Review: The Heart of the Wild

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

After what seems like seven lifetimes of the elves in waiting, we finally have the next sourcebook for The One Ring RPG by British publishers Cubicle 7, The Heart of The Wild. I have read through my pre-order PDF copy and I think I have an answer to the question, was it worth the wait? The answer is a most resounding yes.

The One Ring: Adventures of the Edge if the Wild, is a charming and remarkably well produced role-playing game penned by Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi, a game that captures the spirit of Tolkien’s literary masterpieces perfectly in its immaculate and breathtaking presentation and its wonderful writing.

Cubicle 7 has published disappointingly little since the release of the core books two years ago. We have had an excellent sourcebook of adventures and a GM screen packaged with a small sourcebook on Lake-town and its environs, both of which easily managed to uphold the lofty standards originally set by the core rulebooks.

It is not until now however, that we fully delve into the meat of Tolkien’s wonderful and meticulously detailed Middle Earth as it has been interpreted by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Francesco Nepitello.

The Heart if the Wild is a 128-page hardcover setting sourcebook detailing the Vales of Anduin along the Great River and the ancient, tangled forest of Mirkwood to the east. With descriptions of these two expansive areas it covers the ancestral homelands of the elves of Mirkwood, the Woodsmen of Wilderland and the Beornings, all of which are featured as playable cultures in the Adventurers Guide of the core set.

The first two chapters go into evocative and intricate detail about the Vales of Anduin and the forest of Mirkwood respectively. Each of these areas are broken into smaller regions, valleys and mountain ranges with each entry detailing the lay of the land, its inhabitants, wildlife, history, and lore. What strikes me about these descriptions is how they are written in an easy and concise style, yet are still very akin to the prose used in Tolkien’s own descriptions of Middle Earth. New fellowship phases and cultural virtues are interspersed in these descriptions too, and they are all a welcome addition.

Each page bristles with plot hooks and ideas for your adventures, but never do you feel like Wilderland is just a setting created for your company of heroes to chop-up orcs in. No, this feels like a living breathing world of its own, as Middle Earth always felt in the great professor’s original writings. The captivating descriptions could be pulled right from the pages by the Loremaster, as he describes to his players what their adventurers see as they travel the trackless forests and steep valleys of Wilderland.

The area presented is not as broad in scope as many campaign settings, but rather, it has a tight focus on a smaller geographical area that springs to life in its shear level of detail. So faithful is the writing to its source material that you will be amazed by the quality of content that is not actually part of Tolkien’s original lore, and has been specifically crafted for this book. Not that you will be able to tell the difference, unless perhaps you are a true Tolkien buff, or use Wikipedia like me!

The final chapter is a bestiary of creatures mentioned throughout the previous text, each with a lavish illustration and stats to use them in your game. Again we have a very high level of writing present here, and the number of monsters on display rivals that of Loremasters Guide. The book is rounded off with an appendix featuring a four-page map showing all the new locations that have been mentioned thus far, as well as a very extensive index.

It’s worth mentioning the next book forThe One Ring, The Darkening of Mirkwood, is alluded to throughout this book. The Darkening of Mirkwood is to be a campaign outline and timeline that complements the Heart of the Wild. The book states in the introduction that although the Darkening of Mirkwood is not required to use the Heart of the Wild, the Heart of the Wild is required to use the Darkening of Mirkwood.

The art and design of this on display is a true thing of beauty, like all the other products in the line. I do not yet hold a physical hardcover, but the pdf shows the high level of presentation. The cover is graced with a foreboding picture of the great spiders of Mirkwood confronting Radagast the Brown, inked by John Hodgson. Hodgson’s illustrations feature throughout the book and although other artists make contributions, his wonderfully imaginative and distinctive art have become synonymous with this game.

Many art pieces show landscapes of Wilderland that a Loremaster is sure to show his players as they explore on their journeys, and the maps featured include: the halls of the Elven King, the settlements of the Woodman, the house of Beorn and the dread fortress of Dol Gulder. I cannot say enough good things about the excellent combination of cartography and illustrations used to bring the areas to life. The book is worth the cover price for these maps alone!

In all, The Heart of the Wild is one of the best put together setting books I have ever had the pleasure of owning. It is a beautiful and entertaining book to read, that should appeal to any fan of Middle Earth, and I would go as far as to say that this is absolutely essential reading for any Loremaster running The One Ring. My only hope is that when they are done with The Darkening of Mirkwood, Cubicle 7 next gives the same treatment to the lands of Dale, the halls of the Dwarves, and of course, the fertile lands of the Shire.

He has just started a new campaign using the 13th Age, and is a strong supporter of Dungeon World, The One Ring RPG, Mouseguard and many other narrative-driven games.

Review: War Against the Chtorr

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

This review covers the GURPS book War Against the Chtorr based on the series by David Gerrold. If you enjoy a different kind of Alien Invasion series then I suggest trying them out. The series starts with A Matter for Men that was published in 1983 and since it is 30 years old can be found cheap in many used books stores and to borrow in local libraries. This review will contain some spoilers.

Alien invasions are a common theme in much science fiction. Usually ships come from outer space and Earth is at war. Rarely is there a different kind of invasion but that is what one gets in the War Against the Chtorr series by David Gerrold. Gerrold is not a household name among science fiction writers but many more people are familiar with his work then they realize. His most famous piece of work I would think is the episode Trouble with Tribbles for Star Trek the Original series. In 1983 he wrote A Matter for Men the first book in the series. There are now four books in this uncompleted series but they still make for some very good reads.

The blog post though is not a review of an incomplete series. It is about gaming and thankfully GURPs put out a book called War Against the Chtorr allowing gamers to experience this alien invasion. Like many GURPS books it is filled with useful information and not bogged down too much by rules. I am not a fan of the GURPS system but I still own fifty or so of their sourcebooks because they are so easy to use in other systems and many times are more informative then other gaming books on the same topic.

The Alien Invasion is subtle. They did not arrive with ships or by dropping asteroids on the planet or even by transporting huge monsters to us through an undersea rift. The characters in the books believe that is started with billions of microscopic particles that came from deep space and arrive on Earth. There it slowly reproduced and started to create small pockets of an alien ecology. The first evidence was massively deadly pandemics. They hit one after another after another and by the time some scientist were figuring things out the population and infrastructure was in serious jeopardy. That’s when in remote areas of the world people started to notice alien creatures and plants. The creatures there evolved and changed and produced more different kinds of aliens. They are not a united front and they do prey on each other. But they also are devastating to the Earth’s ecology and they are winning.

War Against the Chtorr is one of the easier licensed projects to have a campaign in that mimics the books it is based on. It would work best if the players are not familiar with the books. I imagine that won’t be too hard to do. Then you just have the PCs make discoveries and learn more and more about what is going on just like in the books. The aliens are really alien and different than what we usually see in science fiction. It is more than just killing them but trying to understand what is going on and how it all works. The GURPS book has twenty pages on how to do a campaign with great ideas and ways to make it all work. Many times license projects just give ways to make characters and some setting information but leave the question of “What do the PCS do?” unanswered. The book has forty alien plants and animals for the PCs to discover. Even by the forth book of the series the characters are discovering new types of aliens and understanding older aliens they thought they had figured out. Pacing of information might be one of the more challenging aspects of this campaign.

