Map: Bandit Stronghold

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This map was drawn over the weekend. Unlike several of the maps I have posted so far, this one did not originate as part of the Friday Five Minute Map challenge. Rather it was some doodling during downtime over the weekend.

A lot of my previous maps have been done on plain sheets of paper, no grid lines to help square things up. This map was done on printed graph paper. The lines were faint and removed during the scanning/Gimp/Inkscape process I have been using to clean-up the maps.

I have been relatively happy with how my cave maps have been coming along. This map includes some cave work off the side. It also includes several man or dwarf created rooms as well. I am working on “spicing” these rooms up with some objects and such to keep them from being so plain. Still need some more work in this area, but the rooms on this map have a little more going on than in some of my previous maps.

Bandit StrongholdBandit Stronghold

This stronghold is nestled deep in the rocky hills just outside of town. A maze of game trails cross the hillsides, winding their way in and out of the the small valleys and hollows.

Several small caves dot the area, most only a chamber or two in size. The one’s closest to town are frequent play places for the children of the town. Others are protected by animal inhabitants who call the caves their own.

One hollow is particularly rocky, several deer trails leading in and out of the area. The rock covered slopes nearly make traversing the slope on anything but a game trail near impossible. The slopes keep the valley in the shade most of the day, the temperatures a good couple of degrees cooler in this hollow.

The entrance to this smuggler’s stronghold is obscured by an oblique stone. Behind it is the entrance to one of the more expansive tunnel complexes in the area. Apparently abandoned by dwarves of centuries past, a group of enterprising smugglers known as the Blue Hoofed Bandits found the location and began using it as a base of operations for their illegal activities.

The Blue Hoofed Bandits primary use this stronghold as a storage place for good in transit waiting to be fenced and as a rendezvous point before and after their operations. The front portions of the complex are used for short term storage.

Should the stronghold ever need defended the bandits use the worked dwarven carved rooms as an initial defense point. The group only makes a cursory defense in this front portion of the stronghold, preferring to fall back to the natural caves which act as a natural choke point.

Though there are no obvious exits from the back of the stronghold, the well in the northern cave chamber is said to act as a quick exit to a lower level of the caves. Where these lower chambers of the caverns lead are unknown to all but the bandits that call this stronghold their home.

Review: Gygax Magazine

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Gygax Magazine Cover #1The Wait

On February 9th I received my shipment notification for my Gygax Magazine subscription noting my first issue had shipped. From about February 14th onward I began anxiously checking my mailbox every day for my copy to be here. I was frequently met with disappointment as each day the mailbox held no copy of the magazine for me.

On Saturday, February 23rd I received my notification the PDF copy of the magazine was available for download from DriveThruRPG. This was a welcome surprise as it seemed the word on whether subscribers received a free copy of the PDF went back and forth between yes and no. I am quite pleased that it turns out I do get a digital copy of the magazine as well.

I held out hope my actual print copy would arrive on Saturday as well and only downloaded the PDF to my iPad, not actually opening it. My patience paid off as the friendly postal worker delivered my magazine to my door just a few hours later!

I had been one of those people concerned about how long it had taken to receive the magazine. The PDF option helped lessen that concern a bit. The other thing I must remind myself of is even back in the Paizo Dragon days it used to seem to take a long time for me to actually receive my issue. There must be something about shipping a magazine at the periodical rate that equates to saying “send on the next mule that leaves the city”.

The Reading

So I immediately headed to the fridge to get the Dead Guy Ale I had held in reserve for this moment, I turned off all my electronic devices and settled in with the magazine I had anxiously been awaiting. I was a little nervous as I had read an early review or two that was not thrilled with all of the articles saying several seemed more ego filled, patting their own back than anything else.

First, this thing looks so much like the old Dragon magazine I grew up with in the 80’s it is uncanny. Opening up to just the table of contents further cements the this look. This look will bring a lot of fond memories flooding back for those of us who used to read Dragon many years ago.

I did a quick flip through, leafing through the magazine before settling in on the first article to read, The future of tabletop gaming by Ethan Gilsdorf. I really enjoyed this article, it too struck home on so many counts. After a depiction of what life was like as a kid in the 70’s-early 80’s, talk of Star Wars the movie and then his introduction to D&D. “I consumed the game and it rapidly consumed me.” is a sentence from that article. How many of us does that single sentence describe? He goes on to talking about D&D as time moves on and how it is today and how it will survive into the future. This article resonated with me on so many notes, it is easily my favorite article in the magazine.

