Vacation Reading

One  of the things I took along on vacation to read, was the first 50 issues of Dragon Magazine from the CD-ROM archive I got a few years ago (a decade? Who knows?)  It was fun figuring out where I joined in the fun   (somewhere in 77-78, when I was in 7th grade, I had the first edition of the first version of Basic D&D--the one with the Blue Cover edited by Eric Holmes),  It looks like AD&D first edition was not out yet, although the Monster Manual was soon on the way.  So, if I had actually met anyone who was playing at the time, and they weren't playing basic, they would have been playing Original D&D, in the three soft-back brown booklets.

I was actually familiar with many of the articles I came across in the Dragon.  The 'Best of the Dragon volume 1" was something I got when I was still in high school, and was a huge influence on how I DMed.  It was really cool looking at many of those articles again.

One very interesting thing was just how thin-skinned Gary Gygax was.   There was one editorial he wrote, absolutely furious with plagiarists (quite rightly so).  But then he goes on a huge tear about Amateur Press Association publications.  These things (APA's), were set-ups where any old jerk would write an article, a story. or whatever, then send it to a particular APA and pay a fee.  The coordinator would compile all the articles together, get them printed, send one copy to everyone who had submitted and also would sell copies to interested readers.   There were several APA's that published Role-playing materials back then.  APA's in general, I believe, have been more or less made redundant by the Internet, although I believe that one of them from the old days still exists "Alarums and Excursions", and one could argue that "Fight On!" magazine, which publishes new "Old School" material through PDF and Print-On-Demand is more or less an APA. 

Anyway,  Gary spewed forth an unremitting stream of bile against APA's in this editorial.  He basically called anyone who published anything in any of them a wanna-be, a loser, a vainglorious puss who couldn't get published for real.   It was really pretty strong,   I suppose it's good that Gary was in the wilderness when the Internet came to town.   My gosh, they just let anyone say anything on that thing.

I guess I knew Gary was a bit thing skinned.   My only contact with him was on an internet message board, where I posted something about not liking how D&D 3rd edition handled Spears.   I know old Gygax was a big spear and polearm guy (several articles by him in early Dragons), but he basically tore me a new one.  I was surprised, since he didn't have anything to do with D&D 3rd edition, and I hadn't directed the comment in any way toward him.   I knew he occasionally posted on that board, but wasn't expecting he'd notice.

Card Project

I decided to go forward with my combat card project. It's a lot of work upfront, but really pays off in-game and in making adventures.

I just decided to go through the ACKS random dungeon monster encounters and card them up.

Most monsters are pretty easy, except for the various Humanoids.  For each humanoid entry, there's a Normal, Champion, Sub-Chief, Chief, Shaman, and Witchdoctor to do.   You've got to look up a bunch of stuff and recalculate XP for all the non-normal types.   But, since they're concentrated on the lower levels, I think I've gotten through most of them by now.

NPC parties are another nut to crack.   One problem is spell repertoire,  it's actually harder to set up than AD&D, since casters can cast any spell from their repertoire spontaneously.  The other problem is Magic Items, each NPC has a 5% chance per category (potion, scroll, sword, etc) to have an item.   If I'm just going to have 1 generic NPC per level, then we'd be running into the same magic items repeatedly, if I just say "roll when you use him" than the stats on the combat card my be wrong.  I'm sure I'll come up with some solution.

New Cards

I've been experimenting with some stat cards for ACKS.   Hand-written seems to be the way to go for these, since I can do them anywhere and I don't have to get involved in the whole moving stuff from one format to another when I move them from one computer to another (long story).  

So, above are 4 examples of different types of goblins:  I put the AC, Damage, Attack Number and Movement Rate at each of the 4 corners, since those are the quick combat referenced, and the other stuff is filled in between.

I'll have to see how more complicated creatures work out, but I like these so far.  

Experience and Treasure

I've mentioned this question before, but now we are about a month and a half away from actually starting ACKS, I do want to bring it up again, and perhaps get some serious feedback.

In the ACKS rules as written, if the party seizes 10,000 gp in treasure, and there are 5 PCs and 10 henchmen (a not unrealistic scenario).  Regardless of how the treasure is actually split up, the PC's will each get 1000 XP from "treasure share", and each henchman will get  500 XP.

Now the actual treasure split, by the book, should be: 230gp for each henchman (15 shares each), and 1,539gp for each PC (100 shares each).

My instinct is that it would be far clearer to do things this way:

The PC's split the cash evenly.   Each PC awards his own henchmen cash out of his share as he wishes (but if the PC takes more than 6-7 times the amount of any henchman, that henchman will consider himself ill-used).  Sometime a PC might get a larger share of the total pot if he doesn't get a good magic item.  Sometimes a PC might steal or hide treasure and end up with a larger total.  And here's the important bit:  the PC's and henchmen get XP  based on the amount of gold they actually take home for themselves, not as a share of the theoretical pot.