Technology in the books is advanced in some ways and others not. I think one can still keep the feel of the books tech but adapt and incorporate some of today’s high technology that surpasses what we see in the book. Near future science fiction has always had these types of problems. The GURPs book does a good job of mapping out the technology from the series. Some of it like the giant Zeppelins from the fourth book I’d probably change but they did serve a unique purpose for attempting to communicate with some of the hives.

One aspect that makes it much different from other alien invasion stories is the lack of a command structure for the invaders. They have shown in the books creatures of different intelligence but if there is a true unifying intelligence behind everything we haven’t seen it. That can happen with uncompleted works so it doesn’t always give the PCs great direction knowing there is one being or something specific to strike against.

For fans of the series the GURPs book is important because it builds off of Gerrold’s notes and includes nuggets of information that have not been published in the series yet. In 2005 the names of the three final books were announced and I had hoped that we would have a new book released by now but since it has been almost 20 years since the release of book four, A Season for Slaughter, I fear we will never get a completed series. I’m okay with that as I’m not sure we could get a happy ending that did not feel forced.

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.

Review: Ultimate Campaign – Part 2

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

This week I have been busily reading the wonders of Chapter 2: Downtime in the Ultimate Campaign Sourcebook. The initial pages had me frowning and also getting rather pleased that I would have something meaty to criticize in the book. To find out if that is the truth when I finished reading the chapter read on!

Chapter 2: Downtime

This chapter looks wholly and solely at a thing called downtime for the players. You have heard about it I am sure. You know, that time where your character is hanging around the town with not a lot to do with themselves. I am being a little facetious here because this type of time in my game is a little bit of a mythical creature. That is, everyone has heard of it but they (the characters) have never seen any.

Of course that is not true of every campaign I have run. In my Earthdawn campaign I ran well over a decade ago it was all about the character motivations. They built a group building in Bartertown and one of the players (a Nethermancer) hollowed out a living Kraken and used it as his “tower” where he spent a lot of time creating lifeforms to serve him. Yes, it was weird but very cool at the same time. Beyond all of that though, most of the reading that I do tells me that the heroes are, well, heroic and that they don’t spend time drinking in a tavern when there are kingdoms to be saved and monsters to be killed.

In essence my own personal group do not get a great deal of time to sit around and talk about the weather with locals so I was so ready to do this with this chapter. The first part of the chapter introduced something that really irks me with sourcebooks. It introduced an economic system that sits on top of the current economic system to make a “Downtime system”. So much added complexity I could see occurring from these new rules. It was meant to model expenditure in doing stuff for the mythical downtime your character gets, including things like goods, labour, influence and magic. I smiled a wry smile at the thoughts of writing this blog. Here was the fatal flaw to this book.

Well, it actually pained me so much that I could not go back to the chapter for a while. I was very disappointed, so I started reading Fate Core again as well as Dungeon World and the latest module from Paizo: The Dragon’s Demand. It was only late in the week that I braved picking up the book again and realized I should have pushed on through.

This chapter adds a load of complexity to what is meant to be quiet time for characters. So why do it? Well, I kept reading, and as I did, I found myself wanting to be a player with a GM that uses this book. I wanted to do some of the stuff located in the chapter. I wanted to buy a tavern and run a thieve’s guild. I wanted to make a castle with a throne room and an altar! This is what this chapter does!

It gives the player options on what they can do in their local settlement. They can set up buildings that become a source of income (as well as a source of drama). Not only buildings though. It also covers how to get a group together that work for you while you are away. And it is in that way that they failed this chapter. Not by providing all this, but by the way they organized the chapter.

At the start of the chapter it details the structure of its economic system it is going to apply and then rather than getting into the seriously cool stuff they talk about what happens while you are all out adventuring. They talk about resource depreciation and economics and snoooooooore… After that they detail managers you can use to run your stuff. They connect the Leadership Feat really well to some of this stuff and then show you how to build buildings and teams by using your Goods, Labor, Magic and Influence. They provide a way to make your building one room at a time providing an awesome number of rooms for you to look over. Also they provide a number of groups you can hire on too to create your Thieve’s Guild or Mercenary Company.

The rooms section is excellent. I can not tell you how many times as a teenager I went to map a castle out and built my throne room a few bedrooms, a prisoner dungeon and a gatehouse with moat and said “What am I missing?” Well let me tell you, the answer to my questions lay within these pages. I smiled at the extensive list and imagined myself with a seventeen story palace with every one of the detailed rooms located inside. I am seriously going to build a few places up and build some maps using this. Which reminds me, they provide some nice maps of a select few of the buildings included too!

The last thing that I am yet to mention is they provide a kind of random encounter list of things that happen for generic buildings and also specific lists for a lot of the buildings. These contain some excellent adventure hooks to whet the players appetite that a GM could easily build into a nice little side adventure while the players are just working on their own thing.

So, there you have it. this chapter needs to be reorganized. It should have interesting stuff first so everyone gets enthused about what they can do and then learn the boring stuff of what happens when you are gone after it. I can see there may be readers out there that may just skip this chapter after the first six pages of grueling agony. Had I read the second half first I would actually care about what they wrote in the first half. I would be open mouthed in shock about how my seventeen story palace could degrade while I was away. Truly I would.

But this chapter has also convinced me that I should give my players some down time and encourage them to invest in their characters. One of my players in the Serpent Skull game always wanted to set up a survival camp on Smuggler’s Shiv (the island you get shipwrecked on in the start of the module) and this would be perfect for that. I have been inspired by this chapter to include a new, character forming, dimension to my games. That is after all what core rule expansions are meant to do right?

So, next week we will be moving into the wonders of Chapter 3: Campaign Systems. Something that I have a strong interest in and have written pretty extensively on with this and my own blog. It is this chapter that I was exceptionally keen to get my hands on when I heard of this sourcebook. So join me in a week as we unpack it in my next blog. Until then, keep rolling!

Homeless in Fantasy RPGs

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

My wife is a veterinarian who helps out with a local organization called Street Petz in Colorado Springs, CO. She and her volunteers go out once a week to help out the homeless population downtown and their pets by providing food, vaccines, and whatever supplies they can. She also gives blankets, water, socks, some food, and whatever she can to the homeless themselves. I’ve met a few of them and many are kind folks just trying to get by. They are people and deserve our help if it’s within our power to provide it.

But it’s left me wondering about the many homeless populations that must exist in fantasy RPGs and why we don’t usually see them appear in our campaigns and adventures.

Take a common scenario we see again and again. Bandits. Marauders. Barbarians. Swoop into a village, take what they want, and set fire to the rest. If you’re lucky enough to survive, you’re likely hurt, your family is dead or missing, and your home is destroyed. Or take the Robin Hood scenario. Good men, women, and families taxed to the brink of starvation and death flee for their lives as their homes, livestock, and more are possessed in lieu of payment. Again, the strong take what they want from the weak and leave them to fend for themselves. What happens to these people? Where do they go?

If you’re in an urban environment, imagine the devastation from a simple fire burning out of control through a group of houses. Just like today, those people may lose loved ones, but more than likely they lose their property and homes, with nowhere to turn for help. Again, I’m wondering where these folks go. Does anybody help them? Do they get justice or help in any form?

So let’s take a look at a few possible angles from which to tackle this question.

