New Classics: The Bonegarden

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Necromancer games hit the ground running back in the early days of third edition D&D. Not many companies had a clear direction with their products. Very simply they had the slogan “Third Edition Rules, First Edition Feel” and they lived up to that. Their adventures were usually longer and more in-depth than others being produced at the time. Their adventures also were a bit more out there and had unusual and creative backdrops. For my fifth New Classic line of blog posts I look at the Bonegarden, a sandbox style module written for third edition D&D but easily converted into other systems.

The great thing about Bonegarden is the multiple ways it can be used. There is not a plot or assumed path for the module. There is no one hook that bring the PCs into the place. The module is designed for characters of about twelfth to fourteenth level, but with different encounter areas it could be used as a difficult place for lower level characters that just need to get in and out with no need for dealing with the whole place. The Bonegarden is a very large cemetery. It is surrounded by a magical field that keeps the undead contained but also makes it difficult for characters to get out. Undead in the Bonegarden are more powerful than those elsewhere and the module covers the reasons for this. The part that makes the Bonegarden especially deadly is that every night all the undead that were destroyed in the previous twenty four hours come back to unlife, so to speak.

The one hundred and twenty eight page module is filled with undead. There is a wide variety of them here including many new ones that were in the Tome of Horrors. There are fifteen new creatures and templates in the book. My favorite is the undead mimic. Mimics are always fun and having an undead version is clever, as when players are thinking undead they usually are not thinking about mimics. There are some new feat options and spells in here, but the new magical items are more interesting. The Pieces of Her Heart is a sad artifact with a unique history and it offers interesting abilities as one collects the different pieces of this broken heart.

Inside the Bonegarden there are many different encounter areas. The module has wandering monster tables and is one of the few modules that I think makes really good use of them. There are all types of generic undead one can encounter in here and the undead always come back. Many of the different encounter areas have their own hooks. This can make them easy to use sections without the need to use the whole module. There are also plenty of empty areas a DM can insert in their own encounters and buildings with their own undead creations.

Not everything in the Bonegarden is dead though. There is a group of survivors that use one of the buildings as a place of protection. They are dying off slowly but the group is using smart tactics to stay alive. They are not the oddest thing in there either. There is a large spaceship of fantastic design that has crashed there. One could easily make it an ancient spelljammer or something more like the tech of Numeria from the Pathfinder setting.

Like most of the books I look at, this one never seemed to get its due when published. Now one can easily find a copy for less than ten dollars. It was a fun module when I ran it for my group many years ago. There is a lot of things going on but nothing so complex or so huge that is overshadows everything else. It is a great undead sandbox adventure.

Chris Gath. I’ve been gaming since 1980 playing all kinds of games since then. In the past year I’ve run Pathfinder, Dungeon Crawl Classic, Paranoia, and Mini d6. My current campaign is mini d6 and we are using that for a modern supernatural conspiracy investigative game. On some forums I’m known as Crothian and I’ve written a few hundred reviews though I took a sabbatical from reviewing for a few years as it burnt me out. I was also an judge for the Gen Con awards (ENnies) six times. Jeff, the owner of this blog, is one of my players and a good friend.

What is Coming up Next?

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

I have publicly declared my dislike for Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) much to the chagrin of many fans of the system. I did not take this lightly, as my group and I played the system for over a year solid but we found we were just not getting any enjoyment out of it. That is when a friend of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and I have step by step been indoctrinated into the system. I even publicly stated that I would not even look at 5th edition D&D as they had lost me with the franchise.

A few days ago though a blog from Mike Mearls who is the senior manager for D&D R&D at Wizards of the Coast (WotC) entitled “The Final Countdown” caught my eye. He talks in it about how the public playtest has gone, what they learnt from it and what is to come. It appears the final playtest is almost over and that the recent release to the DnD Next community was to be the last before they did the hard work working out the maths of a balanced system and creating what will become the 5th Edition of D&D. I had previously downloaded the Next documents as I had mentioned to Jeffrey Tadlock (the fine proprietor of the Iron Tavern) that I may do a review or two. When I looked at it though I just could not bring myself to get into it. I saw good and bad in the first few pages and so I left it.

But this blog has gotten me to download the system again and I have been doing some reading of the contents over the past few days. What in this article got me to reconsider? It was this quote from Mike that offered me hope “So, what did we learn from the public playtest? In some cases you confirmed things, in others you dispelled some notions that had become lodged in R&D’s view of you.” Then he lists his five points that they learnt the most which were:

We like simplicity. We like games where we are up and running quickly and are able to create games quickly with simple tools
We want classes that can contribute in every situation though we are OK with specialised classes if they balance things out on a broader scale
We want tools that build adventures quickly and easily allowing us to focus on the plot rather than the mechanics
We like flexible rules. Give us a general rule that can be applied across many instances rather than a rule for every situation
We want a game that will fit several styles of play and above all, a game that works

So I have now retracted my statements about fifth edition and I am looking at the Next material through new eyes. If the D&D R&D take the above five points on in the system D&D should be looking like a very good game. I have read a bit of the material now and am ready to make a few overall observations on the new material. I have double checked the FAQ page and the people over at WotC are happy for me to blog about my experience with the system and so here we go.

I am really quite excited about what I have read and seen so far in the system. I was trying to explain it to my Pathfinder players last Tuesday night by saying that the system felt like a nod to the retro systems without it actually being retro. I really do feel like I am reading D&D, not a complete rehash of the system! The system feels restrained, checked, simple. I really felt it was a bit like Dungeon World with some of the ways that it has reigned its previous editions excesses in. The system has been scaled back and a lot of effort has been placed into making the character classes have a lot of flavor and role-playing potential. Previous editions really seemed to lose a lot of the character class flavor and they have drawn it right back in this edition.

