Sunday, December 15, 2019

A Little Bit of Worldbuilding

Here you go, folks, a little bit of backstory fluff and some explanations after all is said and done. Enjoy!



    The two prisoners were brought before the Lord, bound at the hands, and thrust to their knees before him. He looked down at the pair, the rough hewn edges of the ancient desk offsetting the understated elegance of his office. The prisoners, for their part, merely looked back at the aged figure before them.
    “Karzent and Wisendon,” the Lord began. “Fomenting rebellion amongst your fellow slaves again?” Many would have quailed before this gaze, but these two, frequent visitors to this august presence, did not. “It has become apparent that the standard punishments are no impediment to the two of you, so I believe something different may be in order. We may even be able to get some use out of you.” The Lord smiled at this last.
    The prisoners exchanged a look. Nothing that pleased the Lord boded well for them and their fellows.

    The small band crouched at the lip of the ridge overlooking the valley. They had started on this adventure with ten, but now there were only eight, as two of their number now shared a common grave with the fell beast that had ended them. It had been distasteful to most of the band, but those in charge had decided that mere slaves deserved no better.
    Karzent lowered the spyglass and handed it over to Wisendon. “I don’t see anything living, but some of the markings are fresh.” Wisendon looked through the glass, but not having the tracking skills of his partner just nodded in agreement. “I’ll go tell their Highnesses.” Wisendon snorted, but kept looking through the glass.
    Karzent scrambled down the backslope, to where the horses and pack animals waited, along with Karzent’s minders. Despite her comment, the two minders were not royalty, but they were pure bloods, sent to mind their half breed slaves and make sure of their completion of mission. The slaves had not slipped blades into their backs, despite many opportunities, as the two did have their uses, and the mission was grim enough to require all the help they could get their hands on.
    “We are there,” Karzent announced.
    “And? Speak up, slave.”
    “There’s something there, the signs are clear.” Karzent was used to being addressed as such, and had long stopped reacting to it. “Not sure how many, but it does not look like more than two or three.”
    “Well, let us go see.” They deigned to dismount and climb the hill. Karzent would have demanded they keep low, approach the top below the brow and but peek over the top of it, but she was more than sure that whatever resided below had either already detected the band, or had no need of forewarning.
    The castle was ancient, a legend and a nightmare. Built into the side of a now inactive volcano by the tyrants that once ruled the entire land, its current resident or residents were purported to have cast them down, long ago when the flow of lava had stopped and the fields of fire had died to ember and then to ash. Even though it had been generations, the area was still a blight in the heart of the land, for all who traveled through it were never seen again. All expeditions to find the missing never returned themselves. Eventually all of the surrounding city states learned to avoid the area entirely, counting the extra travel time spent going around a small price to pay.
    Built to massive, nay gigantic proportions, the defensive works of the keep dominated the landscape. The lush greenery feeding off of the plain of volacanic residue would have overwhelmed and hidden works built by the smaller races, but here the towering giants of the forest just served to show how massive the walls and towers truly were. Even surrounded by the undisturbed vegetation of generations, it dominated the landscape.
    “Should we wait until night?” asked Wisendon. They all looked to Karzent, her years of experience tracking and hunting in the wild making her a natural leader of the band.
    “No point,” she answered immediately. “Whatever is down there already knows we’re here.” She turned down the hill towards the horses. “Or they don’t care.”

    In the end, it was nothing more than luck that had saved them. The tyrant at the heart of the fortress had let the party come deep into his lair and played with them for most of a day, all the while killing them one at a time. Only when Karzent and Wisendon were left did he stop the games, and confront them directly. The dark giant, his skin covered in runes of power, was ancient beyond measure. The last of his tribe, they had defeated the former masters of the keep and enslaved them. They had lost control of the once great kingdom the previous masters had, but they cared not. Their slaves had served them as long as they could, but their new masters, more powerful than they had even imagined, ground their entire tribe to dust, and then themselves had succumbed to the vagaries of time. Until there was just one left.
    He had gloated as he chased them, telling them of the vast expanse of history he and his tribe had been witness to. How insignificant the half-breeds were, how only because he had nothing to occupy his time and had no one else to speak to in a long while was he deigning to speak with such lower beings. One does not hold conversations with rats, one merely kills them, do they not? Karzent’s arrows and blade had bounced off the steel-like hide. Wisendon’s best magics slid off of the giant like so much water. The rest of the party, slave and master alike, their efforts had been similarly futile. He had laughed, time and again, at their impotence, and continued to hound them in and around buildings built at a scale almost beyond their comprehension.
    In the end, age and luck, bad luck, had done the tyrant in. Karzent had managed to trip the tyrant and it had fallen against an aging wall, and its protective spells, weakened by time, had reacted with the monster’s own runes, bringing enough weight down to crush the tyrant. The last of the party, they had not survived without wounds of their own. Only by searching the body of the fallen giant and drinking deeply of several healing draughts they had found did they manage to survive. They both had lost parts of themselves, but they still lived and huddled in the still ruins to gather themselves.
    “We won,” said Wisendon, his remaining eye closed against the pain. “But for what? So our pure blood masters can expand their control and grind us further under their heels?”
    “Yes, Wis, that’s exactly why I came here, to lose half my leg and watch you hover near death just so that goblin’s dung heap of a Lord can clamp down on trade with the south even more,” Karzent said. They were tucked into a corner of a long cold hearth, many times the size of the shacks they and their fellow slaves enjoyed back home. A small fire crackled before them, the wood hacked off of a chair that had towered above them both. “Though I have to admit, watching that monster squish those two uppity bastards like so many mice under his sandal, that was almost worth all of this.” They were quiet for a little while. “What do you suggest we do, Wis? We barely made it here with ten of us, and everyone had all of their legs and hands.”
    “Don’t forget eyes,” said Wisendon. “The hand was bad enough, but at least I don’t appear to need it to manipulate magic.”
    “I’m sorry, Wis, I am,” said Karzent, and sat silently for a long, miserable while. “You know, we could just build a home here. If we didn’t tell anyone all the giants are dead, who’d come looking for us here? We could settle down, stop the constant moving, raise a family…”
    “Karz, I’ve told you, while our people live under the lash…”
    “...of pure-blood hatred and oppression, you do not have the time nor the interest in any type of relationship,” Karzent quoted at Wisendon, having heard the sentiment far too many times. “I know, but I’m on the old side of middle-aged, Wis, and a girl won’t wait for…”
    “Wait,” he said, “what did you say about building a home here?”
    “We could build a house here. Only we know the giants are all dead, and since everyone avoids the area out of fear, we’d get at least a couple of years alone. Just you and me and...” She stopped and looked at him intently. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Wis?”
    “I think you’re right,” he said, his eye open and staring intently at the ceiling of the hearth, many feet above him. “I think we could build a home here.”

    The journey back had been harrowing, but they made it, and more importantly, without running into any of their masters or their minions. They slipped into the slave slums and word spread quickly through all of the camps, for fear of their masters catching word from one of their many spies. The word was such a shock to the community that several such spies revealed themselves in trying to run to their masters, a boon to the slaves as it allowed them to eliminate those leaks and gain more time. The slower, more careful spies were too cautious, and by the time the slaves made their move, it was too late.
    The slaves revolted, along with many of their former guards. Even in a land of slave and master, many of the so-called masters were treated not much better than the slaves they guarded. They escaped into the night, half of the land on fire and in chaos, Karzent and her fellow trackers obscuring the trail and misleading the pursuers in many different directions. Tens of thousands of slaves, from the old to the newborn, all vanished into the wilderness.
    They could have left years ago, generations ago, but they had nowhere to go to. Bastard half breeds of two proud races, unwanted by one and enslaved by the other, they had tried going to the other races in the surrounding lands, but beyond weapons and equipment, supplied more to twist the nose of their masters than out of a sense to help them with their plight, no one was willing to open up their own lands to these unwanted children. Now, with an entire fortress, the most recent owner dead at the hands of their own with no one else the wiser, they had that somewhere to go, somewhere to call their own. And took it they did.
    The fortress, built to the scale of giants three times the size of its new occupants, had been crafted by masters of stonework and magic, protective energies woven into the near seamless stonework to make it as indestructible as anything else worked by mere mortals. As such, the new inhabitants could not alter the structure, they had not the skill nor the equipment to rework the bones of the fortress, bring it down and build it back to suit their size. So they left the stone as it was, and built everything else to their scale. Hallways became two story dorms and apartment blocks. Kitchen ovens became smithies and forges. Extra steps added onto every staircase made them accessible, while the unused portions of the stairs were used for market stalls. The mighty forest that had grown up in the nutrient rich volcanic ash was quickly cleared, first to provide lumber for all of the projects, and second to provide planting area to grow crops. Used to the hard labor under the lash of their former masters, the people worked even harder to build and grow what was now theirs.