First, if it’s a wilderness setting, there’s always the camping alternative. Imagine a hidden camp area where folks gather, share resources, and work together to survive. Would these people be fearful of outsiders? You bet. Whether you represent the law or not, they’re going to be reluctant to let anyone in to take advantage of whatever they have left. Even if all they have left is a shred of dignity, they’re going to hold onto that and likely fight for it to the bitter end.

I could see an adventure where the PCs are asked to investigate some bandit activity and come across a burned out village. They might track the survivors down to one of these camps and ask some questions to determine who the bandits were or where they came from. Then they could track the bandits down and remove the threat so the villagers could return and try to rebuild their lives if they chose to do so.

Or your PCs may simply run across some displaced individuals along the road. Where did they come from? Can the PCs help? Where are they going?

Second, maybe we’re dealing with a rural setting. Farms and ranches. Sometimes a kind family will take in those affected by tragedy and help them out for a time. They may even be integrated into their daily lives, helping out with chores and jobs, or building new lives with their benefactors. Like in the camp situation, bonds will be formed and they will become protective of one another if things are going well. Or if they aren’t, they’re likely to turn out the troublemakers quickly.

Imagine an investigation into a series of deaths in the vicinity that all started when a family farm was decimated by wild creatures. The PCs may have to talk to many local farms or ranches in the area to figure out where any survivors went and then see if one of them perhaps caused the initial incident and the following murders. I can see resistance to the idea that “one of their own” would do such a thing…

Third, let’s look at an urban setting like a town or city. Larger civilized population centers typically have one or more spots where homeless tend to congregate. Unless the local police force is really draconian about their policies, homeless may group near bridges, drainage areas, parks, or even on church grounds. A homeless population may form a community in the wilderness beside a town or city. And again, most will try to keep to themselves and avoid trouble if at all possible.

An adventure idea here may revolve around an arsonist destroying homes in town and forcing people onto the streets. Can the PCs determine where the survivors are? Will the survivors give them any clues they may have? And can they stop the madness before more people become homeless?

Though all of these ideas are fairly dark and gritty, each offers some interesting ways to work ethical and moral dilemmas into a campaign world. Will a local government help or hinder an investigation? What are the laws like? How corrupt are any local officials? Plus, you have plenty of room to make the homeless in your worlds a part of the tapestry, with plenty of colorful characters with dark pasts and potential links to other adventures…

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!

The Importance of Fiction

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Recently I have been getting really into my new campaign using the excellent 13th Age, created by D&D alumni Rob Hiensoo and Jonathan Tweet.

I have seen a number of comparisons between 13th Age and Dungeon World and quite rightfully so, they are both modern, innovative, narrative-driven games, that primarily focus on dungeon crawling and fantasy adventures.

As many of you will know, Dungeon World comes with a number of “principles” for the GM baked into the system. These principles are more like GM advice than actual rules, they don’t have any mechanical impact, rather they help you run a fun and exciting RPG. Most of them can be applied to any tabletop role-playing game, and I think many of them are particularly poignant to a 13th Age game.

One principle in particular that I want to talk about is: “Start and end with the fiction.” If you are a GM go ahead and write these words on an index card and place it face up on the table so everyone can see it, or pin it to your GM screen facing the players. You want everyone at the table to remember this point as you play.

What this means is that first and foremost you should describe what a character does in the fictional world and take your interpretation of the rules from that description, roll the dice to interact with the rules, and end with a fictional description of what happens.

Noi, the dwarven mercenary has managed to bust the door down of the chancellor’s office, and he’s looking for clues that implicate the slimy toads involvement with the Prince of Shadows. Aaron, the player playing Noi narrates how his character searches in the drawers, opens up the cupboards, looks behind paintings and generally ransacks the place. The GM declares that this definitely sounds like a Wisdom check and Aaron rolls the dice. He rolls a success! The GM describes how Noi finds a letter in a hidden drawer of the table, addressed to the chancellor by someone referring to themselves as “The Little Prince.” Noi is going to have to find a lot more than this if he is to bring this matter before the Dwarven King.

In this example we began with a fictional description and we ended with one, the rules simply provided a bridge between the two in the middle.

In many role playing games the player may have simply entered the office and declared he was using wisdom to look for clues and rolled the dice, but this rule exists exactly to prevent such a scenario. The player is instead encouraged to think about what his player is doing in the fictional world, and how he’s interacting with his environment. The benefit of this is it enhances the story told at the table, and also helps the GM decide on how best to use and interpret the rules.

Now this is particularly important to a 13th Age, a game that uses character backgrounds as a means of task resolution. When a character attempts to do something in the game that has dramatic consequences or a chance of failure, the GM does not have a hard and fast skill list to draw upon. He must think which ability score is most relevant to the task at hand, how difficult the task is going to be, and what kind of backgrounds may apply.

This process is made easier if the player fully narrates what his character is doing, as well as his intent. A canny player may even describe his action so he can take advantage of a background, and this kind of play should be encouraged. The player is taking the written words on his character sheet and bringing them to life by playing his character within the shared fictional world, and that sort of thing is really the whole point in a character-driven narrative-game.

Noi has been asking around the underbelly of the royal capital and he’s heard whispers that the head of one the thieves guilds calls himself the “Little Prince.” He’s managed to corner a lower member of the guild in a dark back alleyway, a sneaky little weasel that goes by the name of Regnar. Aaron describes how Noi grabs Regnars by his shirt, pulls him close enough so they are nearly touching and demands to know where the Little Prince’s hideout is. The GM declares that it sounds like a Charisma check but the Little Princes wrath is well known to those who rat on his gang, so the GM assigns this a hard difficult in an adventurer-tier environment. As it stands, none of Noi’s backgrounds apply to this check, so to get an advantage Aaron tells the GM that as he issues his threat, he mentions how he was expelled from the Royal Guard for the unlawful torture of the crown’s enemies. The GM likes it, and allows Noi to apply his +4 bonus from his “Former kings guard” background.

This principle also applies to combat and powers. Take a look at the 13^th Age classes and you will notice a glaring difference between 13th Age and 4th edition D&D powers: you don’t get a little bit of italic flavor text in the power write-up. Does this mean that Rob and Jonathan play dry combats that don’t focus on narration? I don’t think so. If you have any doubt, listen to Rob running a 13th age game for the Geek Nation guys that is posted on the Pelgrane Press website.

Rather I think they saved themselves some space in the book by making the assumption 13th Age is going to appeal to a group of creative people that are going to create their own descriptions anyway.

Again this relates to beginning and ending with the fiction, as a player, start your action in combat by describing how your power or spell looks and feels within the game world. This description need not even be consistent and may change based on the circumstances. Roll the dice and the GM will end the fiction by telling you the effectiveness of your action. Through his process, combat becomes a shared narrative experience between the players and the GM as they vividly describe what is going on back and forth.

How could Noi be so stupid? He had failed to notice three of Regnras cronies skulking in the shadows of the alley, and now they had him surrounded, wicked looking curved blades drawn. He loosed his shield and took a hard grip of his warhammer, today like just like so many others he would have to fight, or die. Aaron rolls the dice to attack the nearest thug and scores a hit, and he uses the natural result of 17 to activate his “Defensive Training” flexible power. He describes how he swings his hammer in a wide arc slamming it into the thug’s skull, then quickly retreats behind his shield, just like he used to all those years ago, when he and his men formed the shield walls in the Frost Giant Wars. His men were long dead, but still, these thugs were welcome to try and beak the wall.