The core classes remain, and I mean core. The Cleric, Fighter, Mage (no longer Wizard) and Rogue make up the core contingent of classes with Barbarian, Druid, Monk, Paladin and Ranger also present as options that are not pure classes. But each of these have a really distinct feel to them that makes me feel retro but offers some great color to the classes. It is not only the classes that have had an injection of flavor, the whole text has with many Forgotten Realms references made in examples (this crushed one of my players who loves Greyhawk!).

All the traditional races are present with some variants (e.g. High Elf) so you will find the Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Halfling and Human in these pages. Variants are treated as off-shoots of the main race so you would find the High Elf detailed in the Elf section. Again, these are delightfully portrayed and have a nice flavor to most of the races with only the half-breeds being terse on information apart from their statistical effects.

Skills have gone by the wayside, kind of. They have now been wrapped up as attribute rolls. You do not get skill points to spend each level so it really depends on your statistics how well you are at most of the skills that were included in third and fourth edition. For example, if you wanted to patch up a bleeding companion it would ordinarily require a Heal check but now it requires a Wisdom roll.

The rules on How to play are fantastic. I was through them so quickly that I was shocked! They have some great rules supporting a very intuitive, simple system! Intuitive and simple? Words I never thought I would say in connection with D&D again! I laughed out loud after the combat section because it was so simple and so short that I figured there had to be more. But you know what? There wasn’t and it looks like it will work seamlessly which is something I craved for in these games. One of the problems I had with third and fourth edition was the fact that anytime someone moved you had to reach for a rulebook to see if it met one of four hundred different criteria for various triggers (yes, I know I am exaggerating but not much).

Feats exist still but they are not the broad range of multi-configurable minor benefit wielding mechanics that they used to be. In fact they are entirely optional and to take a Feat you have to give up one of the flavor powers that are offered to your class. There are only twenty odd Feats listed in the section although I am sure that will grow before the final product is released.

That is about as far as I have looked in the system so far, although I have flicked through the Bestiary and made one major discovery. Things have really been toned back. Do not expect to see creatures in the coming edition with horrendously huge Armour Classes any more. their stats have been toned right down as has the increase in player character to hit bonuses etc. But I will talk to that after I have actually run a game of the system which I hope to do soon. There is no telling how good a system is just from reading it so I already have a couple of people keen to give Next a run before next week where I hope to do a play review of the system here for the Iron Tavern. Until then, keep rolling!

Mark Knights is 39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia. I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games. I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM. When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules. I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner. When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be. On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

Instant NPCs – Part I

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

In any campaign, sandbox or not, the world has to be filled with people coming and going to give it life. Otherwise our PCs are just wandering around talking to themselves or a bunch of monsters. And yes, monsters can be fun (I love a good dungeon crawl), but the roleplaying aspect of our hobby comes from more than combat.

So are NPCs a dime a dozen? It wouldn’t seem so. When I was GMing regularly I had a list of names that I could grab something from when my players decided they needed to visit with someone. But a name isn’t usually enough. After all, who is “Bob” really? He works at the blacksmith down on the corner, but what does he do? What’s his personality like? How does he dress? And that’s when I always got a bit drowned in details. We could go into detail on each and every character in the “world” the characters inhabit, but what does that mean?

Details it turns out are sometimes unnecessary. I find I really like the “One Sentence NPC” approach that Johnn Four pioneered at the Roleplaying Tips site (you can see the issue with the article here), but I want to streamline it a little.

All I really need is a name, a personality trait, and a motivation. The rest sort of handles itself in the process of roleplaying the NPC.

Let’s start with the names. I prefer to have a list prepared that I can just randomly select from, cross off so I don’t use it again, and move on. So let’s generate a list. There are a number of terrific random generators I use regularly:

Behind the Name offers all sorts of categories to help guide your name generation. You could specify the “Breton” and “Hillbilly” categories, select “Masculine” as the gender, click “Generate a Name” and instantly have one pop up. I got Corentin, Yanick, and Gwilherm, which are all fun.
The Fantasy Name Generator from Samuel Stoddard at Rinkworks is one I use the most. It has two options – Simple and Advanced. I usually just go with Simple and click “Generate Names” to create a block I can pull from. The Advanced side requires a bit of ramp-up to learn how to use, but you have a ton of customizable options available. We’ll grab three “simple” names here – Denad, Alet, and Tai’sul.
Seventh Sanctum has a huge number of available options for names (and many many other things). In this case, I like the “Fantasy Name Extreme Generator”, which definitely offers some over-the-top names for your list. After generating 25 names, I’ll grab Blizzard, Flora, and Zeal.
And last but not least there’s the Fantasy Name generator at Chaotic Shiny. Like Seventh Sanctum, Chaotic Shiny has a ton of fun generators to play with, but the name tool works great. Tell it how many you want and what gender and it chugs away giving me Kad, Traska, and Kailin.

Obviously there are many more out there. Use your Google-fu to find a few and let me know if you find any other cool ones. 🙂

Editor’s Note: And don’t forget Brian’s own License Plates as Name Generators article here for great name ideas.

So here’s the name list we’ve put together. It works well for a random d12 roll at first or just the random stab with a finger:

Corentin
Yanick
Gwilherm
Denad
Alet
Tai’sul
Blizzard
Flora
Zeal
Kad
Traska
Kailin

Once we have our names, we need to find some traits. Again, there are quite a few online references to choose from or existing supplements to pick up.