    The delegation from the Lords Under the Mountain entered into the grand hall of the new nation. The hall had been built into the old inhabitant’s own great hall, but with so much extra space, much of the upper areas of it and the sides of the hall were being walled off and made into offices and apartments. The delegation was met by the council of the new city state and quickly escorted into the feast hall for a welcoming meal. The grizzled head of the delegation’s guard excused himself from the meal, and with two of his guards left the hall for one particular, newly-built apartment overlooking the hall. He knocked and stood with his hands tucked into the belt under his prodigious gut.
    “Yes?” asked the face behind the door.
    “I would like to talk with the Lady Karzent and the Lord Wisendon, if they are not indisposed,” the grizzled veteran said pleasantly.
    “I’m sorry, they don’t live…” he tried, before the man before him snorted and gently, but inexorably, moved him and the door out of the way and walked into the cozy domicile. The man attempted to protest but stopped when a voice from the next room stopped him.
    “Let them in, Lenet.” Lenet bowed the grizzled veteran in, while he motioned for his own men to stand in the hall outside.
    “Stay here, boys, I’m sure if they wished me harm, you couldn’t stop them anyway,” he smiled at his men and motioned for Lenet to accompany them. “You too, kind sir, I hold no harm in my heart for your master nor your mistress, and I assure you they will have no trouble from me, as I don’t wish to perish anymore than you do.” Lenet bowed at the grizzled man’s sincerity, and left. When Lenet had secured the door behind them, he walked into the next room to find a very pregnant Karzent reclined, with her foot and jewel-bedecked wooden leg propped up.
    “Lady Karzent, I presume?”
    “I’m not a Lady of anything, in this nation or the next,” she said, her eyes peeking out from under a damp cloth. “The council runs things, we did our part, igniting the revolution and bringing our people here, and they honor us by letting us work for our new country.”
    “Nor am I a Lord,” said Wisendon, coming down the staircase, “but you are, aren’t you? Not some mere guard from the Under Mountain, are you?” Wisendon stopped behind his wife and began to massage her shoulders.
    “You have me there,” he said, setting his bulk down gently upon a plain, but comfortable chair. “May I? The wife and I have ten of our own, adopted more than a few, and have more grandchildren and great-grandchildren than I care to think about, and even starting to get some great-great-grandchildren.” He began to massage her remaining foot and ankle, his massive callused fingers gentle on the swollen appendage. “But you are correct, I am no mere guard. I am Hlerzod.”
    “Hlerzod? One of the Five Lords Under the Mountain?”
    “Aye, that I am,” he continued to massage, even though both Wisendon and Karzent had stopped and stared with intent. “Let the delegations talk and look pretty to each other, I wanted to come out here, see this new nation for myself.”
    “But, your Lordship…” began Wisendon.
    “Please, if you both are neither Lord nor Lady, then here, in this time, I am not Lord anything either,” he smiled, continued to knead away. “We Under the Mountain, we may live in darkness, surrounded by those who hate us, inwardly focused on our mine works and projects, but we hear things even still. You are bastard children unwanted by both of your parent races, except to be slaves to your former masters. Your leaving has crippled one of the largest and oldest countries, upset trade, and nearly started three separate wars. The whole western half of the continent is in an uproar thanks to your little revolution, which is the only reason no one has shown up to see exactly how impenetrable this ancient fortress really is.”
    “We just wanted to be our own people, have our own place,” Wisendon said. “It’s been almost ten generations since any ‘slaves’ were born due to infidelity between the races. My parents, Karzent’s parents, almost every parent of the half-children in this place were half-breeds themself. We aren’t bastards, merely Master Hlerzod, we are a new race, a new people that have bred true. We are not mules, unable to reproduce, we are a people!” Wisendon’s face was suffused now, the fervor that fired the entire revolution shining through.
    “It matters not whether or not you are a race, not-a-Lord Wisendon,” Hlerzod said, “that is not the question. No, the question at the heart of the matter, is whether or not you are a country and can remain a country.” He stood, slapping at his vast belly. “Can the other nations trust you, can they count on you, to keep and hold any treaties with you a generation from now? Two generations? Three generations? Three years? Three months?” He paced around the room, studying the items the pair had gathered over the years. “It’s not that we, the other countries around you, that we care not for your plight, but we have our own problems and issues and enemies, and the most any of us can do is sit back and watch.” He turned to the pair. “Well, most of the countries in the area can only watch. We Under the Mountain can possibly do more than just watch, but you can’t expect us to sacrifice our own country, own safety and stability, just to prop yours up. We can provide instructors and weapons to build up your army and defenses, markets to trade your goods for, and I think, most importantly, someone to recognize your legitimacy, confirm to the whole continent that you are indeed a nation in your own right.” He sat again and looked at the two younger leaders.
    “I don’t know which promises any of us can give you, sir,” Karzent said, “all we can do is try.”
    “Well, you have a better start than I did,” Hlerzod said. “What? That surprises you, that I struggled and had a start? How do you think I became one of,” and here his voice swelled, “The Five Lords Under the Mountain?” He smiled at that. “No, I certainly was not born into it, and while it seems a long time to you and yours, it has not been all that long when me and mine moved and settled a new mine away from our home shafts.”
    “What now? Where do we go from here?” Wisendon asked after a few moments of silence.
    “I go back to acting like a guard, for form’s sake, and once my delegation returns home, the Five Lords will decide to extend you the copper nugget of friendship.” Hlerzod stood, creaking and groaning, and slapped his ample belly. “We may not be able to keep you safe, but for nothing else, tweaking your former masters’ collective noses is worth the help we can give. And,” he continued, “we need every friend we can get. It doesn’t hurt that this will open trade with you and your very skillful craftsmen, but will also open up another trade route and byway to us. Until you two killed the tyrant in this keep, we had despaired of ever using the old lava tubes on this side of the peak.”
    “Pretty quiet trip up into our deepest basement, was it?” The delegation had indeed come up into the lowest levels of the keep, as the original builders had tapped directly into a lava flow underneath their keep, possibly to use the lava in their workings, or to commune directly with fire elementals who had lived in the volcano. As both the volcano and the original builders were long dead, the current occupants did not know for sure, but the lava tubes underneath the dead volcano proved to lead almost directly to the caverns of the Under Mountain.
    “Pretty quiet, aye,” Hlerzod said, rubbing his face, “and it will get quieter still the more we travel it and clean it up. There are a few chasms that we will need to fortify to keep the very deep ones from using, especially now that they don’t have the tyrant of the keep to fear.”
    “That’s what my trackers told me,” said Karzent. “Do you really think we have a chance?”
    “My dear lady,” Hlerzod said, smiling, “if any of us have a chance of giving our children, and their children, and their children, a better world than the one we were born into, it is you, here.” He paused, thoughtful for a moment. “By the by, what are you going to call it, this new country of yours?”
    “They want to call it Wiskaria, for Wis and me, but…”
    “Wiskaria, hmmm. Yes, I think you should let them give you that honor. It may just serve as a warning to not attempt to enslave your people ever again.”



That little bit of fiction I wrote back in the days before 5th Edition came out, and 4th Edition was not of an interest to me in the least. As a result, Pathfinder v1 (just Pathfinder at the time) was the most interesting RPG to me at the time, being pretty much D&D 3.75e and as you know me, I am not satisfied with just playing the campaign world as it is written. Because of my constant need to tinker tinker tinker, I was pondering on my own version of PF, and started by pondering a half-elven nation. Or a half-orc. Or tiefling/aasimar. I prefer to think of the participants in the above story as half-elves, their elven masters, uninterested human forebears, and the mountain dwarves that have agreed to help them out. However, you may have noticed that I left everything as vague as possible that you could adapt it to whatever mix of races you want.

Yes, I specifically wrote that using the PF-specific rune giant (Bestiary 2, page 130, if you're curious), and used the lore that they enslaved other giants as the kernel of the idea behind the above story - what if an ancient, but now pretty much now dead, empire of rune giants sat athwart a major trade route? And what if this was right next to a nation of elves/humans/orcs/whatever that used their half-breed offspring as slaves? Also, I like the idea of someone vaguely human sized occupying a structure built for something that is roughly 40 feet tall and weighs 12 and a half tons - what would you do with the place? The corridors alone are 40 feet wide and at least 50 feet tall, if not 60 to 80. You could build multi-story structures INSIDE the hallways, much less the rooms themselves. I was going to take a castle map and blow up every measurement 8 times, then go through and map out an entire city inside the fortress alone. Never did get much further with the world or the city-inside-a-giant's-castle than the idea and the little bit of fiction above, so I thought I'd share it. 

