Tag Archives: RPG

Review: Coliseum Morpheuon

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Authors:  Clinton Boomer, Jonathan McAnulty
Publisher:  Rite Publishing
Price:  Print – $31.49 / PDF $17.49 / Electronic Bundle $15.94
Pages:   122, Softcover
Tankard Rating:  5/5

Coliseum Morpheuon presented by Rite Publishing is a mini-campaign setting for the Pathfinder ruleset. It also includes a mini-adventure for 16th to 20th level characters. The setting is designed to be dropped into any campaign setting you may be using and details the Plane of Dreams. Regardless of whether you play in Golarion, your own homebrewed setting or any other published setting, Coliseum Morpheuon is easy to fit into an existing campaign world.

The setting covers the Plane of Dreams. The plane is ever-changing and one’s experience with the plane can easily vary from one trip to it to another. Gravity is subjective, time can be erratic, the environment can morph, yet magic tends to work normally – save for when it doesn’t.

The opening chapter of the book covers several of the regions of the plane with areas such as The Idle Isles of Daydream, The Ghoulish Cliffs, The Halls of Painted Heaven, The Slumbering Sea and more. Some attention is also paid to how one enters the Plane of Dreams.

Chapter Two covers the currency of dreams in the Plane of Dreams. In this realm dreams can almost be a form of currency separated in various levels depending on whether a dream is a Hope, Aspiration or Goal. Mechanically one can burn a dream much like one might use action or hero points in a game. Besides burning a dream a character can sacrifice a dream for greater effect, though this destroys the dream.

This chapter also includes several new traits for characters who enter the Plane of Dreams that relate to this new mechanic. For GMs that might feel dreamburning is too much for their game they also provide a short list of alternatives to dreamburning.

Chapter Three is dedicated to the Denizens one might find in the Plane of Dreams. This plan offers greater variety of life than most other planar realms. The book starts with covering the type of creatures, such as Constructs, Fey, Dragons, etc. Some brief information is given about each type, commonality and other tidbits of information. From here the chapter moves into specific creatures to the Plane of dreams with full bestiary style entries.

Chapter Four moves to cover The Island of The Coliseum Morpheuon. While the Plane of Dreams has a large number of changing environs the rest of the book focuses on this Island. The Khan of Nightmares oversees this island and it is legendary for its hosting of gladiatorial competitions that draw people from a myriad of locations.

The history of the island is discussed as well as the society of the island. More detail is given to the Great Coliseum that lives on the island and the various parts that make up the Coliseum. Later in the chapter some of the surrounding areas of the island are given some additional detail. The chapter closes with several additional adventure seeds for use by GMs planning to use the Plane of Dreams in some form.

Chapter Five provides a much closer look at the denizens of the Coliseum itself. This chapter does a good job of outlining how these denizens relate to each other and then much more detailed bestiary style entries appear later in the chapter.

Chapter Six contains an overview of the Epoch, an grand tournament that takes place at the Coliseum. This chapter provides some background, plot hooks to weave into the contest itself and information on the benefactors that the PCs may find themselves aligned with or struggling against.

The remaining chapters of the book are primarily related to the higher level adventure a GM can drop in to their campaign. From how the player characters receive their invitation, to the various tests and trials of the event and the last chapter addressing some of the secrets of the Coliseum to help the GM develop and engaging game.

And finally the Appendix includes two possible rival groups for the party to encounter during the tests and the third Appendix contains pre-generated characters.

I found the Coliseum Morpheuon a very engaging setting. One of the parts I really liked was that this mini-campaign can really be used in nearly any campaign setting you happen to be playing in. It does not matter whether you are running a game in Golarion, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk or your own homebrew, there is room to drop this setting in to open up a whole new arena of play.

There are a lot of interesting campaign settings out there, but if you already have a game underway in one, it makes it difficult to do any real integration with another setting. But with Coliseum Morpheuon it can easily be used within a campaign you might already have running.

The included adventure also acts as a perfect end cap to an adventure path or any other long running campaign you might have wrapping up. As campaigns reach the winding down stage around 17th or 18th level the GM is often left with little option to continue another few levels. With the Plane of Dreams there is a whole new interesting area to explore, likely different than anything else the group has done before.