Luckily Johnn Four’s 3 Line PCs book offers just such a list. There’s 1000 traits in the list to choose from. Randomly roll a d1000 or use the phonebook method of scrolling to a page and putting your finger down. Everything from Able & Brutish to Young & Zany. Just pick one.

Or if you are looking for a list on the web, here are a few I found:

Fiction Writers’ Mentor has a good list of almost 450 broad terms to use.
The Character Trait Descriptive Adjectives and Other Words list has a bunch of generic terms that could easily be used.
The Hypertext d20 SRD has a solid random trait table (d100, each described with a bit of text) that can easily be adapted to other systems.
The Pathfinder SRD site has a list broken down into numerous categories such as Combat, Faith, Magic, Social, etc. Some of them are quite entertaining and most if not all could be adapted.

And lastly we need some form of motivation. Why drives these characters to do whatever it is they do or behave the way they do? Here again are a few resources on the web with lists of motivations…

If you haven’t explored it, the TVTropes.org site is a treasure trove of plots and other story tidbits. They have a great list of common tropes used to motivate characters that should offer some interesting story ideas.
And Alric @ The RPG Athenaeum has a great article written back in 2009 that offers 24 different motivations to figure out what the character thinks is important.

So with these three broad, random lists in hand why don’t we create a few NPCs? Next time we’ll do just that. 🙂

Brian “Fitz” Fitzpatrick is a Software Engineer who manages (or is that mangles) Game Knight Reviews and tinkers with writing game materials via his Moebius Adventures imprint. When he’s not writing about gaming, he’s actually gaming or at least thinking about gaming in some capacity. During the non-writing, non-gaming time he’s likely trying to keep up with his wife and two daughters or wrangling code for a living!

En Route Encounters

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

It has been a while since I ran a good sandbox fantasy campaign. I like the adventure paths and enjoy going through them, but they are linear and it can be tough to really have the feeling of go anywhere and try to do anything. Even though I haven’t run that kind of campaign lately I still hold on to and seek out books that aid in that kind of campaign. There are not a lot out there that are easily adaptable and portable into different fantasy games and worlds. This week I am going to look at three books of the En Route series by Atlas Games for their Penumbra line. These books offer a variety of different encounters that can easily be dropped into almost any fantasy campaign.

The En Route series of books boasts some impressive writers. We have author credits by Keith Baker, Brannon Hollingsworth, Chris Aylott, Spike Jones, Justin Achilli, and many other familiar names. The first two are written for 3e and the third is written for 3.5 ed D&D using the OGL, but these are very mechanics light products making them very easy to port into any other fantasy game. Since the books are older it should be easy to find them relatively cheap. A quick look on Amazon.com shows they can be purchased for around $5 a piece.

The En Route series are books featuring simple encounters designed to be used when the PCs are traveling from one place to another. Some are for on the road, in a city, a tavern, in a forest, on the sea, and other places. There is a variety of different locations with some unusual ones like in a goblin encampment or whenever the party teleports. Each encounter is a bit more in depth with great plot ideas that a DM can carry forward. This is one of the great things I like about the books, the encounters can be throw away encounters the PCs run into and then can forget about. But I like encounters that might originally feel like that but a DM can cleverly use something established there and showcase it later in the campaign. I think it helps tie different adventures together and helps the players remember what is happening in the campaign because they know something that is happening now can come back and help or hinder them in the future.

Between the three books there are approximately 50 different encounters. Each covers about four to eight pages. There are simple ones like the Door. It is designed for second level characters and while wandering a road they encounter signs that say something like “Are you Worthy?” and “Do you think you have what it takes?”. Ahead off to the side of the road is a small trail that leads to a door in the side of a rock facing covered in mystical runes and animal carvings. The door is locked and trapped. What lies behind the door will be remembered by the party.

There is the Haunting Place, which says it is for level 10 but I would reduce it to lower level. The magic of a level 10 party could easily make this encounter too easy or they could kill the creature they are trying to help. It is built on the idea of a summoned monster trying to get home but there is a communication problem between it and anyone it tries to get to help it. It can really set the scene for a spooky encounter as the players are trying to figure out exactly what is going on.

Many of the encounters are not combat encounters. Some use illusions or tricks to set up situations that are not quite apparent to the players at first. One of my favorites is the Glass House by Keith Baker. It is a simple situation in which a magical experiment inside in Inn turns the place and everyone inside invisible. The PCs are assumed to be outside and witness the Inn and everyone vanish. There is a mystery of what happened and how to undo it all but it sets up for some fun and different kind of encounter.

The En Route series is perfect for DMs looking for something a little extra to help out a gaming session or serve as a small distraction. None of them will take a full session or even a half of session but all of them could if the DM wants to put in a little work to add additional levels of complexity. I like these for a sandbox campaign as it would be easy to just have the books handy and grab them when needed. There are a few that could be used in Adventure Paths to just put in something different and not directly connected to the AP. Most of them are for lower level groups and any of these that say they are for higher ones like level 10 and up I would pay close attention to, as most of them I feel would work better for lower level characters. There is a lot of creativity and cleverness in these books coming from authors who were not as well-known as they are today.

Do You Tarrasque?

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

I have never, as a player, been caught in a game with a Tarrasque. Have you? This creature is one of the most iconic creatures in all the bestiary books I have ever read. We have seen at least five different official versions over time and there is always one thing that can be said about the Tarrasque, and that is you just can’t keep it down. Ever. Period. Don’t mess with it because it will kill you.