Starting and ending with the fiction transcends numbers and stat blocks, and brings your games to life in a way that makes them become more akin to what you would see in an exciting and dramatic novel, or a movie.

James Ramage is a 25 year old gamer from Scotland, sailor of the high-seas and advocate of the “new school of gaming.” He started gaming in high school on bread-and-butter Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition, back in the pre-revision days when choosing to play a ranger meant being a fighter that could talk to the odd sparrow, and very little else. He has just started a new campaign using the 13th Age, and is a strong supporter of Dungeon World, The One Ring RPG, Mouseguard and many other narrative-driven games.

ENnies Exposé

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

The ENnies are an RPG awards that have become the Official Gen Con Awards. It started out as something small on EN World message boards. It has grown tremendously and become in my opinion the most important RPG awards there are. I do admit to being biased as I was a Judge for the ENnies for six years. What follows are some stories and gossip on what has happened with the ENnies behind the scenes. Some of it is good and some of it is bad. No names are going to be mentioned because while I am writing this to inform people it is not my intention to embarrass or call out any persons. All opinions right and wrong are mine and mine alone.

I’m really not sure why I ran for ENnies judge. The first year I did it I did not get voted in, but I did the second year I tried. I had no idea what kind of hell I was getting myself into. It was fun and I’m very happy I did, but that first year was difficult because of the circumstances. The other judges that year were great. It was a collection of some very intelligent and experienced gamers. We had some great conversations about what should and should not get nominated. The purpose of the judges is to read all the books that publishers submit and come to a consensus list of five books for each of the categories. Once the judges pick the nominations it is put up to a fan vote. In those days it was also the Judges responsibility to create categories that fit the products submitted. For instance we had the best Monster Supplement that year because we saw many monster books submitted. The reason it was hell was almost everything came at the last minute. The last week of May and all of June I had about one hundred and fifty RPGs to read and it is a lot more work than it sounds.

Everything that was submitted was read cover to cover at least once. I had a notebook I would take notes in about each book. It wasn’t just the content we were judging but the production values, interior art, cover art, rules, cartography, and everything about a book. I learned a lot about layout that year. The concept of excessive white space for instance was not something I ever noticed before. I was paying attention to fonts, font size, how pictures were used to help the text flow, or in the case of bad lay out, just interrupted the text. After reading through everything I had a pile of books that I felt were not good enough for any category so I put those to the side. All the others got read for a second and sometimes third time as I reduced my lists of what was best. During this time the judges are communicating online with what they liked and did not like. There were more than a few times that I had to go get a book out of my “no like” pile and reread it because another judge or two sang its praises. Doing this was in addition to everything else one normal does, like go to work. I had a weekly game and I usually was social with friends during the week. To get it all read and to do my job properly I canceled gaming for June. I didn’t see anyone socially and even took vacation time to get everything finished that I had to finish. My girlfriend at the time broke up with me as for that month reading gaming books became her adversary.

Later years became better as companies would not all wait to the last minute to submit books to us. We still felt that too many of them did but that was really to their disadvantage. The books we got after Gen Con and early in the year we had months of discussion on them and more time to read and reread. Books that came in at the very end of the submission period could not get that kind of scrutiny because of the time crunch.

I bring up all the time devoted to reading because we were occasionally accused of not reading everything. One year we were even called out by at the time possibly the biggest name in gaming. Those years I really feel we did read it all. I wasn’t the only one that took vacation time and missed social and family events to get the job done. After we put in all that hard work and had people claim otherwise, that upset us. Some of us blew our tops and angrily replied. I had friends that asked me in private if I really did read everything or if I faked it. I would tell them the truth that I read everything and was insulted that they would imply otherwise. When I signed up to be judge it was a commitment and a responsibility that I had to follow through to the best of my ability. I took it very seriously even though awards are not always that well respected by the fans and by publishers.

In later years when I was and was not a judge I got the feeling that some judges were not reading everything. I’d talk about specific books with them and they were not able to have a discussion about it. Some of the most difficult books to judge are supplements submitted to games the judges don’t own and don’t play. I talked to judges that would read the supplement but not the game it was based on. It’s impossible to judge a supplement if you don’t know the rules and what the supplement is building off of. There is no oversight for the judges. Each judge does their reading in their own place in different part of the US and even the world. They really need to require more transparency for the judges. They should be required to go to Gen Con. At the very least the people running the ENnies should meet with the Judges. Otherwise it is too easy to lie and cheat one’s way into being a judge.

As RPGs grew on the net, other sites devoted to gaming emerged. People had blogs and then podcasts about gaming. I don’t know whose ideas it was to include them in the ENnies as categories but I thought it was a mistake then and still do. As judges we were told we had control of the categories but when some of us talked about not including Best Blog and Best Podcast the Powers that Be told us that was not a possibility. We had freedom when I was first a judge and it worked. When I stopped being a judge much of that freedom had been taken away. My guess it was done so to appease people who disliked the ENnies. We had some publishers that would never enter and then there were game sites that would just talk bad about the ENnies because it is the internet and that’s what people do on the internet.

Podcasts were the worst. It was amateur radio about gaming done in a way that made me want to quit gaming. We had some that were in excess of three hours. People were coughing into microphones. There was dead air. None of the ones I listened to sounded like they were edited or that there was much of a plan going into them. Some were of people actually playing the games. They gave no lead in like what had happened before, what the plot was, and in many cases what the game was. It would literally be thirty minutes before I could figure out what they were playing. I nominated many podcasts based on length of episodes, the shorter the better. Some podcasts tried to be news shows. I would be listening to a podcast in May that were recorded and aired in November. The breaking news was mostly unimportant by then and the guesswork they did on what companies would be doing would be proved wrong. Having to include and listen to podcasts was one of the main reasons I stopped running for ENnies Judge.

Some publishers would enter others would not. Steve Jackson Games I think entered once or twice by accident. At one time I had a contact within the company who I talked with about the awards. He loved the idea and he was ready to submit stuff. Then one day I just stopped hearing from him. When I finally did hear back it was short message that basically said someone higher in the company had told him SJGs would never submit anything to the ENnies and he was told to cease all communication with me. Goodman Games is another odd one. They used to submit modules and some sourcebooks and we would nominate them because they were good books. I heard Goodman Games stopped submitting product because they would rarely win the awards. It’s a fan vote so we have no control over that and we know it is hard to win going up against companies like Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, White Wolf, Green Ronin, and other companies that were just hugely popular. Upsets did happen from time to time. The way the awards are structured being nominated is an award in itself. That is being picked by the experts, the judges that have read everything. If we see seventy adventures in a year and pick one of yours to be top five that’s pretty impressive. Some companies just did not believe it or did not want to see it. Others usually small companies would thank us profusely. They would see a sales bump the week after we made our nominations.