How do people actually feel about this?

Gatavia III wiki, crammed with goodness

Andrew has set up the campaign wiki for the Gatavia III campaign.  I've shut down the Temporary Gatavia page and moved everything (and more) onto the wiki site.

Gatavia III wiki

I've added a couple of new classes, and put the setting book and some of the maps in wiki form for online reference.  There is new information scattered through there, plus the beginning of a lot of NPC information.

Look especially at the document page, it has a ton of the game information which won't appear in wiki (for example the Gear Book), since the wiki doesn't like tables.

Mythic GM emulator

I sort of gave this thing a try while planning out the "Redline to Carson City" adventure for this Sunday.   It wasn't all that useful as a GM planning tool, it kind of boiled down to "keep flipping a coin."   My questions were pretty simple, like "Do they get across New Mexico?  I could see the use if you had a bunch of people and no GM and people had a wider range of questions which had a wider range of probabilities than I was using.  If you were asking "does the washerwoman have the key of Gargamel?"  and "did the gatekeeper leave the halberd behind?" it would make using the system more interesting.

One More

I've added one last document:  the Book of Magic and Monsters, which has all the custom Monsters and Magic Spells I've made for the game, as well as the Magical Orders that characters can join.

Gatavia III temporary page

That should be the last of the background and rules booklets for now.  I think I've gone through all my ACKS experiments in creating things, and all my campaign information from the past 2 campaigns.  What's there should cover things. 

The only other thing I can think of is guides to the cities of Portchester and Orchester.  Damn.  Now I've thought of it.  Well, I suppose that stuff isn't really player information, so I needn't publish it.
 

More Material for Gatavia III campaign

I've posted three more documents for the ACKS Gatavia campaign, at the temporary Gatavia page:

Gatavia III temporary page

These include:

Setting Reference:  a general background document, describing History, Peoples, Languages and Religions of the Game World.

Quick Guide to Gatavia:  2 maps and description of the regions in the province of Gatavia where the campaign will be set.

Map Booklet:  province, regional, and world map for the campaign.

Most of this stuff is edited together from material from the last two Gatavia campaigns, but there are some changes and additions to make it match up with ACKS and campaign developments. 

World Map Key`

Here is the key to the numbered locations:

1—Jotunheim: land of giants and frost

2—Drakkhar: Northron kingdom, original home of Northrons

3—Trollheim: fallen Northron kingdom, land of trolls

4—Frost Island: isolated island, scouted by Northron sailors.

5—Drell: Bare, rocky kindgom of the Neanderthals

6—The Great Eastern Plains: home of countless Easterling Nomads

7—Aster: Westerling Island, heart of the Druid cult on earth, original homeland of Westerlings

8—Ulban: Westerling Island, once an Ardean province, now battleground between Westerling natives and Northron Invaders

9—The Haunted Islands: a series of mysterious islands filled with danger, magic and treasure?

10—Seamark: a kingdom of sea-faring Northrons.

11—Rucconia: a heavily forested kingdom of Easterlings who have given up nomadism.

12—Hallia: originally a Westerling region, but conquered by Ardeans centuries ago. Now it is a shattered, disordered land of independent provinces and regions. The Old Ones have several city-states across the land.

13—Gautland: confederation of forest-dwelling Northron tribes.

14—Ost-Gaut: second confederation of forest and mountain Northron tribes.

15—Bastarnae: series of petty chiefdoms of a mixed Northron-Easterling tribes

16—Hiron: remote and misty magical island, Westerling and Elvish population.

17—Vesperos: once an Ardean province, now a weak kingdom ruled by a Northron dynasty. Nobility are of Northron descent, but Ardean is the language of all population.

18—Aetia: once a key Ardean mainland province, now an independent Ardean kingdom.

19—Roricon: mountainous collection of petty fiefdoms and towns, Ardean in language and culture.

20—Provere: once the eastern frontier of the Ardean Empire, now the king of this domain claims to be the Ardean Emperor, a claim occasionally honored by other Ardean regions, but mostly ignored.

21—The Great Easterling Kingdom: most ancient civilized realm on earth,wealthy and decadent.

22—Lipon: independent island kingdom of Easterlings, known for warlike isolationism.

23—Hydaspes: rival Easterling kingdom known for seafaring

24—Ardean Islands: once heart of Ardean Empire, now a series if independent island duchies, one of which is an Old Ones city state, another is the home of the Lawful Patriarch of the West.

25—Gendis: a mixed Westerling-Southron kingdom that has become an extreme Lawful religious state since the fall of the Ardean empire.