The Tarrasque has always been an open topic of conversation at the D&D and Pathfinder tables. It is said if a GM ever tires of his current campaign the certain way to end it is to introduce a Tarrasque. But what are the origins of such a beast. When it got placed in the Pathfinder Bestiary I realized that the adorable little critter (not) was’t the Intellectual Property (IP) of Wizards of the Coast (WotC) as I had previously believed. I became curious as to the origins of such an iconic creature in the game so I went and looked at books (yes, the paper kind) and the internet to track some information down. Was there a high level adventure hiding somewhere that I could take advantage of debasing the myth that the Tarrasque was a simple rampaging creature full of wrath and destruction?

The legend of St. Martha is actually the source of the Tarrasque story and it stems from a book of legends called the “Golden Legend” which was penned in the mid 1200’s although more was added through the years. Over a thousand manuscripts of this book has survived as it was exceptionally popular in its time. The source of the story comes from France where there was a dragon like creature known as the Taresque who lived in and around the Nerluc area in Provence, France. The creature was laying waste to a wide swathe of territory and nothing seemed to be able to stop it.

The Taresque of legend was not the colossal magical beast of the D&D books. In fact it was said to have six short bear legs, an ox-like body covered by a turtle shell, a scaly scorpion tail and the head of a lion. It was said to burn anything it touched which was the way it was ruining the land. It is unclear if this was before or after it had been attacked by knights and catapults though so it may have been peaceful before it. Regardless, anything they fought with could not defeat the creature.

Enter our heroine, St. Martha. Understanding the damage the creature was causing, she sought out the creature in the hope that her faith in God would protect her and change the Tarasque to a creature of God. On finding the creature St Martha placated the creature with hymns and readings from the Christian book. The creature joined with St Martha who took it to the city to show the people there that the creature was not a threat. As she approached with the creature the people of the city rose up and attacked the beast in fear. The Taresque did not fight back in any way and the city folk killed the creature with their hatred.

After the destruction of the creature St Martha preached to the masses and converted them to christianity. Ashamed at what they had done to the Taresque the newly converted followers of christianity renamed their town to Tarascon in honour of the creature.

There are obviously quite a few differences between the Tarrasque of D&D or Pathfinder and the Taresque of St. Martha’s Legend. But the tale does offer an interesting insight into perhaps the way it could be used in a game. The Taresque of legend appears to have had little overt intelligence but it was aware enough to make choices and this is reflected in the statistics of the Tarrasque as found on the Pathfinder Reference Document (PRD) here. Obviously the creature would listen to reason and therefore had a good Wisdom again reflected in statistics. It does appear in the legend that the creature itself was not an angry rampager in its infancy and it was likely the intervention of man attacking it that caused it to rampage, so it was likely a Neutral creature reacting to being attacked, again reflected in the statistics.

Where the Tarrasque of the game differs though is basically on every other aspect. It is a colossal creature which is not reflected by the statistics. It looks different to the legend representation, it regenerates (even if it has been disintegrated!) and no known method has been found to kill it! In the statistics it truly does seem that this creature is something a GM uses when they have had enough! The only time I have ever used one was in a what if scenario with a mate of mine. It was “What if a Tarrasque met a Hekatonkheires Titan (Bestiary 3). By the way, the Titan won just by stunning the Tarrasque, beating it down to below 0 HP and then banishing it to another dimension.

Using the St. Martha legend you could handle the Tarrasque a different way though. Perhaps even using the same story line where the monstrous beast is simply found and attacked out of fear as your high level party approach the area. The Tarrasque retaliates out of anger for being threatened and disturbed and the players need to find a way to get through to the creature instead of finding a way to destroy the beast. This creature does not need to be the death of the party, in fact it could be a great ally in a time of need if they take the time to solve the beasts issue and the issue those that attacked it have.

I always find it interesting to look at the history of creatures. Find their folklore or legend origins and you will likely find a seed for an adventure. I have never heard of anyone (seriously) using a Tarrasque in a game yet it reappears edition after edition as this gigantic monstrosity. It generates a lot of discussion at the table and while I am sure there is a lot of visits to the Tarrasque page to check its statistics there are very few games that have ever employed one. I am keen to hear in the comments from those that have used one in a serious way or for those of you that have ideas on how else you could introduce the Tarrasque to your game. Let me know, and until next week, keep rolling!

Gen Con – A Reflection

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Gen Con is a gaming convention held yearly in Indianapolis. It features role playing games, board games, card games, and LARPs. If there is only one gaming convention people go to a year it is usually this one. This is the first year that it has been held in Indianapolis that I have not gone. I’m just a few hours away by car and I have plenty of friends to share a room with. But it just was not in the cards this year. It saddens me as there are a lot of friends that I only see there. Gen Con for me is not about gaming it is about the friends I have gained through gaming. For the socially awkward introverts like myself that is something to really cherish.

Gen Con is huge. It is really hard to imagine how big it is even if you are there. There are sections of the convention that people are not aware of because they focus on events some people are not interested in. I make an effort to walk around to all the places in the convention hall and all the rooms in the many different hotels that they use just so I can get a better appreciation of it all. There are all kinds of board and RPGs being run at all hours. They have GMs sign up to run games and then people buy tickets for these events. It is one of the main attractions at the conventions. People can sign up for games they know and love or try out ones that they have not been able to play before. It is a great way to get an idea of what else is out there in the industry. It is a part of Gen Con I avoid. I don’t like their system to sign up for events and I have better luck with games at smaller conventions. In all my time at Gen Con I have only played in one event and that was True Dungeon which I really disliked. I have run three games there and those were done as a favor for a friend who asked me to help him run some events. I play and run games with my large group of friends off book. We have our own GMs and a huge player pool. We do RPGs and board games and some card games and even miniatures.