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Eberron Musings

The latest 5th Edition world setting book, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, has been released by Wizards of the Coast (or WotC), and I like many others am pretty excited by it. You should find this interesting, as you may know that I prefer creating my own worlds to run D&D in, but here I am interested in a published setting. Do not mistake me, I do find the published world settings as interesting, just not the entire settings, only the parts I like to steal for my own worlds. Eberron is different, though, and it is because of my shared history with the setting. As you may or may not know, Eberron is the youngest of the official D&D settings (excepting those brought over from other IPs, like Ravnica from Magic the Gathering), having been created in the early 2000s after WotC purchased D&D from TSR and put out 3rd Edition D&D. WotC had gotten all of the various world settings with their purchase of D&D, but decided they needed a campaign setting of their own and had a competition (the Fantasy Setting Search) to see what us the fans could come up with. Roughly 12,000 of us D&D nerds submitted to the competition, and yes, I was one of them.

Let us get this out of the way right now - my entry sucked, it was way too bland, boring, and generic. No, while I did find my submission, I am not sharing it. I do have a bit of the world my group was creating and using at that time, and it is not as bad as my Fantasy Search Setting, though much smaller than an entire world as it only covers one small continent/large island, may have to resurrect it and share it here. Or use it in my current world. I have no delusions on that original entry, seeing what did win the competition at the time, that I had even smidgen of a chance of winning, and was definitely not as good in my world building as Keith Baker was at the time. Or maybe even now, but I am good enough my players keep coming back for more. Anyway, as a result of competing in the Fantasy Setting Search, I still feel a connection to the eventual winner. As you have already guessed, Eberron won the competition, though it came into the final with two other settings, one of them by Rich Burlew of The Order of the Stick fame, so I think it was a hard fought final round and Keith Baker still came out on top with Eberron. That is part of what still interests me to this day about the setting - the addition of arcanepunk (which I have talked about recently) plus the fact that the main political entities had just come out of a major war and the next war simmers always in the background, ready to flare up again.

Having said all of the above, and while being perfectly willing to run Eberron games (should I italicize "Eberron" when I'm not talking about the book, but talking about the world itself? I'm going to not italicize it for now and see how I like it) as laid out in the campaign setting (no, as I am typing this, I have not read completely through Rising from the Last War, but I am working on it and do remember quite a bit from previous books) with my usual minor modifications - look, there are some classes and races that just do not make sense to me, narratively, and I do not allow them in my games, at least not unaltered - I have been thinking, since they announced Rising from the Last War, how I would adjust Eberron to better suit me. I know, I know, why cannot I just leave well enough alone and run the world as they have it set out in the setting book? As you know or may have guessed, I am a difficult, old, gaming bastard and like to modify things to suit my tastes. Plus, I saw some pictures online, specifically a couple of maps, that I found rather intriguing and I have been plain itching to use them somehow for a campaign setting. Specifically about two years ago, I saw these maps:


And:


Neat, right? Those two have been rattling around in my brain, just begging me to set up a campaign setting based on them. Obviously, something with flying mounts or airships is going to be needed just to get around, and it hit me earlier this year when WotC announced Rising from the Last War - what if the Mourning not only turned Cyre into the Mournland, what if the world split into the different layers? That setting already has airships and halflings riding flying dinosaurs, Eberron is most of the way to a good fit for a map that looks like the above.

As a responsible gaming blogger who does not simply jump online and type out whatever rant strikes my fancy without at least some forethought (I'll just pause here for the laughter to die down), I did my due diligence and searched to see if I could find the originator of the pics. I had first seen them in a Google Plus group dedicated to fantasy maps, back when G+ was still a thing, and I immediately saved them as being "interesting". No links to the originator, just some random fellow fantasy enthusiast sharing an interesting find, so I had little to go on. However, my Google Fu is strong, and I found not only the originator, but also the comic he wrote and drew set in this very world in the pictures. The comic, by the way, is known as Skyheart by Jake Parker, and while I unfortunately missed the Kickstarter for the deadtree edition and he is completely sold out of the extras, he is selling the first chapter in pieces via .PDF from his website. It is what I would consider cute, more young adult than adult, definite inspirations from anime (the anime Last Exile sprang immediately to mind), with an anthropomorphic bent. Does this change my plans for turning Eberron into something that looks more like Airth, as it is called in Skyheart? No, not at all. I am not copying that setting, I am plagiarizing (plagiarism is the highest form of flattery) the map idea, but the rest of the setting - the steampunk airships alongside the arcanepunk weapons of the bad guys, the anthropomorphic races - I am leaving alone. They do not fit my idea of Eberron with floating continents, and besides, Mr Parker is doing them justice without my help. I think though that I will borrow the winged whales, but that interest started, at least for me, from an old comic book entitled The Chronicles of Corum #6:

Michael Moorcock's Elric Saga makes for great D&D fodder.

Yep, that is a winged shark you see on the cover, and ever since reading that comic back in the '90s (the comic came out in '87 but I didn't run into it until the mid '90s) I have wanted to put in one of my D&D settings an ocean or sea that had disappeared through magical means and the remaining animals - fish and aquatic mammals - have been altered to have wings and be able to breath air, though they seem to want to remain in the air where the salt water used to be. I would definitely add those into my version of Eberron, which I am calling Airberron, because I am just chock full of originality.

Now that I have Eberron: Rising from the Last War in my hot, little hands, I will be writing more on Airberron in the near future. I am excited because I think the base setting, Eberron, is unlike anything else out there, at least when it comes to D&D settings, and setting it to a map full of floating continents for myself sets it even further apart. Stay tuned, loyal Truncheons & Flagons readers, I will be breaking out the Campaign Cartographer I got from the Bundle of Holding oh so many months ago to use in my current campaign setting (and never have), rewrite some history, and change up some of the other settings.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Gamemasters, Please Kill Your Characters

Ah, I love it. About once a month, when I see a devilishly good idea, like throwing something as nasty as Warduke from the halcyon days of D&D's history directly into my players' path, someone has got to tell me how awful my ideas are. It is like they feel my month is not fulfilled unless I hear a rousing chorus of "you're destroying your players' fun!" Let me repeat this, again - if your players are not worried about whether their characters are going to live or not, the game is boring. Without tension, without challenge, you may as well narrate to your party what they did and how they did it, and then roll right into rolling for treasure and doling out XP. Why bother rolling dice or trying to figure the best tactical plan to overcome a foe if your victory is assured? Why even play the game at all, wouldn't it be more efficient to merely read The Lord of the Rings trilogy to them with their characters' names in place of Frodo and the rest?

I see the glazed look in your eye. Yes, yes, I have trod upon these boards many a time, worked a veritable rut in this subject I have gone over it so frequently and often, but here we are again. Yes, I like to find those monsters that annoy my characters. It was not my find, but part of the adventure I was running recently, to throw a night hag at the party, and they have a nasty ability that denies one party member the benefits of a long rest, plus knocks down their max HP until they receive some major healing most parties don't normally have immediate access to. And the only way to stop it from happening is to kill the hag or chase her off the plane you are on. It is quite nasty, and the players, while frustrated at the time, enjoyed the encounter and still talk about her. Now, I didn't pile her and enough of her sisters to deny a long rest to the whole party, plus other big nasties they wouldn't be able to overcome, just one at a time that presented a different challenge from the standard "see bad guys, roll bunch of dice, bad guys die", rinse, repeat, ad nauseum. That is what I am trying to convey to you, worrying your players is what you want.