I also found the dreamburning mechanic interesting and different enough to add some spice to those later levels in campaigns. The thought of consuming your dreams for benefit or having dreams stolen was very intriguing and opened up several story ideas for me as I read about the concept.

A GM that was aware of this campaign setting could also easily work various side plots and such into their game even from the low levels. There are several ways to involve lower level characters into brief forays into the Plane of Dreams.

Overall I found this book a very good read. I believe it could provide a GM with an entire Plane to explore in –depth or simply provide a way for GMs to make brief excursions into the realm. The included adventure is a perfect way to cap off an adventure path once it has come to completion. So whether you use the mini-campaign setting in its entirety or in bits and pieces there is something for any GM to use.

The book is available in print and PDF at Paizo or Cubicle 7. A bundle option is available from DriveThruRPG that includes PDFs of Coliseum Morpheuon, four map packs, and paper minis.

Tankard Rating
5 tankards out of 5 tankards

Note: The Iron Tavern was provided a review copy of this book.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Related Kickstarters

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Last week I took a look at the new Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG from Goodman Games. Already this game has an active community over on the Goodman Games forums. People are putting out various character sheets, 0-level character creators, upper level character creators and the game is seeing some good 3PP support. I plan to take a closer look at some of these resources in a future post here at The Iron Tavern.

This week I wanted to look at a couple of Kickstarters that are out there to support the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. Each of the following Kickstarters has about two weeks remaining, so there is plenty of time to take a look at them and make a pledge to them.

First up we take a look at the The Crawler’s Companion from Purple Sorcerer Games. The Crawler’s Companion project is an attempt to bring a cool tool for DCC RPG players to tablets (iPad and ones running Android 2.2 or higher). This tool would be extremely useful to have at the gaming table and will provide the following features:

  • Funky Dice Roller: D3-D100 and everything in between
  • Critical Hit Charts: All player and monster charts
  • Failure Charts: Fumbles, corruptions, misfires, deity disapproval!
  • Rules Reference: Many topics available for quick reference.
  • Spell Reference and Resolution: Yep, they’re all there!
  • Multiple Modes: Have the program roll for you, or use it to quickly reference the charts based on your own physical dice rolling

The developer currently has this running in desktop PC application. The funds raised by the Kickstarter will simply help port the application to tablets for easier use at the gaming table. Even the lowest tier of funding provides a PDF of a Purple Sorcerer Game’s adventure. Checkout the project and take a look at the video.

The next project that has already met its initial goal and is moving quickly to meeting its stretch goals is one from Brave Halfling Publishing. They are looking to get a solid start in producing modules for Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG via this Kickstarter.

As this Kickstarter is already funded it is a very good deal to get several modules to help you get your Dungeon Crawl Classics game up and running! As of now this Kickstarter is giving you:

  • Appendix N Adventure Toolkit #1 : “The Ruins of Ramat”
  • Appendix N Adventure Toolkit #1 a: “The Witch of Wydfield”
  • Appendix N Adventure Toolkit #2 : “The Crumbling Tower”
  • Appendix N Adventure Toolkit #3 : “Danger in the Sulyndri Forrest.”
  • Appendix N Adventure Toolkit #4 : “The Revenge of Abudakar”
  • Appendix N Adventures Game Box

There is still one stretch goal not met yet, but it appears to be a great one if the project can meet this final stretch goal of $15,000 dollars. From the Brave Halfling Publishing Kickstarter page:

“Five years ago, I spent many months working with Gary Gygax on a unique campaign setting for his game, Lejendary Adventures. We shared back-and-forth almost daily about designing settings, npc races, magic item creation, divine beings, etc. Maps were created and art was commissioned. With Gary’s passing and the end of his game, I decided to not release this material. However, from the first time I got to read some of the early DCC RPG play-test material, I knew this campaign setting had found a new home! So my friends, if this kickstarter reaches $15,000, everyone who has pledged $20 or more will also receive a pdf copy and a print copy of, Appendix N Adventure Toolkit #5: “The Old Isle Campaign Setting.” This product will include a 11″ x 17″ color campaign map, a digest Player’s and Referee’s Guide. While all Appendix N Adventures are generic and can be placed into any campaign, they all do have specific locations in the Old Isle Setting.”

If you are just getting started with the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, these two Kickstarters offers some great tools to help you hit the ground running.