In 2006 we were blindsided by a controversy I was not expecting. I’m still not sure if it was a legitimate complaint or just people airing sour grapes because they lost. Shackled City hardcover was entered by Paizo Publishing. It is a great product that reprints the adventures of the Shackled City AP that appeared in Dungeon Magazine. They expanded on those adventures to include more information especially about the city of Cauldron the setting for most of the Adventure Path. We, the judges, nominated for Best Adventure and for Best Campaign Setting/ Setting Supplement. It won gold for both categories and then some people complained that the book cannot be both an adventure and a setting book. I disagree as there have been books that are both setting and adventures. RPG books can’t always be so easily classified as just one thing.

This past year has also not been without possible problems. When the judges wanted to discuss what should be nominated they wanted to use Skype. It would have been a great way to communicate and I wish we had that ability when I was a judge. But one of the judges refused, and for some reason, instead of majority rules, which is the way it is set up, Skype was not used. Instead the judges had to have the discussions in a less efficient and much slower method of e-mail. That’s a situation that management should be watching over and step in.

Another more alarming example from this year is the exclusion of Star Wars Edge of the Empire Beginner Box. It was submitted but left off all the nominations. It was not left off because most of the judges don’t like Star Wars or felt that other products were just better. It was left off because one judge didn’t like the special dice the game uses and refused to let it get nominated for anything. It is fine that a judge didn’t like the product but no one judge should be able to influence the nominations and have their opinion override the others.

Being a judge for the ENnies was great. I came across a lot of products that I never would have otherwise. I loved that I was there to help open up the awards from just d20 to all RPGs. I think the awards have lost focus on that as we see more items that are not RPGs in them. Voting for the awards is taking place now and is going to be open till July 31^st. I encourage all gamers to go and vote. It doesn’t matter if you’ve only read or played a few of the items on there. The more votes that the awards get and the more feedback they get from fans can only improve the awards.

Review: Ultimate Campaign – Part 1

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

It is taking me a little time to get through my Ultimate Campaign sourcebook by Paizo for Pathfinder. It is not because it is a poor book, rather that real life keeps trying to get in my way. This morning I had a bit of a revelation anyway in that the sourcebook has four chapters with topics that take a quite different look at various parts of a campaign so I should do a review per chapter. In the final review I will bring it all together and give you my overall impressions of the book but this way I am able to give a bit more of an in depth look to each chapter as we go because they are quite meaty chapters.

Chapter 1: Character Background

This chapter is largely what I was looking forward to this book for. Many of you will realise that I am a big role-player as opposed to the roll-player. I like to take on large roles, or fill my games with them so that the drama does not necessarily need to rely on combat to progress. To play a large character you need to think not only about their motivations but also where their motivations stem from. That is right, the background of the character. I have a discussion about getting into backgrounds on my own blog, which you can reach from this link.

Pathfinder has made attempts to get players involved in character background through Traits that first arose as a free web supplement and then also got included in the Advanced Players Guide (APG). Feats also could be attached to your character background as well if you so wished to do so. But in reality the background of your character has been largely left to your own to develop (which is not a bad thing) while the game focused on how to handle “the now”. As a GM I have always needed my players to use the Trait rules from the APG, taking a trait that they want and a campaign trait (to the adventure path or from the APG). This of course has led to an array of characters who all choose the Reactionary trait as their free choice and a varying campaign trait. Few of these characters ever bothered to tie these into a background of sorts.

Well, enter Chapter 1 of Ultimate Campaign (UCamp), which is in its entirety here to offer a mechanic to build your character’s background with sixty-eight pages of advice and support. As that is more pages combined of the sections that make up the Games Master section of the Core Book I think the people over at Paizo have looked at the trend of story based games that are rising in popularity and are beginning to provide some assistance on how to build well developed characters before the first game is even done.

Brainstorming

The chapter itself offers up a couple of different options to building your character. The first option is a structured brainstorming idea that helps you take on a character concept (with some really good ideas on what to do when stuck) that looks at the circumstances around your birth inclusive of family, the area, the characters social standing, exposure to magic and also a major event that is likely to be part of the formation of why the character took on a role like they did.

The brainstorm then moves you through adolescence including how you move from a child to an adult in your community, what friends, allies and influences affect you. It also asks you to think of a class event in that an event that led you to the training of your character’s actual class rather than social class, details of your first love as well as your duty and responsibilities. Then it leads into your adult life and the character you are now. It asks you to reflect on the past and how your character handles such things like their ordinary demeanor or conflict, what their vulnerabilities are, who their friends, associates and companions are. Once you have thought about this it then asks you to think about your trait choices and tying them into the background as a whole.

New Trait Mechanics and Drawbacks

The second option is a Background Generator which allows you to build a complete random background for the character. Before I discuss this I want to discuss the expanded traits that exist in this book and the new mechanics they have added to the character background. Traits have been greatly expanded in this new book. They have gone from an eight page section in the APG to a thirteen page inclusion (with all the traits from the APG included) in UCamp. The rules around traits are still that you may take two for your character. But now there is an addition to the rule where you can take three traits if you are willing to take on a drawback! New mechanic people! The drawback is something that limits your character in some way and they introduce some examples which are good but they are limited to two pages. I love this new idea as it becomes a source of conflict which adds drama to the game but only two pages of them? Come on! We want, nay need more Paizo. There are a world of flaws you can draw on and we get only a handful of good examples?

The Background Generator

The reason I covered the traits and flaws expansion before the random background mechanics is due to the fact that as you go through the Background Generator (BG) it ties results to possible traits that you should choose from so that the traits you choose are reflective of the events in your background. The BG is something that when I started reading I turned my nose up a little at it. I thought a character should come from within the player but the more I read the more I warmed to it. I thought of the characters that my players had run and how some of them had little to no background at all and thought this is a great way to show the importance of it. The BG is very old school in its approach. It is essentially a process of going to tables and rolling a percentile and finding the result. The tables go through three different stages (multiple tables in each stage.

The first stage is the Homeland, Family and Childhood stage. It lays out tables explaining about your family, what life is like in your homeland and more. As you go through and role on these tables you open up access to certain traits that you may want to take in your allocation of traits. For example, if I rolled an 82% on the Circumstances of Birth table on page twenty I would gain access to the Blessed faith and Birthmark faith trait (there is a description to the roll but I won’t be offering spoilers). Now it is just gaining access to it which means at the end of the BG when all three sections are complete I will have a list of traits that fit my background and I will then go through them and choose up to two traits from the list or up to three if I am to take a drawback.

The second stage covers the character’s adolescence and training into their class while the third and final stage looks at moral conflicts, relationships and vulnerabilities. The third stage even has an alignment generator tied to the background of the character! How cool is that? Fancy your alignment being a product of your background!

Story Feats

The final thing that I want to say about this chapter is the final new mechanic in it called the Story Feat. These are fantastic! They can be tied into character background I believe at points during the BG as a suggested feat for the character. They in essence offer you a personal quest, which gives you added abilities (like a normal feat) while you are pursuing the quest and then, once complete, these abilities tend to become more powerful. These Feats can be taken by anyone that meets at least one of the eligibility criteria at the start of it, which means they are easily adaptable to existing campaigns. The Feats themselves offer a GM automatic secondary stories or plot lines to be incorporated into your game adding a beautiful depth to the story that will be pursued by the player! Get into these feats GM’s and players alike. if you sit around in game wondering what is going on, these feats will give you motivation to stay focused and find areas that can help you complete the feat. There are a healthy eight pages devoted to these feats.