From there I bounced around the magazine a bit. Gaming with a virtual tabletop by Nevin Jones was a good read. It focuses on Roll20 and how it helped bring some gamers together for online gaming.

DMing for your toddler by Cory Doctorow was interesting as I run games for my kids frequently. It was nice to see how he simply adapted on the fly to gaming with kids and seeing what tactics others use. I think it was cool to see someone not needing to purchase a special kids RPG product, but just adapt a game you already know down to the kid level with some tweaks.

There is a small section in the magazine labeled Kobold’s Cavern which is where some articles previously destined for Kobold Quarterly are going to appear, shepherded by Wolfgang Baur. A couple of AGE articles make their appearance here and a very nice alternative for Pathfinder feats with the introduction of scaling combat feats. This was an article written by Marc Radle and was an interesting take on tweaking how certain Pathfinder feats work. If I run a Pathfinder game again, I think I will be taking another closer look at this article.

Included as a special attraction is a writeup on a village by the name of Gnatdamp. Written by Michael Curtis it was an excellent location article. With a full page map of the village, an overview, a closer look at life in Gnatdamp, and much, much more this will be infinitely useful the next time I need a village for my PCs to find themselves in. It walks the delicate balance between enough detail to be useful without venturing into overly detailed territory quite nicely.

At the end of the magazine there are full color comics – Marvin the Mage, Phil and Dixie, and Order of the Stick. Yep – that is not a typo, Phil and Dixie are back!

The PDF

I did all of my reading for this review on the print copy. I did fire up the PDF on my iPad though just to take a look. The display and readability on the iPad was great. The downside was the magazine was not bookmarked. In today’s day and age of the PDF a non-bookmarked PDF was pretty unusual. Hopefully they either update the current PDF or at the very least improve that with the next PDF issue.

Thoughts

As is evident from the articles I touched on above I am really satisfied with my purchase of this magazine. My decision to purchase a subscription to it sight unseen has further been reinforced with this inaugural issue.

Yes, there was some people starting their article with a short blurb on their credentials. I did not find that out of place or obtrusive in the slightest. It felt more like gathering around the table a bit to hear from some folks that have been playing D&D and been in the industry for a long time.

There were some articles I was not fond of in the magazine. An article on science fiction in your game and an article on ICONS. I very much live in the fantasy RPG niche and I am not too into superhero games. But even the old Dragon of past used to have articles like this and I remember skipping those articles even then. There is enough value in the articles I did enjoy that the inclusion of these non-fantasy genres is not a significant issue. If nothing else it reminds me of the Dragon magazines I read as a kid!

I am quite pleased with the inaugural issue of Gygax Magazine. The magazine is available in print and PDF. I would recommend giving the magazine a chance and taking a look. I enjoyed my read through of it and am already anxiously awaiting next quarter’s issue!

RuneQuest Sixth Edition: Characters

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runequest-6

The post below is written by UbiquitousRat, a guest blogger for The Iron Tavern.

Following the near-collapse of my home roleplaying group, saved only by the decision to drop our most recent campaign, I’ve begun to tinker with two convergent ideas:

  1. Trying to build a solo-game using Mythic Roleplaying
  2. Testing out two promising candidates for fantasy RPG systems in my home-brew setting.

This morning, in a bid to get things rolling and take advantage of a day off work, I decided to try out character creation using RuneQuest Sixth Edition. This article is a review of those efforts and my thoughts on the experience.

RuneQuest

A long time ago, in a city far far away, a young boy and his father bought a boxed game called “RuneQuest”. This was the first RPG we had bought and, frankly, Dad wasn’t impressed once he opened it and found out what it was. For my part, however, I was hooked.

I remember rolling up my first character and reading through the rules with avid pleasure. We had some resources from Glorantha too, such as Apple Lane, and I still recall being slightly amused by the idea of sentient Ducks.

RuneQuest, however, won a space in my heart. I only played it a couple of times with friends, who much preferred to play D&D and Traveller, but I was a convert to the style. It was a game for heroes – proper heroes – and not just a game. And RuneQuest gave birth to my first campaign world: Mykovnia.

