the alternate quest, and save A4 for the results of losing on the way.
It's not a bad pickup for the extra material - especially the Drachensgrab details - but the originals are better.
* These coastal nobles are also paying protection to the Slave Lords, so it makes sense they'd like a cheap and deniable solution like sending some expendable adventurers. Win if they succeed, nothing to lose if they fail.
A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity
A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade
A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords
A4 In The Dungeons of the Slave Lords
There is also a special edition hardback out containing A1 - A4 plus a new adventure. I do not have that, but if ever get my hands on a copy I'll be sure to review that, too.
Speaking of reviews, if you like them, there are all linked on my reviews page.
A1-4 Scourge of the Slave Lords is one of the "supermodules" put together out of earlier adventures. This one assembles the slaver's series into a single volume.
The adventure opens with the assumption the PCs have completed T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil, and are now heroes. They're invited to a party by a noble woman, who gives them a desperate mission of mercy to go on. Naturally, as soon as they leave the manse it gets sacks by slavers and everyone carried off.
This is not a good adventure intro. Now, the PCs have two choices - complete the mission (and get punished for doing so, because this isn't a "Good" action) or give up and chase after the slavers. Instead of a mission with real meat on it - PCs getting hired by nobles and sent on their way to try and take out the slavers at minimum cost to their employers, they're guilted into the mission by the raid.
The railroading just starts there. After that, the road is strewn with clues pointing to Highport and the slave-pits of the undercity. Instead of letting the PCs make their way there, the module puts obstacles in their path in the form of slaver agents. If the PCs lose, they're tossed onto a ship and made to be slaves for a while before they are aided in an escape that puts them in Highport. If the PCs win those fights, they're automatically overwhelmed in a later fight and tossed onto a ship and made to be slaves for a while, etc.
Whenever the PCs either fail, or when the original modules would have aid from the (few) agents of the hiring lords, the PCs get bailed out by a conniving slavelord looking to overturn one of the other slavelords.
That addition actually makes a lot of sense, but the actual mechanisms of the plan (planted materials, aid to the PCs) tend to be a little obvious and overcomplicated. Basically, every chance the adventure has to give the players a lot of choices and an active mission with a plausible explanation of minimal support* the PCs get forced down a specific path. It's disappointing.
This is really too bad, because the connective tissue put before A1 and between A1-2, and 2-3 is good stuff. It makes the Drachensgrab Hills come alive, gives the Pomarj a feel of a dangerous area full of uneasy and ill-cooperating humanoids, and lets them use violence, bribery, or their wits to deal with any number of situations. One section - the Broken Rudder, an inn with lots of clues about the road ahead - are excellent set-pieces that invite good roleplayer and/or good tactics. It's just that whenever there is a chance to let the PCs find their own path the adventure chooses a ham-handed railroad.
The book also has a lot of little editing issues. These include errors, missing stats, assumptions that mix "the players have their own characters" and "the players are playing the tournament characters" that show where text was lifted without review from the originals.
The art is interesting. It's a mix of illustrations from the original modules and many new ones. The new ones seem like illustrations done over pictures, which a mix of photo-realism and clearly drawn elements. Overall, I'm not a fan of most of it. Even more oddly the picture of the slave lords changes the sex of several of the members (Lamonsten and Neralas become women) and the half-orc looks . . . just odd.
Overall, this isn't one I can recommend. For all the good, useful, and fun stuff in here, it's not one you would really want to run for a party. It is too much railroading for no good purpose, especially the set-up slave raid and the even-worse automatic capture to get the players into Highport.
War Stories
For all my complaints, you'd expect I would have never run this.
But I did.
I ran it with AD&D for an Unearthed Arcana-era group. They never made it as far as Highport before the game broke up, although I didn't enslave them. I was actually kind of surprised to be reminded the module calls for that - I don't know if I was planning to use that or not. I didn't use it, though.
I later ran bits of this with my 3rd edition GURPS group back in the mid-90s. I moved the lot to the Forgotten Realms, put a slave ring outpost in the sewers under Waterdeep, and let the PCs at it. They took the slavers out and found clues leading to The Broken Rudder. They went there and had an epic fight, with several PC deaths and lots of NPC casualties. From there they found the clues to Highport and headed there. Once there, they went into A1 and never came back out. Well, some did, as slaves, and the campaign changes radically as half of the players dropped out.
At that point, I knew this was a bad railroad, so I wasn't planning on any forced slaver or deus ex machina assistance from NPCs. Had the PCs made it out of A1, they'd have had a chance to deal with A2 or A3 (they had enough clues in A1 to skip ahead) and go from there.
Like I said above, the expansion material is uniformly good. It's just how it's put together as a railroad is bad. If I were to run this, I'd get rid of Dame Gold (unless I just wanted to give the PCs an additional, personal reason to go), get rid of the alternate quest, and save A4 for the results of losing on the way.
It's not a bad pickup for the extra material - especially the Drachensgrab details - but the originals are better.
* These coastal nobles are also paying protection to the Slave Lords, so it makes sense they'd like a cheap and deniable solution like sending some expendable adventurers. Win if they succeed, nothing to lose if they fail.
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