The Wardkue thing that started this whole rant. I mentioned I liked throwing challenges at my players where it is so tough that I don't even bother starting up the big nasty at all, just put in my notes "if the characters fight this, they die". Warduke, for those of you who did not grow up in the 80s, was this awesome evil character who was famous for showing up in the D&D cartoon. He was a badass fighter who didn't fear anyone. I would totally throw him against my party, and picture him, at least in 5e terms, as something of a high teens/low twenties CR. But I would not stat him up, because as overwhelming a fighter that he is, the party would be TPK'ed if they fought him, or they would get lucky and kill him. Neither of those outcomes is what you want from that NPC/monster, so don't do it. No, he is not there to fight the party, he is there to intimidate them and cause them to work around him, get him to go somewhere else either by sweet talking him, paying him, or taunting him into being led away via a chase. But he is also not THE big bad, he works for the big bad, and is just a roadblock of an encounter set between the party and the big bad that the party cannot solve by fighting it. Puzzles and traps do the exact same thing, minus the intimidation factor, but still makes the party worried and stressed, plus they have to do something other than roll a bunch of dice. Plus, because he is not the big bad, the party can feel satisfied once they "defeat" him and he gets to show back up at a later date because he was not killed, which is win-win: I get a repeatable character and because he gets even scarier as the PCs level, they stay scared of him. Will this encounter be the one where he snaps and kills us all? We got him to go away last time by bribing him/pointing out the squirrel (SQUIRREL!!) outside/jingling our keys, will that work this time or will we have to come up with something new? Why does he giggle and say "stop tickling me!" when we hit him with our swords?!

Come on, my fellow DMs, don't be afraid to at least threaten to kill off your PCs (just the characters, mind you, you don't want to face the trial for killing a real human being in our world), it makes the game more interesting.

Friday, November 8, 2019

Steampunk or Arcanepunk

I confuse my players on a regular basis. I do not mean to, but I know what I like and do not like in my medieval fantasy RPGs, and you will have to come up with something better than "it's tradition" or "we did it this way in last edition" or my personal favorite, "you're ruining your players' agency!" to get me to allow things into my game that I don't approve of. So I don't like bards, because I believe that if you can make magic by singing, why can't I make magic by painting? Or carpentry? Or lighting my farts on fire? So I am weary of gnomes and half-elves/-orcs, due to the former not having a strong enough racial identity, and the latter just beg the question where are all the other half races at, because I wanna see what a half-halfling, half-elf looks like. So I don't like dragonborn because we had half-dragon as a perfectly viable template back in 3e (and honestly, in a game called Dungeons and Dragons, having a mostly dragon character race means too many people play them... think of it like Star Wars, everyone plays Jedi, and now Jedi are boring and not special), and warlocks are still just creepy if you aren't a part of their religion. Don't get me started on monks, I'll let GM Word of the Week tell you about that one. And last but not least, while I love me some arcanepunk, I really don't like steampunk in my games.

First off, let us explain some of our terminology here. When I say "steampunk", to most people that is a mix of our own world's and history's technology from about the Victorian Age (or is it Era, I can never remember), but instead of changing over time to petroleum distillates and electricity, taken even further down the steam engine rabbit hole where everything - vehicles, communication, computing devices, and even military technology - is powered by steam. "Arcanepunk", on the other hand, to most people means that technology develops just as we know it up to a certain point - basic metal working and forming, simple machines like horse drawn carts, and military technology no higher than hand spanned crossbows and swing arm trebuchet type catapults - and anything beyond that has a magic element tied into it, as "magic" replaces "physics" and "chemistry". Printing presses become powered by imps and Mage Hand spells, photographs are taken by devils bound into a box, air ships float through the air with air elementals tied to the ship, trains ride rails of magical lightning, and so on. Everyone tracking? Good. This is where it gets tricky.

The "steampunk" that bothers me in D&D, or at least what I think of as steampunk when I run into it, is science from our world that goes too far past the basic metallurgy of decent weapons and armor, and basic physical machines like catapults and crossbows. Anything considered to be chemical, really, like black powder and explosives. I know, that's not actually steampunk, but that's the best term I can find in common use. Why does it bother me? Yes, I realize that Pathfinder has a class that makes their own black powder analogue, and even 5e has an option for it in the DMG, but to me, that is just too anachronistic to the setting. I realize how odd that sounds about a fantasy RPG setting, trust me I do, but trying to talk about firearms in a D&D world just does not sit well in my brain. Think about it - why would you waste time researching the right mixture of sulphur, charcoal, and saltpeter, when your local wizard/sorcerer can cast Magic Missile all day long, and Fireball just to add flavor? Ditto with explosives. Why go through all the trials and tribulations of refining your glass recipe and the mathematics of light refraction when True Seeing and Eagle Eye spells so readily available? Why develop electricity and long range communication when Sending is so much cheaper and easier to do? There are a hundred more examples of magic already replacing what we consider science in the core rulebooks, which is pretty much why they exist in the game, so i won't cover them here. It just does not make sense to me, which is why I don't like them and won't allow them into any game I am running.

Which is all why I like arcanepunk and not whatever it actually is, but what I've been calling steampunk for years (and in the rest of this article). The Eberron setting all the way back in the halcyon days of 3e/3.5 has interested me for a long time, not just the fact that it embraces the long-standing human tradition of warfare, but also for the arcanepunk elements strewn throughout it. If you want to have guns and explosives in your RPG, go for a different setting. Your stock medieval fantasy setting just doesn't fit well with more advanced physics and chemistry. Go arcanepunk instead, otherwise pick a new setting. 

Sunday, November 3, 2019

Best Laid Plans of Yada Yada

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just cannot keep a gaming group together. Like Dell Paxton said in That Thing You Do, "Some bands last for just one album and even then that is one album too many." It seems like my group has taken this to heart since its inception - we added a member shortly after forming, lost another member to have him replaced, lost the replacement but only after gaining a new member and then getting back one of the original crew, and most recently losing not one, but two (possibly three) other members. If you wondered why I have not been as active on the blog these past few months, this has been a major portion of it.

The most frustrating part of all of this shuffle is that my own plans for the group have gone pretty much out the window. Yes, I can add in even more players back into the group, and set them up with equivalent level characters, continue and finish out the campaign plans I have in place. But it's awkward as one, possibly two, of the original players are out of the group and I already feel uncomfortable finishing without them. Especially as the one that is definitely out, that player's character's name is part of the party's name. Yeah, he may come back, but it's going to be a long time and I just don't want to let someone else play that character in the meantime.

What is a Dungeon Master to do? Continuing with That Thing You Do and Mr Dell Paxton, speaking of bands and their propensity to disintegrate with no warning, "Ain't no way to keep a band together. Bands come and go. You got to keep on playin', no matter with who." The plan at this point is to get the remaining party members together, find out who is actually still in and up for a game, maybe send out some invites to a few former coworkers who are up for the nerdy pursuits, and determine where we go from here. I do have to admit that I have built in a logical reason for anyone joining the group in my current campaign, so we may stick with that (the current party belongs to a Musketeers-like organization, so they can be "assigned" in or out of the chapter house at my whim), but as there are so many good, long 5e official campaigns already printed we may go with one of those. Or the new Eberron core book is coming out soon. Or Cyberpunk Red just had a "lite" version put out, and everyone expects the main, full versions to come out in the very near future. Or I have been (slowly) building up a Savage Worlds worldbook based on SM Stirling's fantastic Emberverse series of books, I could finish that off and we could run it. Or I backed the Planet Mercenary RPG, based on Howard Tayler's excellent webcomic Schlock Mercenary, that is full of sci-fi and mercenary goodness, been dying to try that one. Or... the list goes on. Think I have a post about how pursuing hobbies in a modern, 1st world country knocking around, need to finish that up.

We have options, that much is clear. Figuring out what we are going to do is going to be the issue. And who is going to be playing with us, that of course is the bigger question. Stay tuned for more thrilling adventures!

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Politics at the Gaming Table, Part Vier

Oh, thank God (or Science or Yahweh or Her or, or, or whoever you believe in - May You Be Touched By His Noodly Appendage), it appears Paizo found enough backbone to tone down the far left, MeToo!, extreme political correctness bullshit before they published Pathfinder v2. For a (not so) quick history, parts one, two, and three of this rant. Surprise, surprise, I've talked a lot about this. It is almost as if I get so tired of hearing this crap from all parts of the gaming companies and the folks making it that I have started unfollowing them on social media and skip to the next podcast episode when they start in on yet another Biggest Victim of the Week boohoo cry session. But I digress.