Return to Mykovnia

Some years ago I had a recurrent dream. It was a dream of the same world that I used to dream about when I was a teenager: Mykovnia. I shared the dream with a friend (now since lost to the aether) and used the dream to write some very short pieces of fiction.

Wanting to return to Mykovnia as a gamer I ran a very poor, over-rushed game using the Rolemaster FRP games system. I realised that, for my home group, the world was forever tainted as a failed game. Yet… for me, the world lives on. I learned today that I should have used RuneQuest.

Today, then, as I sat down to begin a solo-game using Mythic it occurred to me to also pick up the book that has been gathering dust for too many months: RuneQuest Sixth Edition.

RuneQuest 6e

This is a beautiful soft-backed book. I would pay serious cash for a hardcover.

The book covers all that is needed to play a fantasy RPG: Character Creation; Skills; Equipment; Game Mechanics; Combat; Magic (5 systems); Cults; Creatures; GMing. It is wonderfully written and presented, with some very nice black-and-white artwork throughout. At 450+ pages it’s a weighty tome.

I began to read the book months ago. The problem was that, although excellently written, it is done in a style which was designed to support a “read along as you play” approach. To be frank, I found this hard to get in to and realised that it’d be best to wait until I wanted to try it out. That day took far too long to come.

RuneQuest is a d100 game descended from the Basic Roleplaying system. It is skill-based and flexible, being written so that it can fit any setting of the GM’s design. Gone are the days of Glorantha, although the HeroQuest 2nd Edition supplements would be very easily adapted to the game. By the author’s own admission, “RuneQuest has always excelled at supporting Sword and Sorcery, Sword and Sandal, and mythic Ancient World sub-genres.” It’s this that makes it perfect for Mykovnia.

Character Design

Here’s where I picked up, working through the three-chapter process as written. RuneQuest emphasises background development and deeper roleplaying… so I started with an extract from my own writing:

“Out on the plains, away from the cover of the forest that would protect his tribe, the hunter was watching the lone wolf as it padded along the ancient trackway. Clutching his spear in his cold hands, chest and stomach pressed close to the snow-covered grass, he scented the air and squinted his eyes against the weak morning sunshine.”

This character is called Darryn. Later I described him as, “tall and powerfully built, with lithe form and pale skin.”

Characteristics

RuneQuest provides three systems for the core seven attributes, called Characteristics. I chose the third, a points-buy option, so that I could fully model the hero as I wanted. In truth, this was a quick process and the derived characteristics were really easy to calculate too.

What I really liked was that there is no obvious “dump stat” and that all the core Characteristics derive further stats that are essential. There are Hit Points but they are spread over seven hit locations, instead of being a simple total.

Adding Luck Points and Action Points to my sheet promised systems for creating the kinds of cool deeds Darryn might get up to in the future. I buffed up his Size and Constitution, gave a reasonable Strength and Dexterity, dropped below average with Charisma, and left Intelligence and Power roughly average.

The last step was to add two Characteristics together for each of a range of Standard Skills (which any character can use), giving Darryn some basic percentages from which to develop.

Culture

Here is where I started to think, “This is cool!”

RuneQuest provides a choice of four major Cultures: Barbarian (which I chose), Civilised, Nomadic or Primitive.

These cultures each give you some focused training in a selection of Standard Skills; they also add a choice of three Professional Skills (which cannot be used untrained) based on the given culture.

I chose Navigation, Survival and Tracking. I also gained a Combat Style – a culture-specific but highly flexible concept for choosing how your hero fights and defends – which is called “Wolf Hunter”.

What I really like about Culture, however, is the gentle flexibility of the system. Gamemastery is promoted as the player and GM work out how their characters fit into a system of cultural ideas. It’s really very simple but also very powerful in yielding character detail.

The section winds up with generating some background details. A random roll gave Darryn a mark of the gods on his body, which I interpreted as a symbol on his left shoulder blade which was associated with the Moon Queen (his patron deity).

On top of that, rolling on a couple of extra tables, we discovered he has a father but no mother; two grandparents and a cousin rounded out his family. We also found out that he has a friendly contact in the form of the tribal Shaman. This gave me the idea for a second character who is the Shaman’s apprentice. All good stuff, eh?