Chapter 1 Likes and Dislikes

This sourcebook is shaping up to be a fantastic sourcebook for the Pathfinder game. It is working mechanics to give an in depth story. Chapter 1 on a flick through looks to be all rules and regulations for the game and may be a bit off putting to a player. But the essence of all these rules is to bring an enhanced, in depth understanding to the character and why they act like they do. The rules do not need to be memorized and are easily skimmed through as you make your character.

The thing I am most excited about is the Story Feat, which are just a brilliant idea. They add an in game reason for focus and plot development that the player has an increasing buy in to. I can see me developing may more of them for use in my game and I do hope Paizo has planned other story feats that might be linked to adventure paths or the like. The BG also looks to be a fun way to build a character background. If I ever have the opportunity to be a player in another Pathfinder game I am going to go all in with a completely random background for a challenge to roleplay the end result. It is a very old school way to achieve a background but I think it is going to be fun to see the variations from it.

The only criticism I have of this chapter are the poor amount of drawbacks. The ones there are okay but in one lot of characters you are likely to use most of them up. Drama comes from vulnerabilities and foibles and for this mechanic to be truly embraced we need a lot more drawbacks that can be used. Before I run my next game I am actually going to have to spend a good deal of time fleshing these out as my group will get any advantage they can (three traits, one drawback is better than two traits).

There are some of you out there that have probably read this sourcebook three times over by now but I hope that some of you will read some of these reviews and make your decision on if you should include it in your rules set. I am enjoying savoring the book as I read through it and I will bring a review of the next chapter to you next Monday. 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.

Total Lunacy

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

A few weeks ago we had a “Supermoon” event and it strangely made me ponder the use of moons in fantasy campaigns. Beyond the fact that ancient Greeks once thought that the full moon’s pull affected the fluids of the brain like it does the tides and the strange correlation between a full moon and increased police, fire, and emergency activity (talk to any fireman, police officer, or ER nurse for details), I’m pretty sure I’m not going to go all wolf-man any time soon… But here are a few ideas for how you might be able to use the moon (or moons) in your campaign.

1. Tides

In my years of gaming, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the tides show up in any meaningful way in an adventure except for some of the recent modules from Kobold Press. But if you live on the coast, they’re a literal fact of nature. Why not use them in your stories?

A sand bridge or other submerged feature may only appear at low tide to allow access to a small island off shore. (See “Sand Bridge at Low Tide” @ TVTropes.org for some examples.)
A cave in the rocks that serves as the entrance to an ancient temple or hidden treasure trove in a weatherbeaten cove and is only accessible at low tide for a short time.
In a small boat at high tide might be the only safe way to get to an alcove inaccessible from above along an ocean-facing rock wall.
High tide might wash ashore clues to an ancient (or recent) shipwreck, including bodies and debris.

And if you have more than a single moon for your campaign world, I’m sure you could plot out extremely low tides where the remains of ancient civilizations are exposed on the ocean floor (think H.P. Lovecraft) or extremely high tides when coastal cities have to batten down the hatches or be swept away.

2. Lycanthropy

Everybody likes a good werewolf story, right? Whether it’s in a battle with vampires in Underworld, Benicio del Toro’s The Wolfman, Russel Tovey’s “George” on Being Human (the BBC version), or Seth Green’s “Oz” on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we’ve had a few recent entries since Lon Chaney Jr.’s take on the story in The Wolf Man back in 1941. Howling at the moon has never looked so good.

And D&D brought all sorts of other fun shape-changers to my attention as a kid. Were-creatures gained all sorts of friends such as werebears, wereboars, and wererats. Whether you use lycanthropy as a disease or a racial type, you have plenty of options.

So perhaps it’s time to introduce some wild things into your campaign and let the full moon bring out the beasts!

3. Symbology

Depending on how you look at the moon, you can gain some interesting ideas from how we use it today and how the moon appears in myths from around the world. Usually the symbology has some practical application to the original cultures of the myths and stories.

For example, the Algonquin tribes of North America named the full moon differently throughout the year. The “Worm Moon” in March signified the beginning of spring when earthworms would appear and birds could find them more easily. The “Hunter’s Moon” in October offered light for hunting so the tribes could put away food for the coming winter. Other examples can be found here at Windows To The Universe.

Joseph Campbell talks about the moon and sun in a different manner. The way the moon’s phases work with the shadow of the earth make it seem as though it slowly is eaten away, disappears, and is reborn in a regular cycle. The sun on the other hand is a constant, so if it’s ever eclipsed it’s panic time, but also represents the constancy of consciousness. Or the impression that the sun is trying to dry out or kill the world. There’s a great portion of an interview with Joseph Campbell on YouTube here that talks about this very topic.

Or you could use the simple approach of the moon passing through it’s various phases as a show of strength. A whole or “full” moon represents some forces at their zenith while a new or “dark” moon represents those forces at their weakest. So various cultures or myths or even magical abilities could be dependent on the cycles of particular moons or suns. I could imagine a multi-lunar system as being quite an interesting force to reckon with as far as moons and magic might go.

Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

4: Cosmology

I saved cosmology for last because it to me brings in the world building or setting aspects for the fantasy genre. Though we scientifically know now that there is no life on our one moon, there was a lot of debate about what was “up there” for a long time. Some even believed there were beings living on the moon.

If you look at the John Carter of Mars stories, there’s the idea of portals or technology that allows one to transport from Mars to Earth and back again. Perhaps something similar could exist between moons and planets to allow magical transport between them. Instead of a group of Drow inhabiting the Underdark, perhaps they instead live on the dark side of the moon and stage raids on the worlds for various supplies, slaves, and sacrifices.

The idea of moons corresponding to different planes of existence or dimensions is another aspect to explore. Even if the correlation is merely philosophical in nature, I could see various moons corresponding to different elemental planes of fire, earth, water, and air for example, depending on how the solar system was arranged.

Entire plots could come into play if gods or other powerful beings began adding or removing moons from the sky. How would a religion take the loss of a moon? Or explain the sudden intrusion of a new one? What sorts of cataclysmic events would arise from having additional bodies in orbit? Would the tides become worse as the push and pull of gravity changed stresses on oceans or even internal pressures?

Council of Thieves Campaign

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

~ This post contains spoilers for the Council of Thieves Adventure Path. Do not read if you do not wish to be spoiled. ~

After we finished Kingmaker the DM and blog owner Jeff wanted a break. I stepped in and we talked about what Adventure Path to try next and we decided on Council of Thieves. It was my number one pick as I really enjoy city based campaigns. I did not do a lot of research on it to know what was going to be in store for us. I thought it looked fun and interesting and knew I could really make it shine. There will be spoilers so readers are warned. I’m not going to talk about everything in each book but I will discuss some things good and bad about the AP and some of the changes that I did.

To start with I encouraged my players to make skill based characters, as skills were going to be a bigger focus in the campaign. They chose an Inquisitor, Rogue, Urban Ranger, and a Bard. I wanted to limit spellcasting and that really did it. Also, the campaign is designed to go to 13^th level, but I only advanced them to 10^thlevel for the end. Magic was not a powerful factor for the players and it helped the game tremendously. The AP is the first written for Pathfinder and it shows. The stat blocks for the enemies were not well done. This how an adventure that went to 13^th level could be completed by a group of weaker classes levels behind where they should have been. Also, the content in the books was lacking. We made it through most of them in two sessions verses the five to six sessions a Kingmaker book took us.