I Have the DCC RPG Hardcover!

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As I noted earlier this week in my brief look at the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, I decided having the PDF alone was not enough and tracked down a hardcover copy online and pieced together a set of “funky dice” to actually roll when I played.

Yesterday my book and dice arrived. Tonight I had a bit of time to take some pics of the book and the dice.

As you can tell I am pretty excited about the dice given the number of appearances they make in the pictures above! The book is massive and given the price is an excellent deal. The Koplow dice I pieced together from Troll and Toad are oversized. One day I will need to track down a matched set of a more normal size.

A Look at Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

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Recently I have become interested in the Dungeon Crawl Classics by Goodman Games. I was aware of their beta playtest, but for the most part I ignored it. I am not real sure why I did not pay it more attention during the beta, but it never really made it any closer than the edge of my radar.

Fast forward just a bit and it the game started to get some activity on various forums and social media outlets as its release date drew nearer. Then people started posting they had received their PDF, then people started posting they had received their actual book. From there more review started happening and my curiosity grew.

I started reading a little more about it, EN World did a good review of it and I decided to look for it at Origins this year. I could not find the book there, so I purchased the PDF that weekend.

Initial thoughts are quite positive. The book is chock full of art and art from that early era of Dungeons and Dragons. The back cover has a quote that sums things up nicely “You’re no hero. You’re and adventurer…”

A group sitting down to play starts at level 0. You don’t start with just one level 0 character, but with three, four or even five characters. Why? Because many of them are going to die as they go through the funnel. The funnel is the adventure that gets ordinary people to go adventuring. Ill-equipped and with hardly anything to their name these adventurers go off to tackle the task at hand – maybe a few will survive. Those that do survive advance to first level where a class is chosen.

The game has the basic classes, Cleric, Thief, Warrior, Wizard, Dwarf (who is very similar to a warrior), Elf (who is like elves of old both martial and wizard in one), and Halfling who has some thief-like tendencies.

Magic is dangerous in this game. Casting even the simplest of spells carries some risk. This risk is what keeps magic from being too commonplace. Magic can corrupt you as the game goes on.

The game also uses funny looking dice. No. Not the funny looking dice we are all used to playing with. To us, d4’s, d12’s, and d20’s are common. DCC RPG uses things like the d3, d7, d14, d16, d24 and others. Dice that I actually did not have in my collection. I remember opening my Basic D&D Box set many years ago and the fond memories of seeing such unique dice. Somehow Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG was able to recapture that feeling.

I intend to take a closer look at Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG in a future posting, so let me move on into my early foray into the game. My son and I (the same one that has GM’ed some Pathfinder) generated up three 0-level characters each to see what that experience was like. It went quite quickly.

Generating characters with truly random stats and such was very refreshing! No agonizing over where to place your ability score points, just let the dice fall the way they will. None of our characters were very extraordinary, but I think we each had our favorite we were hoping to see survive.

Yeah, fat chance of that! We tackled the first adventure included in the book. Being used to more modern games where you characters are “supposed” to survive, six characters felt like plenty.

When we reached the second room and saw two characters die right away we quickly realized we might not have enough characters with us. I think we made it to about the fourth room before we TPK’ed. We loved it. We had a blast playing even if it did result in all of our newly created characters dying.

So this weekend I tracked down a copy of the hardback book (which was harder than one would think) and ordered two sets of those “funny” looking dice. I can’t wait for them to arrive later this week.

If you hold some nostalgia for your initial forays into gaming and those initial forays were back in the late 70’s or early 80’s you need to check Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG out. There will be some fun times ahead!

Mini Review: Pathfinder Lite PDFs

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Paizo announced yesterday that they have released “Lite” versions of their hardcover rulebooks and Inner Sea World Guide in PDF format. The products released in this manner are:

These versions of the PDFs are created with the idea of being tablet or netbook friendly. Paizo has achieved this by simplifying and compressing the background in the PDFs and other minor export options to help speed them up on mobile devices.

As tablets have seen increasing use at the game table this has been a frequent cry heard on the Paizo forums to release the PDFs in a lighter format. The originally release PDFs have more intensive backgrounds and layers which often caused for slower rendering on tablet type devices (and even lower end laptops). Finally, Paizo has found a way that they are happy with to keep the quality of their product and answer the pleas for lighter weight PDFs.