Career

RuneQuest offers twenty-four classic Careers – which are professional training packages, really – and for Darryn I chose “Hunter”. This gives the hero some more training in appropriate Standard Skills and a chance to add three more Professional Skills and/or a Combat Style. I chose to simply replicate Darryn’s cultural training, boosting those core skills even higher.

Careers are impressive. There are enough basic choices to provide for most campaigns. If this isn’t enough there are rules for creating new ones. Once again, the GM is given the tools to fit things to their own world very effectively.

What I really liked, however, was the way in which the Culture and Career choices potentially meld to create a unique character. Choice is maximised and, given the array of options, I would expect to see some very different heroes created from even the same combinations. This is a powerful and yet simple system.

Finishing Up

Final steps included spreading around some bonus skill points, including being allowed to choose either another Combat Style or an additional Professional Skill as a hobby. I added Lore (Beastmen) to Darryn’s skills and smiled as I boosted up his core training.

Characters get some basic equipment based on their place in the social order of their culture. They also get some Silver Coins to buy stuff with. Darryn started with a shortspear, knife and some quilted leather armour. I bought him a short bow, Hoplite shield and various basic gubbins. This too was very simple to choose and record.

Filling out the Character Sheet, usually a chore, was facilitated by a very simple yet comprehensive design. I didn’t need the Magical sections… but these aren’t really a distraction either.

All in all, given a total of around two hours spent in design, reading the book from scratch, this was a pleasant and easy-to-follow system.

Verdict?

Honestly, I expected the game to feel very Old School. In reality, it doesn’t… even though it is a worthy successor to a very Old School system. I am impressed. I want to create another character.

What I like is the easy-to-follow steps. It’s a book written to be used, not read and shelved. In retrospect, I like this.

RuneQuest isn’t, however, a quick pick-up RPG system. This is a game for the serious roleplayer who wants to take the time to “get to know” their character. RuneQuest facilitates this style. It’d probably drive traditional D&D types nuts with the background details, however.

Overall, I want to dig deeper now. Next steps include wanting to create a magical character. From there I plan to run a test combat… and then dive into some play.

RuneQuest has me convinced. Hopefully this review will help you decide if it’s worth a look too.

Game on!

Bio

UbiquitousRatUbiquitousRat is a long-time roleplayer and gamesmaster who has a history with gaming going back to 1979. In 1994 he joined Games Workshop, spending 12 years in the gaming industry at the coal-face of tabletop wargaming. In 1998 he founded the Friday Night Roleplay group at his home in suburban Nottinghamshire, UK, and ever since has been the primary GM. Oh, and he’s also a high school teacher during the daytime.

Random Table: Ale Names

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Beer Mug FoamFor this week’s random table we have 20 different ale names! Taverns are one of the favorite places for adventurers to seek out anytime they come to town. What better place to meet the locals and get the feel for what is happening in the newly arrived town.

Instead of selling your characters just another ale, roll a d20 and you can be serving them an ale with a name! No more buying a nameless ale, now your players can buy a Flying Rat Ale or a Twisted Trail Lager!

Have suggestions for next week’s table? Feel free to leave some ideas in the comments of this post or over on Google+!

Roll (d20) Ale Name
1 Skullcrusher’s Ale
2 Overlook Brew
3 Roc Stout
4 Brook Stout
5 Gold Hook Pilsner
6 Runemaster’s Lager
7 Skanzi’s Stout
8 Ironcrag Lager
9 Flying Rat Ale
10 White Root Ale
11 Spinster’s Pilsner
12 Dwarven Gutbuster Ale
13 Twisted Trail Lager
14 Brown Falcon Ale
15 Amber Sky Ale
16 Hobgoblin Stout
17 Rolling Boulder Lager
18 Black Alley Ale
19 Well Springs Pilsner
20 Castle Stone Stout

 

Map: Brewster’s Basement

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This week’s Friday Five Minute Map challenge over on Google+ was to post an isometric map. This challenge was a bit intimidating to me, as I am just now getting comfortable with the cavern maps with hatching I have been practicing. I was quickly reminded the point of a challenge was to actually be  a challenge and I started to view a few other maps in preparation.

Using isometric graph paper and pencil I was able to get the basic outline of my map down on paper within five minutes. Do not underestimate the importance of using isometric graph paper to help you with an isometric map. Once I had my basic outline done in the five minutes I then spent more time adding some detail and re-doing the lines in ink. This week’s map is a little smaller as I was unsure of the amount of time it would take to draw the stairs.