I don’t think Gen Con likes that we do this. One year we had games organized on Google Calendar and Gen Con asked us to take it down. We used to use the open gaming space in the Hyatt and Gen Con people would harass us and then that spaced vanished. Now Open Gaming is in the convention center in smaller space that is never open. We would use table in the Embassy Suites but last year they were even cracking down on those and limiting when they could be used. I’m sure they are cracking down on all kinds of events that don’t bring the convention money. It doesn’t make me want to sign up for their events. It makes me want to game elsewhere.

My Gen Con experiences are about the people. I know gamers that fill their convention with events but that is too much pressure. I take a more laid back approach. I’ll schedule a game or two each day leaving plenty of time for just meeting and talking to people. I would spend time walking around and just see who I might run into and if they have a free hour to hang out with them. I’m a morning person so I would always be up early and I knew which of my other friends would be up and we would get a nice breakfast somewhere. It is a great way to start off the day with breakfast and good gaming conversations with good friends before the masses wake up.

Nights are filled with parties. I will attend more parties at Gen Con than I will the rest of the year. I do not drink alcohol, so that activity at the parties is lost on me. But after a few hour of conversation there is usually some people just wanting to play something so we will throw together a board game or some kind of gaming event. Even if we don’t there are few things better then talking and not drinking with friends.

The dealer hall is a big focus of the convention for many gamers. It is the place that the vendors are and it has reduced hours. There is always some hot new item that hundreds of people want and that causes the ‘Running of the Fatbeards’. It is not complimentary term. The doors will open and hundreds of people will run in trying to buy what they want. I’ve seen it and it looks dangerous. I’m really surprised no one has been trampled yet. It is only luck no one gets injured. Convention Staff just stand back and try not to get hurt themselves. I used to spend a lot of money in the dealer hall. As the years have gone by though the old out of print books I want, I mostly have. There are fewer and fewer items being made that interest me. It is the great irony of a gamer. When you are young you have all kinds of time to play games but no money to do so. When you get older you have the money but no longer the time.

One hassle in Indy is that Gen Con doesn’t seem to get the city to itself. There are usually other events going on that clash with Gen Con. Sometimes it is other conventions, or a preseason football game, or some kind of motorcycle rally. This can make it difficult to get a hotel or parking. Parking is expensive, at least compared to the large cities near me. It is about three times more expensive there. Hotels are also not cheap, especially if one likes to do like I do and arrive Tuesday and leave on Monday. It is more expensive but worth it. I’ve stayed in seven different hotels there and a condo. None of them have been bad.

Gen Con is a great experience and something I look forward to every year. I am sad I am not there now and not going to enjoy the great experiences. It is not a perfect convention by any means and I know the way I experience it is going to be very different from how other people do.

Review: Ultimate Campaign – Part 4

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Thank you all for following me through the review of this mighty new addition to the core Pathfinder books by Paizo. It has been quite the journey. There have been tears, laughter, pain, sorrow, joy but it is now coming to a close with a review of the final chapter, Chapter 4 Kingdoms and War.

This chapter is paradoxically the smallest chapter in page size (around 50 pages) but dominates the table of contents at the start of the book. The Table of contents is a two column affair on one page and this chapter takes up practically all of the second column. Noting this I actually thought it was going to be a piecemeal affair that would irritate me to a large degree so with a cautious eye I moved into the Chapter and began to read.

Just before I give you any detail about the chapter I am going to have to warn you about something. I am declaring that I don’t really like the idea of a campaign that centers around kingdom building. It takes a certain type of GM and player to want to play this style of game. I see it too much as an administrative affair with a lot of extra work involved. I also see that in reality an adventurer would not be able to rule a kingdom unless it were a tribe of nomads or the like. Ruling a kingdom comes with responsibility and Kings and Queens do not get to simply wander off when they want. With that off my chest let us move back to some detail of the actual book.

Kingdoms

The chapter starts with a focus on building a kingdom from scratch but is unusually organized. You read an introduction about how they want to approach the chapter and then they suggest if this is the first time that you have read the chapter, go forward and read a section on building a settlement before going back and reading from that point onward. I found this extremely weird. I did as they suggested and the chapter certainly flowed correctly by doing this but the question has to be asked. Why? Why not just put the section on Settlements at that point in the chapter. There is no major problem it causes on the second read through and I would prefer to read it in that order all the time. This is just a complete oddity of the whole book and the question distracted me from a lot of detail.

The kingdom building rules borrow a lot of ideas from Chapter 3 and Chapter 2 to build sort of a mini game that is Kingdoms. You follow a set Kingdom turn that is broken up into four phases representing a month of game time: upkeep, edict, income, and event. The upkeep is where you balance the kingdom’s resources; edicts allow you to declare actions for the coming month that could be good or bad; income is where you get to fill the treasury up again; and event is out of your control and covers events that you may have to deal with directly.

You get to build the kingdom up from scratch if you follow the default manner and you build your kingdom up in hexes as opposed to squares on a map grid. This follows the way the exploration is handled in the third chapter and I am wondering if these decisions have been influenced by the development of the Pathfinder MMO by Goblinworks. The blogs detailing the making of the Pathfinder MMO from last year are beginning to look eerily similar to the way they treat building a kingdom in here. The question is did the development of this book affect the computer game or did what the computer gamers want to do influence the book? Does it even matter?

The rest of kingdom building is similar to building a structure that is covered in chapter 2 and you have a bunch of buildings etc. that you can build up in settlements or expand your territory and the like. There are a lot of detailed rules (and then an optional rules section) that add a great deal of complexity to the system that kind of made me wish I was sleeping rather than reading a bunch more rules for an already rules heavy setting. But, and there is a but, I got through it and have to say I did not hate the section. In fact I thought it was quite novel and that it would probably be very valuable to the accountants of this world who like to role play as well. Here they can build their own kingdoms and exert control over vassals whilst balancing resources. All in all it is well contained and offers a good level of detail to this style of play. Don’t get me wrong, it is a section of the book I will likely never look at again but it is worth looking at if that is what you like.