When Paizo was testing the waters for their new rules for the next edition of Pathfinder - that is another rant I am not getting into right now, did we really need another edition considering how much content they made for the first one? (sorry, digressing again) - one of the things that caught my attention was, well, you can read that rant in the first post of this series I linked earlier. Now that version 2 is finally out, I could not help myself, and looked to see if they still had a section about how gaming is for everyone and the social contract and so forth. They do... but it's a lot more times down and commanding. I am still not 100% happy with Paizo, but let us just say this is far better than what they had in the playtest. Enough blathering, let me share what they put in the Core Rulebook for Pathfinder v2. (another aside, I am glad they are distancing themselves just the tiniest bit from their D&D roots by calling this "version 2" instead of "2nd edition", that would get too confusing, too quickly) (nope, check that, Paizo is calling this "2nd edition" and the fans are calling it "v2" because we want to see the separation while they do not... le sigh)


Gaming Is for All
Whether you are the GM or a player, participating in a tabletop roleplaying game includes a social contract: everyone has gathered together to have fun telling a story. For many, roleplaying is a way to escape the troubles of everyday life. Be mindful of everyone at the table and what they want out of the game, so that everyone can have fun. When a group gathers for the first time, they should talk about what they hope to experience at the table, as well as any topics they want to avoid. Everyone should understand that elements might come up that make some players feel uncomfortable or even unwelcome, and everyone should agree to respect those boundaries during play. That way, everyone can enjoy the game together. 

Pathfinder is a game for everyone, regardless of their age, gender, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identities and life experiences. It is the responsibility of all of the players, not just the GM, to make sure the table is fun and welcoming to all.


Again, we see a "social contract" that they can't provide just hint at, but at least we don't see "safe space" rear its ugly head. But honestly, overall, I am far less offended by this rant than I am by the one in the Playtest. Hell, I am less offended by this than by my own version you see in the last post of this series. However, once again, it begs the question, why do we need this in a role-playing game rule book? I understand the very sensitive nature of modern American society... wait, scratch that, I DON'T understand it, but I realize it is here and trying to change us all. Have we become so afraid of having our feelings hurt that we can't talk like rational adults about things that may happen in a made up story? 

One of the things that has come up with this tolerance movement is the expectation that just because we have to be tolerant of everyone and every lifestyle out there, we have to include someone from every walk of life out there. Just added a new PC to the group? Are they a minority the group doesn't have yet, be it gender, sexuality, race, or religion, because if you don't have one of everything, how can you show how tolerant you are? Don't you know we don't tolerate intolerance around here, right? Personally, I don't care what gender you are, or your sexuality, race, or religion, the only thing I care about is can you complete the mission? And since what we are talking about playing a game with our friends, if any of the above that makes you special (but still equal, always equal, no matter what our differences!) is distracting enough to keep the table from having fun, the tolerance you demand is creating mission failure for the group. Ah well, what do I know? I do know that I am glad Paizo toned down their diatribe for the published book, but still not completely satisfied with them for not cutting it completely. At the end of it all, I'll take what I can get and call it good.

Saturday, September 7, 2019

The Skippy List, D&D Style

If you served in the US Army in the late 1990s or early 2000s, you probably know what I mean when I say "The Skippy List". For everyone else, let me introduce you to a cultural phenomenon that is very familiar to us idiots brave souls who served the United States in the military. First off, if you have never seen The Skippy List, go read it right now, and then come back. You may be wondering, am I Skippy? No, I served after he did, never met him in person, though I did run into some folks who served with Skippy (or at least served in similar positions Skippy did as a psyops Soldier) during my one deployment over seas back in the mid-2000s. You should also go read his about page, he explains who he is and where the list comes from much better than I can. And if you want a fun little game about killing off your totally-making-a-parody-of-Star-Trek redshirts while protecting your opponents' redshirts from themselves, you should check out the game he made called, strangely enough, Redshirts. If you can find it, as the Kickstarter for the original game and expansion (or was it just the expansion? it may have just been the expansion, as it was very early days for KS at the time) were successful, but the game did not survive too much longer past it due to some rule issues. The art is great (by David Reddick, creator of the Legend of Bill comic, which I like for obvious reasons, plus it was good) and the humor was fantastic, but the game was a solid meh. Can't win them all.

What does all of this have to do with Dungeons and Dragons, you are asking? The Skippy List was so popular back in the early days of the internet (well, okay, if we're in the later days of the internet, this would have been the middle days, but at least the early to mid 2000s), many folks on the internet made their own parody lists, and one of my favorites was "what if Skippy were a dwarf in a D&D-ish medieval fantasy world?" I was reminded of this list by my own party in our last game, and shen I went to find that list... the page did not exist anymore. Fortunately, the Internet Wayback Machine is a thing, and they had an archive of the list. This gentleperson had many of these parody lists, and while many of them are quite funny, I think the Dwarf Skippy list is the best. Here is the (and I am assuming this person's gender here, because they never say) gentleman's archive of his homepage, in case you want to check out his other work, but here is the Dwarf Skippy List archive page. Enjoy!