26- Rudrun: ancient Southron kingdom, now has a mixed Southron and Ardean and Old Ones population divided into a host of duchies engaged in constant bloody war.

27—Desh: original home of the Zaharan people, now divided into a series of small emirates, several of which are in the hands of the Old Ones.

28—The Zahara Desert: a vast desert full of mystery and death.

29—Ur-mutoz: an Easterling colony across the sea. The coastal cities are still in Easterling hands, but the Old Ones and Orcs have seized the inland regions.

30—Island of Shebar: mysterious Southron Kingdom of great wealth and legend.

31—Southern Jungle: filled with savage Southron tribes, lizardmen and who knows what else.

32—The Kingdom of the South: original homeland of the Southrons, an ancient and legendary land.

World Map

I had a vague, sketchy world map for the world Gatavia is in, during the Return of the Trolls campaign.  I had another rough map of the NW corner of the world during the Badlands game, that didn't match the original map, but did map the "mapping conventions" of province equalling 200x200 miles.

I've finally got a schematic (not artistic) world map put together that covers the whole world, uses the mapping conventions, and includes all the places of the other two maps, plus "Lipon" from Andrew's Lipponese character.   Here goes:

More ACKS/Gatavia Material Ready

Check out the following page:

Gatavia Temporary Page

The following things are posted there:

Gatavia Gear Book (as mentioned earlier)

NEW:  BOOK OF CUSTOM CLASSES:   this contains the following 9 custom classes made by me for the campaign;  Gnome Titan, Halfling Burglar, Halfling Pumpkin Queen, Halfling Scout, Lackey, Nobiran Dragon-Slayer, Orkin Bandit, Orkin Hexmaster, and Orkin Thug. 

NEW:  SUMMARY OF CLASSES SHEET:  a two-page PDF that summarizes all of the classes available from the ACKS main book, the Player's Companion and the Book of Custom Classes.  Man, there are a metric ton of classes to choose from.

Alak! I've just had an idea

I've gotten a good collection of 12"x12" dungeon tiles, and a smaller batch of cave tiles.   Now it just hit me, I should have some urban tiles too, with various buildings etc.   I suppose I'd have to put a 1" clear space all around the edge, to represent the street.  Although some might only have street on 1-2 sides, to be sure.   Hmmm, I'll have to play around with this.   Suddenly 150 tiles is starting to look like it may eventually not be enough.

Now it's positively done

I finished the Gear Book, and have committed to the final version. So far as to say, I took it to Office Max and had three copies printed out for use at the table.

If you want the pdf right now, click on this link (to a temporary page I've added onto the Mutants wiki) to have a look:

Gatavia temporary page

I think it's done

I think I'm done with the Gear Book.

The last touches were the Poisons, which I finally decided to include,  a series of Alchemical items I found in a magazine and thought were fun (pickled orc eyes etc), and Special Beverages (some from a magazine, some from Hackmaster).

I'll look over it again a few times before I post it somewhere.   I have to decide whether I'm going to put in a contents page or index now, or wait until I print it out and add it to the end.  I'd like to take it to Office Max or something to print it out, since I'd rather have it be two-sided, since it's 30 pages, and I want to make 2-3 copies for the table.   It's so much easier making a contents page or index from a printed copy that trying to constantly jumping back and forth on screen.

I think I've gotten everything we'll need for quick reference.  It seems to have everything, more or less, from the Badlands book, plus a few things more.

Mythic GM emulator

Bought a new product yesterday,  a PDF from Drive Thru RPG, called the Mythic GM emulator.  It's a 50-page rulebook that produces a system where a party can play and adventure without a GM.  It would also work for a GM without a prepared adventure, or for solo play.

Basically, it has a mechanism where the players ask yes or no questions and refer to a chart with dice rolls to see whether it's yes, no, exciting yes, or exciting no, based on their idea of a reasonable probability and a randomness factor based on how well or ordered or poorly/wildly it's been going.

I'll keep reading away at it, and maybe try a solo game this week.  If it's up to snuff, maybe we'll try it sometime. 

Here's a link to the publisher's description:

GM EMULATOR

ACKS Gear Book under way

The urge to do an ACKS version of a Gear Book.  I got the combat equipment done last night, and have worked up most of the everyday equipment this morning.  

It might be helpful to have, especially since much of the equipment stats are scattered about the ACKS book.    Most things are converting pretty easily from the Badlands book, although I had to re-configure all the encumbrance stuff to match the ACKS   items/stone system (which I do like).  Books and paper a lot cheaper in ACKS than in AD&D. 

I'm debating whether to put the poison section in the gear book or not.  It'll probably be o.k. to do so, since most of the poisons are slow acting and I don't see people getting really into using them all the time. 

A bit worried by ACKS initiative

I'm a bit worried about the ACKS initiative system.