Once the extra details were done, I scanned the image, tweaked some things in Gimp and Inkscape and finally back to Gimp to fix-up a background. Details on the steps I use are written up in Matt Jackson’s blog post and this write-up at Deviant Art.

This week it is Brewster’s Basement, or rather what lies just beyond his basement…

Brewster's Basement

Brewster’s Basement

William Brewster is the proprietor of Brewster’s Pub, a quaint pub in a small crossroads village in a heavily forested region. Known for the Golden Hook Ale, familiar travelers through the forest always take time from their travels to enjoy an ale or two before heading on.

William is of slight stature and has shoulder length gray hair, typically tied back in a ponytail. He moves gracefully for his age and is a hard worker. His memory is impeccable and he remembers previous visitors of the pub by name, greeting them as they enter. William has been in this village for many years and none of the locals know his story from before he arrived.

William built Brewster’s Pub over the burned out ruins of a small homestead decades ago. Only the ruined cellar and base foundation remained when he built those many years ago. The foundation stones today are still blackened from the flames that claimed the original structure.

Brewster’s Pub is now a two story structure. The first floor contains a common room and a cramped kitchen just off the back. The second story is more akin to a closed off loft, providing just enough room for William to live above the pub.

A small cellar sits below Brewster’s Pub. Stock overflow is kept here as well as several keg racks. On the back wall is a warping oak door, iron bands holding the planks together. William has not opened this door since the pub was built, he frequently has a stack of kegs in front of the door obscuring the view of the door from those descending the stairs from above.

What lies beyond the door?

D&D Original Edition Reprint

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Original Edition ReprintNot 100% sure when this popped up on Wizard’s site, but it is there now. The Original Dungeons & Dragons RPG Premium Reprint. People were wondering if they would release this one. It appears the answer is yes.

It looks like the boxed set will include the following seven books:

  • Volume 1: Men & Magic
  • Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure
  • Volume 3: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures
  • Supplement I: Greyhawk
  • Supplement II: Blackmoor
  • Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry
  • Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes

The blurb on Wizard’s site says the books will have updated covers but the art inside will be the same.

The picture shows what appears to be a nice wooden box and also dice.

The price point appears to be $150 USD. Though that seems on the steep side to me, I am sorely tempted by this one.

Review: Adventure-A-Week

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Adventure-A-Week LogoOver the past few weeks I had the opportunity to review some of the materials being put out by Adventureaweek.com. For those unfamiliar with the site, Adventureaweek.com releases a new adventure for Pahfinder and D&D 3.5 every week. These are not short, one or two encounters, but full adventures to run with your group. The adventures are in color and include maps and full layout design.

What You Get

The site is subscription fee based, for $9.99 per month you will receive one adventure per week and gain access to the back catalog of adventures already released. The adventures are available in web format or PDF. They are beginning to release their products in print form as well. In addition adventures come with maps for the GM, Players, and ready for VTT use. Hero Lab files are included for users of that tool. The web formatted versions are extensively hyperlinked and compatible with tables to ease running games from your table.

The Review

For my review I requested two styles of adventure – a city based adventure and a good old fashioned dungeon crawl adventure. Adventureaweek.com was readily able to provide me with a an example of each from their back catalog. My review is based on the PDF version of the adventures. For this review I am going to look at each of those adventures and then at the service as a whole. At the end we will touch on some of the other things Adventureaweek.com has going on in the future.

To Catch A SerpentTo Catch A Serpent

To Catch A Serpent was the example of a city-based adventure I received. The adventure is a 10th level adventure for 4-6 PCs. The PCs find themselves in the city of Tawwa amidst a series of murders. Drawn into the investigation the PCs find themselves moving about the city gathering clues that eventually lead to the sewers under the city itself. Within the sewers they seek to find out who or what is responsible for the recent events in the city.

For the GM the adventure opens with an adventure background and then a summary to quickly advise the GM how the adventure is likely to proceed. Several adventure hooks are also provided to help get things underway for the GM and PCs.

Sometimes investigative adventures with 10th level PCs is difficult to pull off. 10th level spellcasters have a myriad of resources available to them to “shortcut” an investigation rather quickly. This adventure has a section to help the GM with that, offering several valuable tips on how to handle some of the more powerful investigative spells 10th level casters will have. I think it does so in a way that won’t make a caster feel cheated, the divination spells will still be useful, just not reveal the whole basis for the adventure up front. Very handy section for this adventure.

