Coming Up with a List

I'm coming up with a list of things for our test session next week to show how the system works in practice.

I've come up with the following:

1) Stealth Demonstration:   show what the difference in the various stealth effects are between A thief, barbarian and explorer (and a "guy with high dex).

2) Combat Special Effects:  showing how Charge and Cleave work (especially) and the other specials like overrun, knockdown etc.

3) Spell Repertoire:  showing how mages of different INT have different Repertoire and how that is effective.

4)  Dungeon Exploration:  the searching, dungeon movement, traps and so forth

5) Wilderness Exploration: how overland encounters work and the benefits of having an explorer.

Are there other features anyone would like to get playtest focus on before making characters?

Mutants and Muskets post mortem

I had a basic system of my own about 1/3 finished for Mutants and Muskets when you guys talked me into Savage Worlds.   The switch in systems caused a lot of change in how the campaign played out.   First of all, the game got a lot more over the top.  When we had mutant powers and weird science, it made the whole setting much more gonzo and much less gritty than I had first imagined.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, almost every campaign I've ever done has been gritty in imagination, but goofy in practice.  Just as the characters were goofy, I enjoyed cooking up weird, goofy mutants of all sorts.   The original scheme would have seen mostly mutant cannibals, rabid dogs and a few mutant animals that weren't outrageous.  That would have been fine for fiction, but weird mutants were much more fun.

The characters also were a lot more broken than they could ever have been in my system.  I ended having to replace the standard ape-men with tough ape-men, and had to give most enemies 11+ on toughness just to make it worth putting them on the table.   I suspect that some people weren't cyphering correctly, but I decided not to care. 

I probably shouldn't have set the armor ratings so high for the breastplates.   I let myself be led by the desire to have gradually improving equipment, rather than keeping the danger level under control.   Having so many guys with 12-13 toughness just fed into the arms race.

I do know that Marlon's character made it impossible to have any adventure with a heavy role-playing component.  He would just say "roll persuasion" or whatever and add 8 to his dice and win.  Yeah, that's a big incentive for me to put in a lot of role-playing encounters.

Savage World's flaws always leak out in the end.  You have broken, one-note characters and battles turn on a randomly occurring humongous damage roll.

I really enjoyed the overland exploration and the encounter system I used.  And then after a while, I had had enough.   Luckily you guys had the truck at that point so I just tried to pressure you into taking the truck everywhere.  That wasn't my plan, but it came as a relief.  

I especially enjoyed the two set-piece battles in Scarptown.   Just having a miniatures battle every once in a while is just plain cool.  Since old school D&D and Savage Worlds were both developed from miniatures battle systems, we've been able to do them now and again.

The Bat-cave dungeon and the Crab People dungeon were both excellent crawls.  I also learned enough about the 12" square geomorph scheme to be confident enough to rely on it for ACKS.   The railroady  Speed-boat/hurricane opening of the crab people dungeon was pretty darn cool too.

I couldn't have dreamed up anything better than Nut-Spanky in my wildest pre-planning fevered dreams.  The fact that he shot down Jock in his junk 3 times in 3 separate sessions was just freaking amazing.

Chaotic Characters

I've had one or two people ask about playing Chaotic characters in the upcoming campaign.

I'm really of two minds on the subject.  One side of me thinks "Why on Earth would anyone want to play the bad guys."  With another voice chiming in, "the adventure designs suddenly get a lot more complicated."

The other side says "whatever they want to play is what they should play."  I've only really played an evil guy once and it was pretty much over the top and amazing, but you burn out on it quick and leave a garlicky corpse. 

What's the motivation for wanting to play Chaotics?  I want to understand what people want in that regard before making up my mind.

Skull Mountain: One level done

I've gotten the first level of the Skull Mountain Complex done.   I think I've learned a few lessons about a multi-level dungeon for practical play.   It's within one day's travel of civilization, so it doesn't require a base-camp or multi-day trek to get there or back.   There are several reasons to go there, and the first visit (only) is on the proverbial rail-road. 

I'm hoping the subsequent levels will pull together quickly since they won't be so "lair of a group" like the first level is, so I won't have to figure out what the bad guys are using each room for.  I'll just have a theme and go with it for the others, with some outposts and mini-lairs.

Dungeon Robber

Dungeon Robber is a simple online, text-based game of dungeon exploring.  It uses a modified version of the 1eDMG random map generator to get you wander around the dungeon and make encounters.   It's entertaining, but incredibly brutal.  Even if you are very cautious and constantly flee to the surface for rest, you can just get randomly killed by traps.   Anyway, I've been playing it off and on lately, and if you want to take a look:

http://blogofholding.com/dungeonrobber/

Sneak Preview: Behold Skull Hill

Traps in ACKS

One interesting thing about dungeon traps in ACKS is that they only activate on a 1-2 on a d6.  This is actually an artifact rule from Basic/Expert D&D and originally from the very first OD&D rule set (but not from AD&D as best as I can remember).

This rule makes the crappy percentage of thieves to find and remove traps at low levels make a whole lot more sense.  If they only go off 1/3 of the time anyway, the F/R Traps ability is more like a bonus saving throw that Thieves get against traps.

Vacation Reading 2: Capsule Reviews

The Age of Odin:
An English ex-soldier, modern day,  gets swept up in Ragnarok.  Hero is a bit of a jerk.  There's no real explanation of why he's so capable and everyone else isn't.  Meh.

Ghost Stories of the Delaware Coast
Poop stories of the Poop coast

Tales of the Mountain Men
Only got through a couple of chapters, there's only so much authentic frontier gibberish one can take.

Castle Old Skull
Awesome e-book, guide to designing an old-school megadungeon.  Crammed full of suggestions on room types, atmosphere, planning suggestions, setting integration etc.  Really a good read.

Quag Keep by Andre Norton
First D&D novel ever written, 1978,  I had read it before, I think I liked it a little better this time, but it was overall pretty lame.  It had the old "players sucked into the game" jazz.  But what was more grievous was that it was over half way through the book before they got into a proper fight.

Donovan's Brain
Written in 1942, I bought a reprint from 1969.  Amoral scientist preserves the brain of a business tycoon killed in a plane crash.  Keeps brain in a jar with nutrients.  Learns to communicate with brain telepathically, but it's EVIL and starts to take control.  Despite the totally cheesy premise, this book was surprisingly really, really good.  The unfolding mystery of Donovan's plan and the story of his life gradually unrolling was very well done.

The Lazy DM
e-book advise on cutting down prep time.   Far too new school for me.  Focuses on aspects of the game that I just don't care about.

Everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten (the POSTER)
Whoever the fiend was who decorated this apartment, hung a poster summarizing "Everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten" but they hung it right behind the toilet, so I had to read the damned thing every time I took a pee.   What horrible cruelty!  What unbelievable evil!  By the end of the week I'm just muttering "Shut-up Martin" over and over again.