Things Skippy the Dwarf Fighter has learned or been told while dungeon delving, or is no longer allowed to do while delving.Dwarf Snorri Snorrison son of Snorrison’s son ('Skippy' to friends and enemies alike), has been a party member of the “Lost Empire” campaign for several years. His adventuring behavior has been corrected from time to time, for not being appropriate for a dungeon delve. The list is almost entirely composed of The Word he was given as a response to an action or event he was involved with.
  1. After the “Dark Vessel” adventure, everyone who ever loved me is dead. I’m not allowed to brag about that anymore.
  2. Aftershave is not to be applied with a putty knife.
  3. Although I do think I could do a better job and I would like to lead, these questions usually turn out not to be sincere.
  4. Anything I say after ‘it’s worth noting’ is usually not interesting to anyone else in the party.
  5. Basilisks cannot be hypnotized by winning a staring contest with them.
  6. Battle axes are not the sniper’s weapon of choice so I should get off the roof and engage the enemy.
  7. Battle axes don’t have a stun setting.
  8. Clerics can move in all directions, not just diagonally.
  9. Clerics that are dragged to a tavern for a night of celebratory quaffing should be returned to their devotions within 4 to 6 working days (or within two High Holy Days, whichever comes first).
  10. Dark Gods require virgin sacrifices, incantations do not require virgin spell components. It is wrong to ask the mage how he knows his frog’s eyes come from a virgin frog.
  11. Draft horses are not missile weapons.
  12. Dragon breath is not funny.
  13. Dragons do not dispense their hoard in lotteries, and there’s no way I ‘may already be a winner.’
  14. ’Dropping Trou” is not a fighter class ‘special attack.’
  15. Elf ears do not require sharpening.
  16. For all that he’s an illiterate man, the seneschal can read me like a book.
  17. For customs inspectors, “Declare” has a specific meaning that does not involve reciting my heritage back to the ‘Time Of Troubles.’
  18. Get down off the altar.
  19. Gifts from The Gods do not come with an exchange coupon for Harrod’s Merchantile and Chandler shop.
  20. God-calls are not protected as Free Speech.
  21. He did not ‘start it.’
  22. He is not kidding.
  23. He is not on “my side of the dungeon.”
  24. He really means it this time.
  25. Holy Relics of Fantastic Power do not have a shelf-life date.
  26. ’Hungry’ is not an alignment.
  27. Neither is ‘stupid,’ but in my case, they’re willing to make an exception.
  28. I am not allowed to make explosives, even if I do have all the supplies.
  29. I am not allowed to render any member of my party to obtain those supplies.
  30. I am not the default love interest and should stay away from any non-dwarf royalty we encounter.
  31. I am not the evil twin, but only because I don’t have a twin.
  32. I am not the Grey Poupon distributor for the kingdom, and I cannot ladle it onto the illusionist and offer him to dragons as a free sample.
  33. I am not the Grey Poupon distributor for the kingdom, and I should stop giving dragons a discount on the stuff.
  34. I am not the rightful heir to the Burger King, I’m just telling a whopper.
  35. I cannot improve my defenses by writing “-10 Armor Class” on my shirt.
  36. I don’t get to keep chaotic monsters that followed me home unless I intend to skin them.
  37. I don’t know what I was thinking when I said the longbowman was ‘out of ammo’ after six shots.
  38. I don’t want you to turn this adventure around.
  39. I should stop screaming about ‘the power of grayskull’ and take cover from the crossbows.
  40. I should stop writing ‘Bite Me’ in orcish on my party leader’s shield.
  41. Must stop writing ANYTHING in orcish on party members’ shields.
  42. “I was bored” is not an excuse for anything done with a loaded ballista.
  43. I was not placed in charge of the prisoners so that I could slaughter them and ‘the paladin wouldn’t get his hands dirty.’
  44. I was not seduced by the Demon Queen of Pormax, and the scars from that adventure are not ‘love tattoos.’
  45. If I sing “I’m A Lumberjack and I’m Okay” just one more time, they’re gonna make me eat my axe.
  46. If it looked like a duck, quacked like a duck, and tasted like a duck, but had a collar indicating it’s sacred to a local goddess, we should skip dessert and start running.
  47. In joining a group of adventurers, the party leader does actually become the boss of me, and I should respond accordingly in combat.
  48. In my case, ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is an offense against the gods.
  49. In my case, an aphorism indicating ‘that’s when you find out who your friends really are’ is just noise in the wind.
  50. Inquisitors have no sense of humor. They also don’t like this fact pointed out to them.
  51. It is wrong to greet Inquisitors by shouting ‘stick to the story!’ to other party members.
  52. It is not motivational to talk about adventure parties that died in situations “just like this.”
  53. It is so my fault.
  54. It is wrong to enhance my codpiece for dramatic effect.
  55. It is wrong to make the evil sorceress cry by mentioning her biological clock, ticking away.
  56. The cleric feels it is wrong to behead someone who’s crying. Noted.
  57. It is wrong to splice centerfolds into the mage’s grimoires.
  58. It is wrong to tell dying heroes they’ve been downsized and their valuables seized.
  59. It is wrong to use exploding shuriken to gather firewood when there’s a Druid in the party.
  60. It is wrong to write ‘First come, first serve’ on the wagon when we’re hired to protect the tax collector.
  61. It would not have worked if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
  62. It’s a Monarchy based on Oral Law. There is no Free Speech.
  63. It’s never too early to tell the others where I packed the healing potions.
  64. Labels on the vials of potions are not the sign of a weak mind, they’re really a good idea.
  65. Labels on the vials of potions should be popular names in a common tongue, not pictionary graphics.
  66. Evidently I cannot draw a clear ‘healer’ to save my life.
  67. It’s not important who’s right and who’s wrong as long ast the party leader is right.
  68. Jousting is the sport of knights on horseback, not dwarves on dining tables.
  69. Kilroy was NOT here and he’d better stop putting graffiti in the castle.
  70. Knowing how to burp fire and NEEDING to burp fire are two different things.
  71. Knowing three swear words in thieves cant does not make me a dual class fighter/thief.
  72. Leave the animation of the dead to professionals.
  73. Leave the noble art of chiurgery to the professionals.
  74. Magic wands do not experience ‘recoil’ so I don’t need to brace the short-skirted sorceress every time she casts a spell.
  75. Membership in the waterferryman’s guild does not allow me to charge passengers for space on a lifeboat.
  76. Mirrored sun glasses are not period ware.
  77. Missile weapons and alcohol don't mix.
  78. Most characters that claim to be invincible don’t understand what the word means.
  79. Must never use the word ‘wanker’ within 50 feet of a cleric attempting to invoke or influence her deity.
  80. Must not delay the party’s attack on the fire dragon while I ‘get the s’mores ready.’
  81. Must not hire an soapmaker to make a half-ton cake of soap, attach axles, and drive it to the king’s castle as a gift ‘from concerned friends.’
  82. Ditto the alchemist, half ton breathmint, the queen, ‘loving but scandalised subjects.’
  83. Must not hire ladies of negotiable affections to follow the cleric back to his temple and commend him to the bishop for the sexual healing he performed.
  84. Must not make fun of high-level dark knights who run their own country
  85. ...even if their knight order is named after a flower.
  86. Must not tell the Amazon she needs to get laid.
  87. REALLY must not tell the barbarian fighter that the Amazon needs to get laid.
  88. Must not throw sliced fruit into gelatinous cubes and call it Jello.
  89. Must not throw the NPC’s into flame traps to ‘see them sparkle.’
  90. Must put the battle axe down before performing the ancient dwarven victory rite of ‘The Barbie Girl Dance.’
  91. Must remember that the time to point out flaws in the strategy is BEFORE we enter the Dark Abyss of Eternal Peril.
  92. Must stop asking if he’s making it up as we go along.
  93. Must stop telling the goblins ‘You might be a redneck if…’
  94. Must stop trying to crossbreed the mage’s familiar with the packmule.
  95. Must stop trying to get the packmules to take loyalty oaths.
  96. Must stop using the cliché: “Fools gold spends just like real gold in an election year!”
  97. Mustn’t wear my ‘tour guide’ cap when we’re forced to return to a dungeon for something we forgot.
  98. Not allowed to describe the colorful history of a dungeon if that history was one of our previous adventures.
  99. My horoscope for today does NOT say ‘it’ll be a cold day in hell before I take point.’
  100. My mithril long johns do not grant me power over space, time and reality.
  101. My operatives will not avenge my death and none of them are vulcans.
  102. My primary weapon is not a two-handed shield.
  103. Never answer the question ‘what else could go wrong’ while the GameMaster is in the room.
  104. Never ask a wizard if they’d rather be a ‘real man.’
  105. Next time I make that old joke about ‘poison canyon…one drop will kill you!’ they’re throwing me off the bridge.
  106. Next time we run out of torches because I used three of them to light my farts, they’re going to set fire to my beard.
  107. No character class has ‘can o’ whup ass’ as a weapon of proficiency.
  108. No longer allowed to ask the half-orc where Beavis is. The Oracle told him all about Beavis.
  109. No more Mr. Nice Barbarian.
  110. No one cares how they did it in the old, old, old days.
  111. No one is interested in how I keep my beard so glossy.
  112. No one is interested in who I’m going to hire as my court fool when I am finally rich beyond dreams of avarice.
  113. No one wants to guess what’s in my beard.
  114. No one wants to hear about ‘the lamentation of their women’ from someone that’s knee-high to a ….well, to everyone.
  115. No one wants to hear me go on about what they do to you in the drive-through.
  116. No one wants to help me look for my invisible friend.
  117. No one wants to know how the fight would have gone if we were playing with a different rules system.
  118. No one wants to know HOW the velociraptor happened into the prioress’ wine cellar, they just expect me to get it out.
  119. No one wants to see a dwarf do a table dance.
  120. No specialty action performed by the thief is improved or enhanced by jostling his elbow and telling him to ‘get on with it.’
  121. This goes more than double for a visit to the alchemist.
  122. Not allowed to ask Death to prove he’s really Death.
  123. Not allowed to beat out the ‘In A Gada Da Vida’ drum solo on the paladin’s breastplate.
  124. Not allowed to carry the shoulder-fired catapult indoors every again.
  125. Not allowed to chop an orc’s arm off, then carry it on my shoulder as my ‘familiar.’
  126. Not allowed to confess my sins to the monk in the party. He’s not interested, and he’s not that kind of monk.
  127. Not allowed to cut the ranger’s warrior braid and leave clippings to mark our passage through the maze.
  128. Not allowed to get thunder gods drunk in civilized areas.
  129. Not allowed to give wounded comrades a hearty ‘pre-cardial thump’ before medical treatment is applied. Especially when wearing Gauntlets of Storm Giant Strength.
  130. Not allowed to go on ‘strike’ in the middle of combat.
  131. Not allowed to grant asylum to beserkers.
  132. Not allowed to have Near Death Experiences when I’m not the one that nearly died.
  133. Not allowed to hire bards to sing about the party leader’s failures in every freaking bar, tavern or inn in the kingdom.
  134. Not allowed to hire someone to make marionnettes of the party so I can restage our last adventure at the next tavern.
  135. Not allowed to hire a voodoo priestess to make marionnettes of the party so I can run our next adventure by remote control.
  136. Not allowed to interrogate the thief in the party about crimes committed in faery tales.
  137. Not allowed to open the drawbridge during a siege even if the enemy promises to let the pizza delivery elf through.
  138. Not allowed to order were-chihuahua chili in the tavern any more never again no way no how.
  139. Not allowed to eat any flavor of chili less than 6 hours before entering a dungeon or any other poorly ventilated space.
  140. Not allowed to organize minotaur rodeos.
  141. Not allowed to paint ‘I’m with stupid’ on my shield.
  142. Not allowed to shout ‘CLEAR!’ every time the cleric starts to heal someone.
  143. Not allowed to sign the cleric’s name, in blood, on a contract offered by a guy whose eyeballs burn with an inner light.
  144. Not allowed to snicker when the seneschal introduces the party leader to the king.
  145. Not allowed to spoil surprise attacks by telling the orc platoon they should leave before they get roughed up.
  146. Not allowed to start wearing taffeta over my armor and calling myself Rapunzel, Queen of the May.
  147. Not allowed to suggest ‘much better’ riddles to the sphinx.
  148. Not allowed to take fallen comrades to the taxiderist, even if I SWEAR it’ll be a tasteful pose.
  149. No one wants to discuss my idea of what’s ‘tasteful.’
  150. Not allowed to teach obscene exclamations to the fighter’s talking sword.
  151. Not allowed to tell the paladin how sexy he looks in that armor.
  152. Never allowed to tell the Amazon how sexy she looks.
  153. Not allowed to throw cave rats at the back of the party leader’s head and blame the wizard.
  154. Not to repeat the Barbarian’s comments on the usefulness of women adventurers to the cleric while she’s treating his wounds.
  155. Oh, stop screaming.
  156. Our druid has never decided a wounded party member was beyond help and turned first-aid into a sacrifice to The Dark One. Well, not anymore.
  157. Paladin party leaders don’t have to explain all command decisions, especially to chaotic stupid dwarves.
  158. Putting cotton in my ears does not make me move silently in plate armor.
  159. Religious tracts should not be handed out every time we meet a party of orcs.
  160. Rescuers are there to rescue, not to shout about the cavalry to the rescue, or inquire who ordered extra cheese with anchovies.
  161. She’s not playing with me.
  162. Stop adding the notation ‘forbidden zone’ to the maps at random.
  163. Stop chanting ‘hobbits are the enemy.’
  164. The bishop is not a hood ornament and when he stops screaming I should untie him.
  165. The cleric did not join the party so as to discuss orthodox versus reformed theology with respect to the question of whether toothbrushes clean the souls of our teeth.
  166. The Happy Hunting Grounds do not have a ‘black tie’ policy.
  167. The Healer is a cleric, not a paracleric.
  168. The Paladin’s horse is off limits to anyone with a meat cleaver and a bottle of bar-b-q sauce.
  169. The party wizard is not undead, and I must stop congratulating him for ‘passing’ as a living being.
  170. The phrase ‘can’t possibly miss’ is way overused.
  171. The wages of sin are NOT ‘heaps and heaps of slightly smelly treasure.’
  172. There is no instant replay in the dungeon, and the refs will not vindicate my actions.
  173. There is no ominous “background music” telling me the monster’s getting closer.
  174. There is no save versus ‘being an inbred jackass’ and I must stop consoling the cavalier on his fumble.
  175. There is no such language as pig-druid, so stop practicing it.
  176. There is nothing under the sorcerer’s gown that is of any interest to a fellow party member.
  177. There’s no such thing as a Dwarven Death Grip.
  178. Throwing halflings off a cliff to see how big a splat they make is not a competetive sport.
  179. Not allowed to spend time on watch developing a scoring system for halfling-splat.
  180. Treason's such a harsh word.
  181. Triage catagories are not (1) Me, (2) You all, I guess, and (3) Those other geeks.
  182. Triage is performed according to the nature of the wounds, not the amount of gold they’re carrying.
  183. Turns out, the Ranger DOES care what his deity-gift magical arrow was last fired at.
  184. Turns out, when I’m told ‘you wouldn’t dare’ they’re usually wrong.
  185. Twenty seven lice in my hair and beard do not qualify me as a leader of a guerilla army of infiltration specialists.
  186. Under most circumstances, no one cares to see how many gold pieces I can fit into a goblin’s skull.
  187. Unloaded crossbows should not be fired in jest.
  188. Valhalla is not the final destination of those that die owing more than a million gold to creditors.
  189. Violating treaties is not an ‘icebreaker’ for diplomatic missions.
  190. Voices in my head are not ‘in a position to know.’
  191. War cries should be shouted, not delivered by messenger or sung by off-side cheerleaders.
  192. We did not recruit the halfling just in case we need a virgin sacrifice. Stop telling him that.
  193. We do not delay returning the princess to the king in order to solicit competing bids.
  194. We do not run credit checks on royalty when hired to rescue the princess.
  195. We do not shout ‘Circle of Life, Dude!’ and leave the wounded behind.
  196. We will not laugh about all of this in a year or two.
  197. We’re here to kill orcs, not moon them.
  198. When a party member is beset by multiple opponents, I will render all possible aid. I will never again stand by, telling the rest of the party ‘He needs to prove himself against the Dragon…and his own fears.’
  199. When carrying the wounded half-orc back to camp, I should not cut him in two to save the human half first.
  200. When cave bears hit cave bears it means love. When cave bears hit party members it means war, and I should not shout ‘get a room, you two!’
  201. When Death lets us challenge him in order to stay alive, we will pick a board game, not Whack A Toad.
  202. When small harmless people shapechange to large slavering monsters, my most immediate reaction is not to try to calculate just how much mass seems to have been hidden/ignored in the transformation.
  203. When someone says ‘It’s Over,’ not allowed to tell the cleric it’s her cue to sing.
  204. When someone says ‘some of you, and you know who you are’ everyone in the party knows they’re looking at me.
  205. When the Oracle offers us the answers to any three questions, not allowed to pull out my Zen For Dummies book and ask about 1 hand clapping.
  206. When the party leader is hanging from the face of the cliff, I must find a rope before starting a ‘how long can he hold on’ pool.
  207. When the reptiloids are sacrificing to their dark gods, and they don’t know where the heart is on an elf, I should not whip out a grease pencil and provide visual aids.
  208. When they say "over my dead body" i should assume it's hyperbole until proven to be literal, not the other way around.
  209. When they say ‘fire at will’ they don’t mean Lord William.
  210. Wrong to tell the cleric she has exceeded her daily limit on whining.
  211. Xylophone music is not required in order to fight skeletons.
  212. Yes, the hierophant does worship Lacedos God of Light, I should stop asking.
  213. Yes, there really are such things as innocent bystanders.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Team Yankee in 6mm