Stats for the creatures are provided in both Pathfinder and D&D 3.5 versions. The stat blocks are included at the end of the adventure and are quickly accessible by clicking the appropriate link in the PDF in the encounter area. Clicking the link takes the reader to the back of the PDF where the full stat block resides.

The adventure itself is an interesting romp through the city and under the city to ferret out the source of the problems for the city. The characters will get to encounter several interesting creatures along the way as well.

Alagoran's GemAlagoran’s Gem

Alagoran’s Gem was the sample of a good old fashioned dungeon crawl adventure. This one was written for 4-6 PCs at levels 3-5. This one is a C-series adventure which is written to capture the “old school” feel in dungeon crawl adventures. A link to a post on Old School gaming is included in the preface to set the tone for this adventure.

This adventure is sure to be fun for anyone who enjoys the deadliness of a Tomb of Horrors type adventure. Deadly traps, encounters and such that challenge both the player and character are par for the course for this adventure. I would almost feel guilty running a set of established Pathfinder or D&D 3.5 characters through this one due to the deadliness. It would make a great one-shot though for an afternoon of deadly fun!

This adventure also opens with an adventure background, synopsis and hooks to get your characters to the dungeon. The map for this adventure is in color and very well done showing the expanse of this dungeon adventure. There is a nice mix between traps and creature encounters throughout the adventure.

I will certainly be tucking this one aside as an adventure to run on the fly at a convention or a time when I have need of a one-shot adventure to torment my players with. Though very deadly, I really liked the feel of this adventure.

Adventuress Overall

Looking at the two adventures overall, they are put together in a way to make them easy to run with minimal prep. Information the GM needs is handily called out in colored text boxes with icons to designate whether the block is a trap, skill check, read-aloud text, and such. This makes overlooking a key point while running the adventure much less likely. Very handy if trying to run the adventure on minimal prep.

As noted above, these adventures are for use in both Pathfinder and D&D 3.5. There are some differences between these systems. In encounter descriptions there are links to both the 3.5 and PF version of the monster. The GM only needs to click it and they are sent to the correct system stat block. This helps cut down on the number of stat blocks in the encounter text itself which would become unwieldy if two systems worth of stat blocks were embedded in the encounter area itself.

The maps by Todd Gamble are of very good quality. Having a GM map, player map, and VTT map is very useful for the GM.

I did take a look at the web version of Crow’s Rest Island as well. It is extensively hyperlinked to help with moving around in the document. It also includes some sound files to play during the course of the game to add to the ambiance. It is an interesting way to present an adventure and having the choice between a web format and PDF is great for the GM.

Overall Adventureaweek.com seems to be packed with value and a very regular release schedule. If you find yourself constantly looking for new and fresh adventures to run that your players have not already read or played, Adentureaweek.com is well worth checking out.

They do offer Crow’s Rest Island as a free preview to check out before signing up for a subscription. If you are curious about the service, start there and also be sure to check out the FAQ on the site.

Adventure-A-Week Extras

In addition to their different lines of adventures being released on a weekly basis, they set this all against their own campaign world. This world is optional as the adventures can be dropped into other published settings or your own homebrew. But if you are kicking off a campaign and do not have a setting in mind, Adventureaweek.com provides you with one as a backdrop for your game.

Adentureaweek.com is also accepting Adventure Submissions. The process and formatting requirements are detailed on their Submit my Adventure page. A possible way for aspiring adventure writers to get their start in the publishing world.

Rise of the Drow Kickstarter

Adventure-A-Week is also running a Kickstarter for their Rise of the Drow trilogy. This adventure is for both Pathfinder and D&D 3.5, just as the other modules part of Adventure-A-Week are for. The Kickstarter is to raise funds for a hardback book for these modules in full color and expanded content. They have well surpassed their initial goal and are charging through their stretch goals, adding content and art to the book with each goal. There are still 30 days left with this post, so plenty of time to check out this Kickstarter as well.

Roll20 Outage Aftermath

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Roll20 LogoSaturday evening Roll20 had a service outage. I typically do not get to play on Saturday evenings as most of my gaming takes place on weeknights as that is what fits my schedule the best. However, I started seeing the tweets about it on Saturday evening even though I was not playing. Then earlier this afternoon the good folks at Roll20 posted a note on the previous evening’s downtime.