Before I delve into how these new Lite PDFs perform, let me go over my current PDF reading setup and past performance.

I use a first generation iPad for a good portion of my gaming materials these days. I use it for notes, the occasional dice roller, web access and of course PDFs. I use GoodReader for my PDF reader on the iPad. It has some excellent features including Dropbox integration, annotation abilities, custom bookmarks, tabbed PDFs and with its read-ahead caching can provide a performance boost when reading PDFs synchronously.

Reading Paizo PDFs on the iPad generally has worked well. GoodReader caches the next page so at a normal reading pace things flow smoothly. The problem historically has been when you want to jump from section to section within a PDF, say as one might do at a game table. Here the delays were much more noticeable with the page redraw taking a second or two. For the most part this led me to hope I wouldn’t need to reference the PDF too much during game play because of these delays.

Granted, some of these cons were taken in stride when with the iPad I could carry my entire Pathfinder book collection in one slim device. It made attending conventions much easier on the back than it used to be and freed up room for snacks in the backpack! Still, I was certainly one of the people hoping for a less heavy PDF of the various Paizo products for the iPad.

This morning I loaded up several of the new Lite PDFs on my same iPad with the same PDF reader software. I worked with the Advanced Players Guide, Bestiary 2 and 3, Ultimate Magic and Ultimate Combat. They all worked quite well on my iPad. The page turns were smooth, I could jump around using the Table of Contents with speed and then page forward and backward from that spot with minimal delay.

The Lite versions of the PDF are definitely much improved over their heavier weight PDFs I had been using of the same books. I still need to see how they do at a full game session, but I suspect this week I will be leaving my hardcover books at home on the shelf and just relying on the iPad this week.

This is one of the many reasons so many gamers really feel Paizo really gets us gamers. Paizo already had my money for all of the PDFs in question. They aren’t really making anything more from me by releasing these lighter weight versions of the PDF as I already owned them. But they listened to their customer, found a way to release these PDFs in a manner which met their production standards and ran more smoothly on the ever growing number of tablets at the gaming table.  Thanks Paizo for listening!

Tankard Rating

5 tankards out of 5 tankards

Week in Review: 2/19/2012

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Art Courtesy chiaralily of flickr.com

Welcome to another installment of this week in review at The Iron Tavern. I like to use these posts as a way to sum up some things that have been going on that might not warrant a post dedicated to the topic.

Timeless Adventures – The Tribute

Carl Bussler of Flagons and Dragons fame has released his Pathfinder Adventure The Tribute for $4.99 for the PDF. I have been quite tempted to do a review on this product, but I was involved with some of the early feedback on the product as he was working on it and feel that could lean my review one way versus another. So I am including in this week in review post.

An adventure for 7th level characters with the Pathfinder system you find yourself at the village of Honningstad and facing the difficult choice of saving the town or rescuing some villagers taken captive from an envoy. The characters must make the choice of which task to tackle first and then see if they can do solve both in a very short timeframe.

In addition to being a well-written adventure it uses a tracking device called the Scroll of Omens to help track the passage of time in an interesting manner. It also allows the characters to visibly see as they proceed in the adventure that their actions have consequences in relation to the timeline.

This one looks like a lot of fun for the GM and the players alike. You can pick it up over at DriveThruRPG.com.

Kingmaker Campaign

The Kingmaker campaign I am running continues to progress. We are midway through book six at the moment and it seems to be going well. Book six of the Kingmaker AP gets a few complaints that it comes out of nowhere in comparison to the first five books in the AP. I believe in my campaign that I have done a good job of foreshadowing the events in book six and it feels more logical. I hope so as at the moment it is my favorite portion of the campaign from behind the GM’s screen.

Our last two sessions have been over Google Hangouts and Skype due to some scheduling issues on my side. Next week’s session will be face to face again. I thought it might be the finale session, but I am not so sure at the moment. Due to some technical difficulties last week we had a late start, so we might have more left than we can fit into one more session. In either case we are getting close.

Campaign Next

See what I did there? Once the above Kingmaker campaign wraps up I will get a break from GMing for our local group for a while. Our normal group’s GM is going to run Council of Thieves for us. I am looking forward to the campaign as it is always nice to just be the player. Our normal GM does an excellent job of weaving together interesting sub-plots. Given the setting of Council of Thieves he should have a plethora of tools at his disposal to do so!