As I have said before, in addition to tabletop role-playing games, I also dabble in tabletop wargames. One of the wargames I play is Team Yankee, a game from Battlefront Miniatures, a delightful company out of New Zealand that has a popular World War II game by the name of Flames of War (yup, another wargame I dabble in). Team Yankee (TY) is, unlike Battlefront's other games, not based on an actual war that happened in Earth's history, it is a "what if?" scenario based on a fictional novel of the same name by Harold Coyle - what if World War III kicked off in Eastern Europe in 1985? It's an interesting time as it was the time when Gorbachev took over Soviet Union, the moment when the Soviets realized they were not keeping up with NATO and the West economically and could have chosen someone other than Gorbachev who would have kicked off WW3 just because it was their only choice to survive as they were at that time. In TY, that is what the USSR does, chooses a warhawk as General Secretary instead of Gorby (remember when he was the bogeyman here in America?) and the tanks start rolling towards the Fulda Gap. It is also interesting, time-wise, because it is pretty much the last time when the USSR enjoys technological parity with NATO and the West. Shortly after the mid-80's, I know that America improves many of their weapon systems - M1 Abrams were upgraded to M1A1, the Cobra attack helicopter was replaced by the Apache, the Dragon man-portable anti-tank guided missile was replaced by the Javelin, the M113 armored Personnel Carrier was replaced by the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, and so on. Many other countries in NATO also were upgrading their equipment. That is not to say that the USSR and later on Russians made no advancements, but those advancements were not as major as what was seen in the West.

Enough geopolitics, just know it's an interesting concept (yes, may you live in interesting times kind of interesting) and Battlefront made a fun little game based on their Flames of War (FoW) rules set. It is kind of funny, because in addition to FoW, Battlefront had several other wargames related to it that had not been as popular - one for WW1, another for the Vietnam War, and another for the Arab-Israeli wars in the '60s and '70s - but had still made them because the company was interested in making them and there had been enough demand in the market for those games. They figured TY would be more of the same and gave it a similar limited release... and then it became more popular than FoW. At least until FoW, which was in the need of a rules refresh, got that rules refresh and became top dog (at least in Battlefront's stable of games) once again. But it still is interesting to see that Battlefront totally did not expect this game to be as popular as it is, which is where we find ourselves today.

So about the time TY came out, I was just getting into FoW due to a friendly coworker in the Army Guard who wanted to get into that game and wanted to make sure he had someone to play with. We discovered TY at about the same time, and the same friend made the comment that TY would play so much better in 6mm. Back in my Confessions of a Tabletop Gamer post, I talked about how I am playing TY in 6mm, but this is where it started - my friend was interested in playing TY in 6mm because he knew the classic modern wargames (Cold War Commander and the like) play mostly in that scale and a major miniatures manufacturer, GHQ, had been making miniatures for US Army sand tables and civilian wargame players for generations. I took a look at prices of the standard 15mm models vs 6mm models, the size of tables needed to play one vs the other, the common scene of "tank parks" in TY games (so many tanks on the field they are parked track to track), and told my friend, let's do it. And so I did, I purchased a bunch of 6mm mini's for the US and the Soviet forces, got some pieces together to do terrain, bought rule books and army books, joined FB groups, talked with other friends who have played the standard 15mm version and have played exactly zero games. Until today (or a few days ago, depending on when I get this typed up and posted).