Technical problems happen with anything that involves tech. Anyone that owns a computer, smartphone, or any tech device has been troubled by a technical issue at some point. Even the big companies like Amazon or Google’s Gmail have the occasional outages and they have substantial amounts of money invested in avoiding these outages. Hitting 100% uptime is very difficult, even for the big players.

A key differentiator between different companies is how they communicate with their users during these outages. I must say, Roll20 handled things very, very well. Let’s look at how Roll20 handles keeping folks up to date on their availability.

First, they maintain http://status.roll20.net/. This is the method they provide to check the current status of their servers. If there is an outage, it should be reflected here. The historic availability is also available for the past three months on the status site. This is a handy resource for Roll20 users if they are experiencing some issues. It provides a quick easy way to see if it is a server problem or a player having isolated technical issues.

Next, Roll20 maintains an active Twitter presence. If you use Twitter and play in Roll20 games, you should follow them. Looking back at their Twitter timeline from last night you can see they were up front about the issues and were tweeting updates about the problem keeping people informed. While tweets do not fix the problem, communicating about the problem really helps people know what is going on and that the issue is being worked on.

And finally, after the outage last night Riley posted on the Roll20 forums more details about what happened. He reassures the community Roll20 takes the downtime seriously and goes on to describe what is going on to help minimize these issues in the future. I have great respect for companies that post these post-problem updates publicly.

I am quite happy to see how Roll20 handled the outage and communicated during the outage. Technical issues happen, it is how the companies handle them that differentiates them from the others. Kudos to Roll20 for handling last night’s brief outage like professionals in an open and forthcoming manner.

BareBones Fantasy Goes Gold

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Barebones FantasyBareBones Fantasy RPG has gone gold over at RPGNow. BareBones Fantasy RPG is a “rules-lite” fantasy RPG that uses d10’s for action resolution. I have posted about it several times here at The Iron Tavern.

BareBones Fantasy packs a whole lot into an 80-ish page rulebook. Enough to get a person rolling with the game and play for quite some time. The fact it is a “light” system helps ensure fast play.

It is good to see it getting some of the attention it deserves over at RPGNow!

Random Table: Treasure Chests

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Old Treasure ChestLast week I kicked off my random table experiment with a random table of odors one might smell in the dungeon. Some folks noted the table could be used in other situations as well – odors in town, NPC smells, and such. There are several uses for the dungeon odor table during your game session or during prep.

This week I post a table of treasure chest descriptions. These can be used on the fly if your players start asking for more details about a treasure chest they have found. Or you can use them during session prep to spark some ideas of your own. Just what would be in a metal, perforated treasure chest?

Have suggestions for next week’s table? Feel free to leave some ideas in the comments of this post or over on Google+!

Roll (d20) Treasure Chest Description
1 wood, appears to have suffered water damage, some warping, though chest still appears functional
2 dark, lacquered wood, iron bound corners
3 copper, stained green, reinforced wooden corners
4 made of cedar wood, the smell of cedar still emanates from the chest
5 light colored maple wood, carvings of leaves and twisting vines on each side
6 sides and lid made of thick vines woven together, flexible vines form the hinges
7 steel fabrication, embossed with gold leafing, two oversized hinges and two padlocks on the front
8 carved from a block of stone, even the hinges are crafted of stone, covered in various geometric patterns
9 wooden chest of thick planking, painted all white
10 scorched oak wood, rusted iron-plated corners, with oversized padlock
11 metal construction, coated in quartz for a “glittery” effect, corners reinforced with painted white metal plates
12 entire chest is fabricated of perforated metal
13 sides and lid made of black marble with white swirls, appears without seams
14 crafted entirely of obsidian the sides are melded together at the corners, silver trim along each edge
15 wooden chest, painted red and edged in painted black iron corner pieces
16 crafted of iron, turned rust red with age and moisture, three hinges on the back with a single large latch on the front
17 crafted of oak, trapezoidal in shape with blocks making chest legs
18 made of reinforced glass, tinted to obscure the contents
19 steel box, one corner and lid significantly dented in
20 dark wooden lid appears mismatched to a lighter chest proper, steel banding does not match, intricate lock