Mass Battles

The next section was on war or mass battles in Pathfinder. I was actually quite keen to see what they had done with this as I have run mass battles in the game before but I had scripted them rather than used any type of mechanic. That said I have seen plenty of systems try to approach this subject and fail horribly by making systems that just fail completely to be intuitive and easy to use.

Paizo have come through with the goods on this system though. I started to read it and thought that it would be good if they did it just by providing something similar to the current combat system with a little less complexity (an army can’t grapple another army!) and that is exactly what they have provided. The system is intuitive as it uses concepts that are similar to the current roll 1d20 + a bonus with a target number of an AC system that currently exists.

They have added a nice usable morale system and given a good description of what this means to the unit. In fact this system is quite good that I may be using that in the one on one combats at times when I think creatures might make a run for it. Things like the commander can affect these rolls or give additional benefits. The commander gives certain boons to their army and will know certain tactics based on their level in Profession(Soldier) which I thought was also a great way of giving value to skills that players do not often take.

Finally, they cover loads of special abilities that the army made be able to use (what if you have a unit of regenerating trolls etc) and it just works. They teach you how to create a unit based on existing skill levels and then also give you a horde of army units that was a really good addition I had not overly expected. I have to say that the mass battles section of this chapter gets two big thumbs up from me and it will be something I refer to again!

The Book Overall

Now I have the content covered I want to say a few more things about this book. First and foremost it is very well presented, but I am pretty sure I don’t need to mention that. Paizo always make their books look remarkable with great artwork and layout. One thing that was a nice addition for this book was that they added a lot of forms for you to use with their system. If you look over the last month of posts you will find how I mention there is a lot more bookwork to be maintained with a lot of this material and they have done their best to give you the tools that you need to use.

Is this book the killer I thought it would be? Well, that is hard to answer as it is not the book I thought it would be. It is a book that helps with building a campaign but it is also a book that does not tell you how to build a campaign. It gives you a lot of systems that can assist you with looking at a lot of different things that some of your players might like to do. With the exception of the first chapter which is something I would like us all to adapt as GM’s (getting our players to get into background that is) the rest of the systems will work for some and not others so you need to pick and choose as you go.

I will say that this book has surprised me though. There are a lot of rules in here for you to read and go over. It is a long read too although it is only set at 250 pages or so the material can get a bit dry so you have to put away all the distractions to read some sections. But I am totally glad I did. This is an exceptional valuable sourcebook to me and will see a lot of use as I continue to pursue my craft as a GM. Some sections will never be used again but on a whole that is OK. You cannot please all of the people all of the time and we all have different focuses in game which is what this book represents.

So, to an overall score, considering everything I have read and fully understanding what this book is about. With its minor flaws and overall view I can’t give this book any less than five out of five castles overall. This is a great book to have in your collection. Save up your pennies and get yourself a copy!

One final footnote, just as I exit the long winded review mode I got an email telling me that my copy of Mythic Adventures is on its way to me. It is the next sourcebook for the core rules and is something that I have been long looking forward to! So there are likely to be more reviews in the near future! But until then, keep rolling!

Movie Trailers as Adventure Seeds

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Like most GMs and writers, I’m always looking for inspiration. Sometimes it comes from within. Sometimes you have to go looking for it. And one place it occurred to me to look for such inspiration is in movie trailers.

I’m sure you’re wondering why use movie trailers. But if you think about it, they’re the perfect vehicle for getting plots, settings, and characters. In about 60-120 seconds, you get the rough outline for the setup of the story. Plenty of plot points to snag quickly. And you don’t get bogged down in all the details as you do when you watch the whole thing. Plus, and this is the key, without all the context your mind is more free to interpret what it sees and put things together in different ways.

Sure, you could watch the whole movie. Or the whole television program. Or read the whole book. But it’s too much information. You might get a few plot points here or there, but it’s a different beast entirely. For our purposes we want broad strokes and nothing more. The details just get in the way.

The steps are simple. Pick a trailer. Watch the trailer. Take some notes about key elements. Ponder the notes and turn them into an adventure idea.

Let’s start with an easy one. Take a trailer like the one for the movie Devil’s Pass (watch it here). I’m not a huge horror fan, but I find that just about any trailer can be broken into story elements around which a story could be built.

In this case, you get a few high points…

A past expedition went to explore a mountain pass and disappeared
A modern expedition is going to recreate the expedition /li>
They arrive in the valley (snowy or otherwise) that the past expedition was heading to
They get strange readings on their equipment
They decide they don’t want to hang around, but it’s nearing nightfall and it’s too dangerous to leave
In the night something/someone triggers an avalanche that they get hurt in but survive
In the morning they are attacked by a group of people
They find refuge in an old cave system or underground facility
But something is in there with them that’s decidedly not friendly

Doesn’t this sound like a solid adventure for your PCs? I don’t even really have to massage it much.

Though the movie appears to be set largely in a wintery location in the mountains, it could easily be moved to just about any location. Perhaps somewhere isolated like a dark wooded area or a desert. Or even somewhere in space… a distant world, shipwreck, or whatever. Just about any group with a secret agenda might have a hidden location they’d rather not have someone bring to light could be the antagonists… And perhaps they have something truly evil in store.

As with all ideas, your imagination is the only limitation.