The main thing I did was help my players come up with good backgrounds for the setting and flesh out some NPCs they knew that I could use. I like to flesh out the setting and add in side plots for the PCs that don’t revolve around the main campaign plot but can cause complications and offer allies. I know many gamers don’t make backgrounds as the GMs never use them and they never serve a purpose. I always use them and if a player doesn’t supply the information I will supply it for them with their approval.

The first book is the Bastards of Erebus. It defines some of the city. Westcrown used to be the capital city until the civil war and the Devil Worshipers took over. Sadly, the repression and evil government is not shown much and if I were to do it again I would do a better job of establishing that. Part of the city has been abandoned and that is where gangs like the Bastards have set up. I did move the events of the book as it starts with the group meeting a second society and then during that meeting bad guys come in and break it up. I don’t think PCs would go back to that group after the first time they almost get killed and don’t have any real ties to them. So, I set up some small adventures using some options the book provides to do afterwards and had them happen first. This established a greater connection between the PCs and the group so when the leader of the group needs rescued the PCs would do that.

One major change I did was giving the group a powerful item in their first adventure, a Helm of Brilliance. The city has a curfew because shadow beasts rule the night. People who venture out after dark have a habit of never being seen again. The problem has existed for over 30 years. I included more history of failed attempts to fix the problem then the books do because by the books the people of the city just accepted it. The Helm gives power versus the undead and some spell ability that can really damage and kill the things. But the Helm is a charged item so the group was conservative and made it last much longer than I expected.

The Sixfold Trial is book two and might have one of the most famous scenes from all the Adventure Paths in it: the Play. The characters are hired to put on a dangerous play in which the characters of the play are tortured through trials. The trials though are real so the PCs have to live through these potentially very dangerous trials. I thought it was fun. It introduced some great NPCs and allowed the players to do some things they don’t usually do in our games. I had each PC audition and have the director yell at them and it was fun. When we got to the play I was shocked that my group wanted to read through all their lines. I was really expecting some of them to refuse. No one is going to win a Tony Award for our performance but I enjoyed it. Afterwards they are invited to the evil Mayor’s estate to steal stuff and sadly this wasn’t as good. I was shocked the PCs didn’t try to rob the house blind. Also the dinner party had other NPCs and my players at the time just didn’t engage them. It wasn’t an issue with the adventure or anything it was just an opportunity missed.

I really like that the dungeon crawls in here and short and there are not many of them. It is also a reason why the AP went as quickly as there is not a lot of filler that consume time. I inserted material from the setting books about the city and different NPCs from different sourcebooks that were part of the city. I even included a dragon that seems to be ignored now in the setting. Strangely, the PCs never realized it was a dragon. I kept track of different books I used for this AP and I think I hit over 60 Pathfinder and non-Pathfinder books that were referenced by me to enhance the campaign. It is the most work I’ve put into a campaign for using mostly printed adventures from start to finish.

What Lies in Dust is the third book. The first half consists of gathering information and some oddly pointless fights leads way to one of the cooler places to adventure and that is an abandoned Pathfinder Lodge. It also featured our first really difficulty combat and one of the reasons the Helm of Brilliance was handed out so early in the campaign. The Lodge features some very cool and creative rooms the Pathfinder had. Much of it is creepy and magical and I would really like to see more places like this. The difficult combat was some Vampires that I did not foreshadow to keep them as a complete surprise. The NPC Paladin that was journeying with them was killed in one round by the vampires as by this time the group is only supposed to be sixth level (they were fifth) and the vampires have a great ambush place and class levels. Most of the NPCs are not well built, but these guys were especially for a group that did not have a Cleric. It turned into a great battle and was challenging and fun.

In the Infernal Syndrome, the fourth book, the Mayor’s house blows up. It was a fun scene of the PCs running through the city to get to the disaster and then trying to help. Our rogue had her favorite combat as there was a devil on a rooftop shooting arrows. She quickly climbed up attacked and then retreated. She knew she could not face the creature in hand to hand so used great hit and run tactics and made great use of her characters abilities. Then the group sees thieves going into the basement and that leads to what is probably the largest dungeon crawl in the Adventure Path. It is a large magical engine with a Pit Fiend as its battery. It is a neat idea and there are some interesting encounters and fun NPCs, but the last dozen or so rooms really dragged on making it tiresome by the time the group gets to the Pit Fiend.

My favorite encounter in here was a Lich (weak Lich, like the weak Pit Fiend) who used to be a former mayor of the city. He was of course Evil. He talked to the group and they talked back. He had good reasons for becoming a Lich. It wasn’t because he was evil but he knew that the only way he could live long enough to come back and rescue Westcrown from itself was to become a Lich. Every question the party asked him he came up with good and reasonable answers. They almost let him live which would have been just awesome and interesting. But one of my players realized what was going on and just attacked. It was pretty awesome and fun.

Mother of Flies is the fifth book. It has the only section that really takes the party out of the city. It’s probably less than a mile outside the city. A potential ally who happens to be an evil Hag is being attacked because she knows a secret. The group had fun planning out a counter attack and really getting in some larger scale tactics. The battle does not have to go that way but I have a player that enjoys that so we let him come up some plans and they executed them well. After that it is attacking a thieves’ guild headquarters. It went fast because I did not make the group do a room to room search because most of the rooms are empty. Also, most the opponents as written are painfully too weak. According to the AP the character should be level 10 and many of the normal thieves here had a measly +3 to attack. So, even with flanking they had a 10% to hit our Bard who had the worst AC in the group. There are some named NPCs here that can offer some trouble but mostly it was an easy book to complete.

The series ends with the Twice Damned Prince. Up to this point the group was not sure who the mastermind was as I was purposefully making it so it could be one of two NPCs. This book instead of a set path, has a lot of small encounters that deal with some of the NPCs and events around the city. It is an interesting way to finish the campaign. The part I hated was by doing this the group collects points and then depending on the amount of points determines how the populace reacts to them. There just is not enough points to be gained to get what most groups would see as a happy ending. I knew I was tossing out that system but told the PCs about it and let them see what would happen if we used it and they got a Martial Law result. We went with a happier ending.

Over all the AP was a lot of fun and a lot of work. I know it is not seen to be as good as Kingmaker but I’d rank it near there, though it is very different. In the campaign there is an artifact the PCs acquire and they still have it at the end. One of the reasons I just leveled the group to 10^th level and had them play skill based characters was the idea they would go off into the world and find out how to destroy the artifact. With the artifacts history I did not change much to lead into the Serpent’s Skull adventure path. The Serpent Skull AP though just didn’t work out well for us.

Rage Quit!

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Ever sat down at the village Inn after a hard day of cleaving Goblin heads from Goblin necks only to be told by the Innkeeper that you need to bathe before they serve you? Then the half-elf waitress makes some comment about meat heads pointedly at your expense and the next thing you know you are staring at an Inn full of dead folk all dismembered and you are holding a bloody axe? I hate it when that happens, as I am sure you do too. And I am sure that you realise you have just exited the rage that marks you as one of the fiercest fighters on the battlefield. You suffered from a Barbarian rage quit and made all the fools suffer for their arrogance.