The way it works is that every turn you roll initiative for every adventurer, every single monster and/or group of identical monsters.  It's 1d6+Dex Bonus+Class Bonus.  Then, you count down from highest number to lowest.

WHY IT'S WORRISOME
It seems to me that it could be quite a chore, especially since Henchmen would have to be rolled separately from PC's.   You would have to keep some note of it and perhaps keep it visible.   Individual Initiative each round works well in Savage Worlds, since the cards are clearly visible.   Individual rolled initiative works in 3.0, because you don't re-roll every turn, you just keep cycling.  This system doesn't have either virtue.  Rolled initiative every time works in AD&D 1e, because you roll for the entire side/team and not for each individual.  The ACKS system takes the slowest clunkiest feature of each of these other initiative systems without their corresponding benefits.

WHY IT ISN'T EASY TO CHANGE:
The problem is that certain classes get initiative bonuses as one of their class powers, and if you change the rules, you've nerfed an advantage of those classes.  More importantly, the individual rolled initiative is tied up with the rules for spell casting, interrupting spell casting, and the mechanism for withdrawing from combat.  If you change the baseline rules, you wreck havoc across these other rules as well.  You also spoil some of the Proficiencies.

Review: Three Hearts and Three Lions (Poul Anderson)

Following Bob's suggestion, I took daughter #2 and her friend down to the York Emporium on Wednesday.   While they didn't find anything they wanted, I picked up a copy of Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions.  I had a paper back copy of this book back in high school, but hadn't read it in many decades.

It's the story about a Danish man (who had spent some years in America) in the middle of a fight with the Nazis finds himself transported to an alternate world which is much like the world of the Carolingian and Arthurian romances of the middle ages.  It's framing device is almost the same as Edgar Rice Burrough's Princess of Mars. 

As he travels around with a dwarf, swan-may and eventually a Saracen, he slowly realizes that he is a famous hero of that world (whose shield design is the titled three hearts and three lions).   He has to overcome various monsters such as an elf-knight, dragon, giant, were-wolf and the blandishments of Morgan LaFey. 

First thing that's notable is just how short it is; only about 190 pages.  Still, there are some really interesting things in it for the D&D gamer.   First of all the Troll he fights is without any doubt the origin of the D&D troll.  Not only does it regenerate all damage, sticking on chopped off limbs, and can only be killed when the bits are dropped in the fire, but the description of its face, with its long nose and eyes like black pools are exactly like D&D trolls.

Secondly, it's description of the two forces "Law" and "Chaos" with various unaligned individuals, is the basic framework of the original D&D alignment system.

Thirdly, the hero is clearly the inspiration for the D&D paladin.  His alternate identity is Holger Danske, a.k.a., Ogier the Dane.  Who in medieval romance was one of Charlemagne's Paladins or chief knights.   In the book, Holger has similar protections from evil like a D&D paladin, and even "Lays on Hands" at one point.   While this is a common feature of Christian miracle healing, associating it with a paladin begins here I think.  When Gary wanted a "super fighter" to beef up fighters in relation to magic-users, I think he went to this book for his inspiration for a Champion of Law.

There is also a wizard in the book who has an "unseen servant" tidy up for him.

It does have elves and dwarves, but they are nothing like D&D elves and dwarves.   The elves are evil and can't touch iron.  The dwarves are good guys, but they really can't fight--as they are small dudes.   I wonder if Anderson wasn't reacting to Tolkein in some way.   The way Holger defeats the giant is strikingly reminiscent of Bilbo and the Trolls and Bilbo's riddle contest with Gollum in The Hobbit, but with a sort of modernistic, snarky twist.  I don't know for sure whether he had The Hobbit in mind, or it's a question of using the same sources.

I'm not the first to point out any of this, but it was really striking while re-reading it again. 

OD&D

I swore I'd never be a "Collector".   I don't buy things just to have them.  I buy toys that I'm going to play with.   Nevertheless, I'm sorely tempted to pre-order the Original D&D Premium reprint set.   It has the original version of the game from 1974, plus the original supplements: Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, Gods, Demi-gods and Heroes and (I think) Swords and Spells.  They're all in a wooden box with a set of dice.

I've had PDF's of all of these volumes for years now, so I don't really need the material.   I probably would never actually play the game.   If you use all the supplements, it is so close to being AD&D 1e that it doesn't make a serious difference, and if you want to stick to the basic "3 Brown Books", I have several retro-clones that clean it up a bit.  So, it would be a case of buying it to have it. 

The chief enticement is the fact that while the list price is $146,  Amazon is offering a pre-order for around $85.   I've wasted more money on stupider stuff than that in my life.   I'd probably never spend the $146 on it, but the $85 falls just at the outer edge of my stupid zone.