This is a real photo of a major TY game in 15mm back in July. No, tanks rarely get that close together in real life.

It does not seem like much of a difference, so why not just play the game in the standard 15mm? For me, and these arguments have gone on many other places so I am not really breaking new ground or convincing anyone who thinks that 15mm is their preferred scale, but for me it is a better scale to play this in. The savings on the cost of minis is a big factor for me. Due to this being military vehicles, Battlefront can't put their trademark on them, so they are not the only suppliers of these models like other wargame companies, and their prices are competitive with the other 15mm scale minis out there. And quite good quality (as long as you stay either with the metal or plastic minis, and away from the resin minis), but for my game I want huge armies clashing over big fronts, tens of vehicles and hundreds of infantry clashing across huge battle boards, and when you talk those numbers, none of the 15mm mini manufacturers can be close to the 6mm price. Not just on the tanks and infantry, but on trees and buildings and roads and so on, not to mention storage for everything is also commensurately cheaper because everything is half the size. In addition to cost, the size of the game expands greatly. As you will see in the pictures of our game later on, you can play a 6mm game in a very small space and still have plenty of room to maneuver. And space to maneuver in a game like this is so much more satisfying than sitting there, front armor to front armor and pound away at each other. Having said all that, are there downsides to playing in 6mm? Yes, it has been noted that these types of games are much more visually attractive in 15mm, so potential new players are more likely to come over and see what you are doing, as it is more visually striking. And, of course, Battlefront tends to make more money from book and miniature sales than they do just book sales, it's always nice to support the company who makes the games you play. 

Today (or, you know, whenever), after a long hiatus, the friend who originally got me interested in FoW and TY and I played some Team Yankee, in 6mm. Both of us have had some pretty intense life events the past couple of years, including one of us going on a deployment to a foreign country with the Army National Guard, buying and selling houses and moving, changing jobs, and life in general. But today the stars aligned and we finally got to get some playtime in. My friend, who is very much a war buff, has never really played many tabletop wargames, though he has played a lot of the simulation board games, he just never had the opportunity to play wargames. And to be honest, even as popular as FoW and TY are, they really aren't historically accurate, leaning more towards playability and fun and expediency over simulation and accuracy, but I think he understands that is why he can find people to play those games, but not the more accurate board games he has played in the past. I on the other hand have tabletop wargame credentials going back to high school with games like BattleTech, Warhammer and Warhammer 40K, and more recently Mobile Frame Zero and Gaslands, games that are more like FoW and TY. Plus, as I have all the books - my friend has been meaning to buy the books, it is not me saying he cannot, just he hasn't done it yet - and have other friends who are actively playing the game (albeit in 15mm despite all my attempts to get them to try 6mm), I am more familiar with these type of games. But I still had not played the game much more than my friend had. Knowing we both did not have enough familiarity with the game, we decided to throw a game together, play with what we had, and learn as we went.

By "throw a game together, play with what we had", that is what we did. Even though I have gathered some terrain bits and pieces together, namely some size appropriate trees I have yet to put on bases, plus some road pieces that need painting and assembling, and a ton of papercraft buildings that need printing and putting together, I do not have any finished terrain and my friend even less than that. So we took some sheets of paper and started drawing out some basic terrain pieces - trees, hills, roads, buildings, walls, and even fields. Knowing that terrain has to be mirrored, something I have seen far too often in other games is an unbalanced board giving advantage to one side over the other, I set up a board that offered a good mix of dense urban and open and close wilderness areas. Too often I see wargame tables that offer little to no cover, something that anyone in the real world would look at and decide it is tactically not worth going into that particular killing field, so I made sure the board felt like it had decent cover (not just in the start box), but not so much that there weren't any open fire lanes at all. Over all, as cheesy as it looked - tiny table covered in various paint hues from past projects, half painted miniatures (even some standing in for other vehicles or pieces of paper standing in for even more minis I did not have ready), and pieces of paper representing terrain, it was still lots of fun.

I am not going to go into the details of the Battle, we both made pretty big mistakes tactically, but it was a learning experience that we can build on and that is what matters. The cogent points of what we learned about the game are as follows:
-Repetition, repetition, repetition is what teaches you the game. The more you play it, the more you remember it, the easier and faster the rounds go.
-Don't spend your opponent's turn thinking of what you should have done on your turn, use that time to think about what you are going to do next turn.
-The rules try to be as common sense as they can be, but let's face it, you will come across something Ina my game that you don't remember perfectly, don't be afraid to dig in and verify.
-As in many wargames that used six-sided dice for everything, TY uses just one d6 to decide if you hit or not. Try to do as much as possible to make that chance to hit worse. If by using cover you change your chance to hit from a 3+ (or on a 3, 4, 5, or 6, or 2 chances in 3, or 66%) to hit to a 4+ (or on a 4, 5, or 6, or 1 chance in 2, or 50%) to hit, it may not seem like much, but you have changed the odds significantly. And in games like this where there is an element of randomness to everything, you have to swing the odds in your favor as much as possible.
-The one thing I had to keep reminding my friend was "this is a game and not a simulation." TY is a fun game, and fairly historically representative, if not 100% accurate, because the makers realized it is a game and must do some things for the game's sake. It does a good job of giving the feel of the forces and technology in play at the time - the Warsaw Pact has lots of cheap vehicles and infantry with some high tech, costly options, while the NATO forces have lots of high tech, costly mainstays with a few cheap options that help them balance out the force charts. It is very much "quantity vs quality" on one side and "quality vs quantity" on the other.

Enough of me prattling on, time for the pictures.

I told you, pieces of paper were our terrain. Here we are after the end of everyone's first turns. Yes, the table is under 4' corner to corner (the long way) and you can see that we still have enough area to do some maneuvering around each other. We settled on halving all distances, even the area covered by artillery bombardments, halved to accommodate the scale of the miniatures.

The Soviets stuck together while the Americans went for envelopment. The Soviets' biggest tactical error was not going for cover whenever possible. And clustering up under repeated artillery barrages, though every time I "ranged in", he made sure to run away from the marker.

The American Abrams are standing in for M60 Pattons, so this is not as threatening as it looks. We played 50 point armies, which is not all that bad, but Pattons meant I could do more than minimal tank platoons. Likewise the Soviets went with T72s instead of T64s to get more on the field. 

Yep, one of my biggest tactical errors - M901s go BEHIND any other vehicles, as they have tons of range and no armor. With a moving ROF of zero and a minimum range on their weapons, M901s need to get their firing positions early and sit as far away from the action as possible.

Americans have already lost their scouts, but the Soviets lost their arty and some tanks. The American Pattons are doing well only because they are forcing misses by sticking to cover, as the T72s' AT of 22 is a bit much for the Pattons' front armor of 15. I did manage one roll of "7" on an armor save... but only one.

The Soviet BMPs died to concentrated fire from several different units but most of the Soviet infantry managed to bail out and not die. The American infantry is trying to set up to assault, mostly because I wanted to test out those rules, not because I thought this was a good idea. 

The American HQ sat at this corner of the building and calling in artillery more than doing anything else. The American artillery was busy the whole game, and while it would have been most effective against the infantry, it never got to shoot at them as no one ever got a line of sight to them. And in the background, yes, that is Shilkas fighting M901s at point blank range. Oddly enough, the M901s made it through the battle.

Yup, besides one move at the very end, American artillery sat here from the beginning and kept their guns hot. And I just realized that my friend who was playing the Soviets wore a red shirt. That irony escaped me until just now.

The end. The M901s have run, the T72s have been almost wiped out, the Shilkas died to concentrated Patton fire, the American infantry lost their M113s but are having a good time assaulting the Soviets. The Soviet Commander is about to get wiped out and have to jump into a nearby T72.

The Americans did not come out unscathed, one Patton platoon is wiped out and the HQ Commander passes from the Captain to the Lieutenant. 

As we had spent more time than necessary learning and researching, we decided to end it here even though we were playing Annihilation. With as many losses as the Soviets had - all that was left was part of the infantry, the commander, and the last two T72s of one platoon - we decided the Americans won and called it there.
The biggest lesson from all of this was, if you want to play a game, just go play the game. You don't have to have fancy terrain, painted minis, or know all the rules. Or even a table of sufficient size.