So you don’t think this is a one trick pony, let’s take another trailer… This time for the upcoming Jobs movie about Steve Jobs (watch it here). Not a movie I plan on seeing. And yes, this one is a little tougher to translate into something usable. 🙂

We can break it down into a few points:

Jobs goes to college
Jobs drops out of college
Gets involved with girl
Gets involved with Wozniac, who creates Apple I
Businessman gets involved
Apple gets big
Jobs and Apple have fight
Jobs fired
Jobs finds himself again
Jobs back at Apple making history

Let’s change it slightly and go with two wizards who went into business together to produce a better quality of magical items. Quality over variety or production. But when one wanted to change the company philosophy towards increasing production by making a deal with dark forces, the two parted ways. Years later, the wizard who left returns to find an empire in ruins because his partner had sold out to a demon. The second wizard asks the PCs to help find and stop his old friend, now corrupted beyond saving… Can they save the empire? Can they save his friend?

Not quite as clean a conversion, but I think I ended up with something usable. In fact, I may start doing a weekly challenge over at my Moebius Adventures blog to have folks submit movie trailers for me to try and massage into adventure plots!

What can YOU come up with? Pick a random movie trailer on the Internet and see! Be sure to put your adventure plots and the movie trailer link into your comments – we’d love to read them!

Review: Denizens of Avadnu

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Potential is a powerful word. It is used all the time and seen in the people around us. We get a hint at what might be and we hope to see the potential realized. Many times it isn’t and we are left wondering “what if?” I can’t imagine what it must be like for companies that impress with their first gaming product but are never able to live up to the potential the gamers see who get their first book. This week I’m looking at one of the best and most creative monster books for D&D/ Pathfinder I have seen. I like it better than Privateer Press’ Monsternomicon, Necromancer Game’s Tome of Horrors, and Green Ronin’s Advanced Bestiary. All three of those books are well worth owning and writing about. I am going with a lesser known book by a company that doesn’t seem to exist anymore and needs to be seen by more gamers instead of the more popular selections.

Denizens of Avadnu is a monster book written for 3.5 D&D. It is the first product Inner Circle produced for their Violet Dawn setting. While a great book I think it was a mistake to make the monster book first and not the setting first. There was a PDF release of epic level monsters and I think some information on unique races to the world but I don’t recall they ever published the full setting. The book was also a bit expensive I felt at the time. It was priced at $40 for a 225 page full color hardcover book. On their gaming site http://www.icirclegames.com/index.html you can order the book for just $10. You might be able to find it cheaper than that, but I do like giving money to the publishers especially small press ones like them.

Flipping through the book I am still amazed at the full color art and the overall look in this book. It is beautifully done and still one of the best looking monster books. That is just the beginning as the creativity is off the charts. The monsters are all original and feel very different. There is nothing in here that seems like a goblin or orc with a few changes. There are no new devils or demons or other monsters like those that just build off of other creatures. Each creature is given its own page. This allows for a lot of good information and that is needed with these creatures. The normal description and combat entries are there, but there is also information for adventure ideas using the creatures and specific information of the creature in their setting of Avandu. Going through and just reading the Avandu sections really makes me want to see a full setting that brings together all of the great little details offered in this book.

One of my favorite creatures in here is called the Dread Spire. It is an aquatic creature rarely seen in places not thousands of feet below the surface of the oceans. It resembles a huge tower with tentacles coming out from it and it is different and weird. The book also has animals and vermin, though each is also given a unique twist. I like that it introduces creatures that are non-Earth native but treats them like normal animals.

Denizens of Avandu is one of those books that even after almost ten years I find myself keeping my copy though multiple book purges and finding ways to use it. It is great for those D&D players that think they have seen everything. There are some really odd and cool creatures in here and being able to show the players amazing art of the creatures makes them that much better.

Review: Ultimate Campaign – Part 3

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

I thank you for bearing with me through the review of this book. There is just so much material packed into the 253 pages this book offers that I would have turned myself inside out trying to fit it all into one review. So we are moving on to Chapter 3 which is innocuously called Campaign Systems. So lets pull it apart in the penultimate (pun intended) review of this book.

Campaign Systems. The title of the chapter. I wrote many posts about campaign systems on my own blog and this one so I thought I had finally reached what I truly hoped this book contained. How to build a campaign! Excellent, the secrets of Paizo laid bare so I too can create my masterpiece adventure path. I was devastated to find I was completely wrong. This chapter had no insight on how to build your campaign from the ground up.

Of course that is because they have done it all before. In the core book and the Game Master Guide there is plenty of advice they give on these very topics. Perhaps not to the depth everyone likes but that is where I can fill in the gaps by writing blogs about different styles. In the chapter they cover numerous systems (meaning extra rules) to cover various concepts in game and how to manage them as a player and a GM.

There is good, bad, and ugly in this chapter. I was smiling with glee at stuff that surprised me. I wore a frown of confusion where I came across material that I think does not need rules (that is putting rules on it reduced role playing and increased complexity). Then I was left dumbfounded in several sections of the chapter wondering why on Golarion they had even bothered. I think a few of these systems really do depend on the style of game you play, although some of them would be much better suited to other games for sure.

The chapter starts with a fresh take on alignment. Well fresh may be a little generous, but it gives an alternative system that allows for shades of alignment. So you could be Lawful Neutral but closer to the Neutral end of Lawful and the Good side of Neutral. This introduces a mechanic which allows your alignment to shift with actions and time. Sometimes with repercussions, other times without. I rarely point to alignment in game (though I do where class powers depend on it) so this system is very unlikely to be used in my campaign. It is, on the other hand, a good basis for a system of alignment that may help people new to the game to understand it. They do try to redefine the alignments in a clearer manner also in this section but I do not think they are any clearer than the entries in the Core Rulebook.