Troll in the Corner

For those that might have missed it, I have become a regular contributor over at Troll in the Corner. I write an article every Tuesday over there. It has been a fun experience so far. Definitely check the site out if you have not done so yet, there are several talented authors over there that post on a variety of gaming topics.

Open Design – Journeys West

The Journeys West Open Design project is progressing nicely over at the Kobold Quarterly site. The major turn-ins are starting to happen and the early rough drafts of the current turn-ins are starting to surface. It has definitely been a learning experience over there for me, both in honing some writing and learning what makes for a winning pitch. It also gives some insight in what goes into a project from start to finish.

Gaming With Kids

I still have been running a Pathfinder Campaign using the Beginner Box rules for the kids. They have been having a good time with the game. For the past couple of weeks my son has actually stepped up to start GMing his own adventures which I have posted about here. He has done a really good job on that. He has run at least one more adventure since my post here about his first experience. We made it part way through that last week, it was another pretty solid adventure from the mind of an eight year old boy!

Weekly Wrap

And this concludes a weekly review at The Iron Tavern. As always I have been keeping busy!

Review: Pathfinder City of Strangers

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Author(s): James L. Sutter
Audience: GM/Players
Price: Print – $19.99 / PDF – $13.99
Pages: 64

While I typically try to review items that have been released within the last two or three months, I am making an exception for City of Strangers. I picked up in preparation for an upcoming Play-by-Post game that is going to take place in Kaer Maga in the region of Varisia. I wanted to have some more information for my character build and this looked like the book to have. I am very glad I picked this one up, it does not disappoint!

Oh, and did I mention Kaer Maga sits atop a massive cliff and has been built in the ancient ruins of a fortress?  With six sides composed of eighty foot high stone walls, the city is an impressive sight sitting atop this massive cliff.

What is in this book

City of Strangers is a 64 page that is part of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting series of books from Paizo. This book is dedicated to the city of Kaer Maga which is located in the Varisia region of Golarion. The book includes a map of the city, history of the city, an overview of the city districts, the people of Kaer Maga, the area beneath Kaer Maga, a prestige class and a new monster.

Inside the front cover is a relatively detailed map of the city. The districts and locations described in further detail in the book are marked. The map was well done and helps the reader put things in relation to each other at a glance.

The first portion of the book is the introduction which delves into the history of the city and then moves into a look at the city from an overview perspective. The various districts are touched upon, brief mention of the Undercity and the stat block for the city is listed.

The next section begins the in-depth review of the city. We get a closer look at the geography of the city including a description of its location and the appearance of the city once inside. We learn more about the eleven districts of the city and how eight of them are in the ring or the wall around the city and the remaining three are in the open air core of the city. This section also covers the resources and economy of the city.

This chapter then moves into a more detailed look at each of the districts within Kaer Maga.  Each district receives attention to what makes it unique from the other districts, a brief mention of certain notable locations and a mention of influential NPCs in that district. Within this section are some sidebars that include a magic item, a closer look at slavery in Kaer Maga, city plot hooks, and more.

The next chapter covers the people in Kaer Maga. It leads with the various Pathfinder classes and how they fit into the city. A similar approach is taken with the races as well. Next up in this chapter looks at the government in Kaer Maga and the city’s relationship with cities and bordering regions, followed by a look at religion in Kaer Maga.

This chapter then moves into a look at key players and factions within the city. There is everything from arcane power groups to golem making families of power to rival gangs in the Oriat district and more. There are many factions at work within the city and this section of the chapter helps describe each of these to the reader.

The next chapter in the book takes an in-depth look at what lies beneath the city of Kaer Maga. Built atop towering cliffs there is plenty of room for an undercity. The first portion covers the Halflight path which is an underground trade route that works its way up to the top of the cliffs. Going on from there the chapter talks about the rest of the Undercity and includes a well drawn map to give perspective to each section. A full page random encounters chart helps the GM have an idea of what one is apt to encounter beneath the city proper.

A new prestige class is included in this book as well, the Bloatmage. The Bloatmage is a mage that has figured out how to get their bodies to produce more blood than normal to gain greater spellcasting abiltity.