If you have not quite guessed it yet, this is my post focussed on Pathfinder’s Barbarian class. The brute warriors with more focus on force than finesse the Barbarian throws defence to the wind in an attempt to deliver as much damage as possible in a short time. We will take a look at the abilities that make a Barbarian the formidable warrior that they are and also look at what options are available for them through the core rulebooks to make them all they can be. Conan wishes he were so good…

RAGE!!!

The core of a Barbarian is their rage. It is a wellspring that exists in them that they tap into when they loose themselves into a battle. The strength and constitution scores raise by 4 with a morale bonus increasing to hit bonuses and hit points (as well as fort saves) in the process. The Barbarian also gains a +2 to their will saves but the negative to all this is they suffer a −2 to their armour class. In game terms the Barbarian becomes wilder, stronger, a little more impervious but less focused on defending themselves as they hit their rage.

While in the rage the Barbarian can’t use skills that require them to think, consider, charm, or coordinate their body. It is seen as a period where the character goes into a wild frenzy led by their primal being. Because of this there is no in depth consideration they are capable of. The best they can do is some intimidation or acrobatic manoeuvres toward dealing the pain to their foes.

The Barbarian can rage for 4 + Con modifier rounds a day at first level and gets to add a further two rounds per day for each level they go up past first. These rounds do not need to be spent consecutively, though coming out of a rage (a free action) causes the Barbarian to become fatigued for twice the amount of time they were in the rage for. They cannot enter their rage again until the fatigue has gone.

Rage Powers

As the Barbarian progresses levels they learn to channel their rage into certain powers. The Barbarian picks up a rage power at level 2 and every second level thereafter. The powers range widely from such things as gaining a bite attack, re-rolling failed saves, extra speed, and even unexpected strikes where the Barbarian can make an attack of opportunity if an opponent enters a threatened square, even if the movement would not normally draw an attack of opportunity. Picking these rage powers allows you to differentiate your Barbarian from others and also allows you to theme the character to a style you like. The available rage powers increase with the Advanced Players Guide (APG) and the Ultimate Combat (UC) sourcebooks.

Greater Rage and Mighty Rage

The Barbarian makes some increases in his rage ability at 11th level and as his capstone power at 20th level. These powers both increase the bonus they apply to their statistics and their Will saves. These bonuses enable the Barbarian to become a much more potent foe at the right time in game to continue to making them relevant. The Barbarian is always a warrior in a battle that the foe needs to pay attention to. They can be unpredictable and become instantly more formidable the moment they give in to their inner anger.

Other Abilities

The Barbarian is not a great armoured warrior and their choice of armour only goes to medium armours. They are of course proficient with all except exotic weapons giving them a wide range of choices for how to deal this damage. Although a shield is not often a popular choice with many Barbarians (who tend to go damage over defence) they are proficient with them (excepting tower shields).

At the heart of the Barbarian is their core rage power but there are surrounding abilities that make them an attractive option for a player or an NPC foe. Over the levels the Barbarian becomes increasingly harder to pin down, firstly unable to be caught flat footed and then later not even being able to be flanked. This relates to the Barbarian’s energy level as they are always moving and always in a state of awareness. They also are masters of battling as many opponents that they can so can handle being surrounded with little problem. This energy also allows them to react to traps quicker and they gain a dodge bonus against traps as they seem almost presentient to them when they trigger.

On top of their mobility the Barbarian is also resistant to physical damage and mental domination. They receive Damage Reduction (DR) at a moderate level of power and the amount of damage resisted is dependent on the level of the character. After some time the Barbarian also becomes mentally tougher receiving a bonus to their Will saves against any enchantment magic that is used against them.

Looking Beyond the Core Rulebook

The Barbarian is broadened in scope with a mass of new rage powers in the APG. These powers make it a lot easier to theme the character as you have a synergy that exists within some of the powers themselves. This synergy makes a Barbarian able to take powers that fit both thematically as well as sometimes with other power mechanics to mesh the character into a whole. There are nearly four full pages in this section all devoted to adding a variety of new Barbarian rage powers to the class making the APG the single most important expansion amongst the core sourcebooks for the class. The book also offers up 10 archetypes that allow you to modify your character from the standard Barbarian located in the Core rulebook. These archetypes are;

Breaker: Driven not only to destroy their foes but their environment as well
Brutal Pugilist: Focus on hand to hand combat and combat manoeuvres to bring their opponents down
Drunken Brute: Their intake of alcohol fuels their rage so don’t think because they are drunk they are an easy beat
Elemental Kin: Tied to elemental forces by tribal shamans the Barbarian uses the power of elemental forces to aid them
Hurler: Focusses his rage into throwing items at their foes
Invulnerable Rager: The Barbarian becomes much more resistant to damage of all sorts
Mounted Fury: A master of mounted war they ride down their foes
Savage Barbarian: Far from modern weapons this warrior has taught themselves battle in a unique and primal way
Superstitious: They develop their rage to warn of magic and mystical abilities and more easily defend against them
Totem Warrior: The Barbarian has a totem that they focus on, revering the powers that make them more like their totem 3

The UC sourcebook offers up another slew of rage powers for the Barbarian. There are quite a deal fewer than the APG but they fit nicely with some of the archetypes also included (another 7 options). The rage powers here work well together and do expand out the options for all Barbarians making this book a good read also if you are thinking of playing in the class. The added archetypes are;

Armoured Hulk: This Barbarian masters the use of heavy armours alongside their rage
Scarred Rager: These warriors are covered in scars, and each scar has a story!
Sea Reaver: Pirates and curs of the sea these warriors adapt their rage to open water
Titan Mauler: A warrior skilled in fighting oversized foes and bringing them down as quickly as possible
True Primitive: Tribes that live hidden away from the world tend to bring out the most primal Barbarian ragers
Urban Barbarian: Skilled at operating with the city or village as their territory these Barbarians are more civilised but just as dangerous
Wild Rager: These Barbarians become more like a beast as they give in to their primal nature

My View

The Barbarian is not a class that I am overly familiar with. I have a rudimentary knowledge of the class as I have had to NPC Barbarian’s only through the Serpent Skull adventure path. I have never played a Barbarian as a player and I have never had a player take on the role of a Barbarian although that may change in Reign of Winter as I have a player who intends to take a Barbarian should his current character die. Based on this I have little feeling for the class as a whole. From my experience NPCing the Barbarian’s in Serpent Skull I do know the class is not one that anyone should underestimate.

The class is brilliant at dealing damage. Their core mechanic is one that allows them to increase the amount of damage they do as well as increasing the likelihood that they will actually manage to hit on most occasions. It is the rage powers that add the subtle abilities to the class that I struggle to comprehend with the class and is a blind spot that I know I need to address. I have tagged the Barbarian as a class I would like to play to help me understand how they work in detail.

A Barbarian is a dangerous opponent and should not be written off as inconsequential. They have a multitude of handy powers that are too numerous to describe individually here but they can and will surprise you with these abilities so expect the unexpected.

I would love to hear from you all if your favoured class is the Barbarian. Hit us up in the comments and let us know what your favoured builds are. What is the best rage powers to equip your barbarian with and why? I have listed here only the core sourcebooks and the materials for Barbarians in those books, are there other books or sources that are a must if you are going to play a Barbarian? Until next week, keep rolling!

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