Then they broke out bargaining which literally gave me a headache. Do not get me wrong, I love mercantile campaigns (I run one in Traveller) but Pathfinder? Really? The algorithms (solutions to the problem) are unrealistic, simplified and frustrating. It is very hard to follow the flow and I can see this coming to very little use. I really did wonder why they had included this section when the rules that exist with bluff, diplomacy, sense motive and the like all function quite well in this regard anyway.

Then the next section about companions surprised me. Surprised me in a major way so much that I broke one of my personal rules and wrote on my own blog about this section prior to writing about it here. You can read that blog here if you want, but the following pretty much covers it. The GM should control some of the player linked companions! I have always played games where if you had a familiar, animal companion, cohort, followers then you dealt with them as the player. This system really turned that on its head for me. They suggest that animal companions, followers, and to some degree cohorts should all be controlled at some level by the GM. Reading through this section it made sense why and I was grinning from ear to ear that something had surprised me.

The section also went over followers (obtained through the Leadership feat) and what they meant in game which is something I never really fathomed. It was a brief description but it gave me a point of reference as I realised that a follower was kind of like a contact that had interest in you. There was some discussion on my blog that this should really be a role playing consequence but I see this as OK. if you get Leadership and you want to have an NPC that has been following your career in a town then why not. I do agree though that this style of contact should be limited to the Leadership feat.

Which lead me to the first real ugly section of the book. The next section was Contacts. I did not read this until after my blog discussions were over and I really wish I had. This section just completely devalues the Leadership feat that they had been describing by introducing a system for contacts. Come on! That is what the role playing is for if you do not want to take the Leadership feat. Why should there be a system that allows for a similar structure than what was just described. And if you aren’t going to describe how to make a campaign from scratch in the “Ultimate Campaign” guide because you have done that before why go over relationships with NPC’s when it is done in at least three books I can think of. This section seems counterintuitive, introduces a lot of bookkeeping to the GM and I just do not understand why it was even included.

You are probably beginning to realise there is a lot of “campaign systems” in this chapter and there are, fifteen to be exact. There are a couple more I want to talk to but I will sum the others that I am not going into too much detail with here. The Exploration, Honor, Lineage, Relationships, Retirement and Young Characters sections were entertaining and I may take some concepts from them into game. The Taxation and Investment sections should never have been included. Tax the characters? We are considering tax and percentage return in a fantasy system… No thank you. So that leaves me three sections to talk about. So I end on a positive note I am going to go from worst to best…

Retraining. There is a chapter here about how your character can retrain any change they have made in their character as long as you have time and gold. This is the most ludicrous waste of space of a system I have ever read. Six levels in and you realise you did not like becoming a necromancer? that is OK, take a holiday and become an evoker instead! Taken a Wisdom upgrade and realised Dex would have been a better choice, no problem! This is just a nightmare. In reality this is normally dealt with with a discussion between the player and the GM. Player: Look, I was a bit rushed last time I levelled and I think I should have taken x feat, can I change it? GM: Sure, you haven’t used the one you took in any major way, no problem. This entire idea of retraining devalues things like spell replacement in Sorceror (and other classes) and is like saying to a player not to worry about considering what you want to play because you can always change it later with a nominal sum of gold and a bit of in game time. If you can’t tell, this section really annoyed me.

Reputation and Fame. If all you have are the core books then this is likely to have some value for you. I collect Adventure Paths (AP) and also some campaign supplements (especially if they are mentioned in the AP as useful) and so this is about the fourth system I have come across that deals with this concept. And it is also the worst system of the ones that I have looked at. Why do they not just migrate the simplest system they have created and use it? To me it would be something similar to the system contained in the Faction Guide which was simple, transferrable and easy to understand. Seriously Paizo, look at what you have and stop reinventing the wheel time and time again.

Magic Item Creation. I loved the second half of this. The first half talks about how to stop min maxing players from exploiting loopholes in the system that exists and how you really should not alter a lot about the way things work (like rechargeable wands or making an intelligence modifying pair of boots). It made average reading and as I am playing a character that I am considering to use as a creator of magic items it was timely. the absolute best thing about this section was the bit that has potential for creating role playing opportunities! Think to (and try not to groan) Harry Potter where he gets his wand that has a strand of unicorn hair (or something similar in it) to make the wand. That is the cool stuff that you want to get involved in but most times for an item you spend your gold, roll the dice and make your item. In the final part of this system they talk about rare agents you can use to make COOL ROLEPLAYING OPPORTUNITIES WITH!!!!!!! Dragon heartblood! Dire animal brain! Giant squid ink and many more! Oh the possibilities. I seriously disagree with the writers that the cost of such items should be taken out of treasure hordes because you get this object as well but apart from that this is the stuff that I love to see in this book.

So, after sprinkling some stardust on my swords to grant them a light that you can search the dark places of the world with I think I had better sum up. This is the chapter where cracks in the overall coolness of this book begin to show. In summary let us look at these sections and put them where I consider they lay.

The Good: Alignment, Companions, Exploration, Honor, Lineage, Magic Item Creation, Relationships, Retirement, Young Characters.

The Bad: Bargaining, Investment, Taxation.

The Ugly: Contacts, Retraining, Reputation and Fame

The italicized section names are the best example of each category in my opinion. This chapter still has a lot of good in it, in fact more good than bad (or bad and ugly combined!) so it is a worthwhile read. I am majorly disappointed that this section did not take a close look at actually building campaigns from scratch with a modular or building block approach. With one chapter to go (final review next week!) there is little likelihood that it is going to occur. So next week we look at Chapter 4: Kingdoms and War. Until then, Keep rolling!

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