A new monster called the caulborn are also included in the book. These creatures were one of the early settlers of this mysterious city that is mentioned in the history of the city.

Thoughts about the book

The artwork and cartography are both very well done in this book as I have grown to expect from Paizo products. The map on the inside cover of the book is very well done and the map of the Undercity later in the book really helps give a perspective as to how things are situated under the city itself.

This book is definitely heavy on the fluff side, which is a positive to me. There are so many things going on in this city that the plot hooks for running in this city just leap out at a GM considering running a campaign in or near this city. If for some reason these ideas aren’t leaping off the page at you there are sidebars to help jumpstart your creativity.

The districts and factions in the book are well detailed, but still leave plenty of room for a GM to work their own ideas into the city. This blend caters to both GMs wanting ready-made organizations and structure as well as the GM wanting to bring their own flavor to the table.  For some reason the rivaling street gangs in Oriat were particularly appealing, likely because it brought modern day gang issues into a fantasy setting.

I also really liked the imagery this city brings to mind. It is easy to picture it perched atop these huge cliffs above the valley floor far below, thick walls that hold entire city districts within them. Coupled with an undercity that spans multiple levels for those that want to adventure underground there is a lot to experience in Kaer Maga.

The Bloatmage Prestige Class had lots of flavor to it and could see it being useful for an NPC. Not sure I would ever consider it for a PC, but certainly some fun to be had for GMs. The caulborn monster was an interesting critter, especially given the history of Kaer Maga. One can always use more critters, right?

I would definitely like to continue to see treatment of various cities in Golarion as Kaer Maga received in City of Strangers. I was very impressed with this book and cannot believe it took me this long to stumble across it.

Final Rating

I rate this book as a 5 out of 5 for its fluff content. The content is well done, interesting and just jumps out at you with ideas as a player and GM alike. This book has a minimal amount of crunch in it and while I like the flavor of it I rate it a 4 out of 5. Overall I give this book a 5 out 5 tankard rating. All city supplements should be more like this one.

Tankard Rating

5 tankards out of 5 tankards

The 8 Year Old GM

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Iron Tavern readers have certainly noticed I have written about the Pathfinder Beginner Box a fair amount. Everything from Beginner Box Anticipation, Hero Lab for the Beginner Box, mentions in weekly reviews and just earlier this week an actual play account of playing the Beginner Box. All of this has led to a final post about the Beginner Box, my eight year old son, whom we will call X, GMing his own adventure.

X has been studying the books in the Beginner Box since he received it in December. He will ask the occasional question out of the blue “What is DR?”, “Tell me more about alignments”, “Dad, why don’t black dragons deal acid damages with their bite too?” and several more over the past weeks.

A little over a week ago he started mentioning that he wanted to try to run an adventure. I told him we could take a week off our normal weekend game and he could run what he had come up with. I showed him how the creatures had challenge ratings and gave him a rough idea of how he could use those to gauge semi-appropriate encounters. He picked up on the concept and ran with it.

So this past weekend he announced he was ready to run his adventure. I built up a quick Dwarven Barbarian and advanced him to second level. His younger sister broke out her 2nd level cleric and we took along Merisiel as a pre-gen. While I put the finishing touches on my character he took care of rolling out my battle mat, getting the wet erase markers ready and picking out his pawns he would need for the adventure.

He started us off in Sandpoint with the mayor summoning us for some assistance. Apparently various weapons and minor valuables had been taken from people’s homes over the course of the past five nights. The mayor requested our help with investigating and tracking down who was responsible for these thefts. We did some dialoging with the mayor and then headed off through town to check out the most recent house that had been burgled.

We approached cautiously and observed the house for a bit to make sure it was not being watched. Then we approached and searched around and found tracks. The tracks were not human tracks he said and after a knowledge nature check we were able to determine they were lizard, web footed like tracks. We also found some scratch marks on the door from some sort of clawed hand.

We then talked to the owners of the house and asked to see the locations where things had been taken from. X did a pretty good job of playing this out and seemed to pick right up with responding to the questioning.

Soon we found ourselves heading out of town and towards the swamps. We traveled for a bit and found a roguish looking individual whom we spoke with. We dialoged a bit with him and learned of some lizard, frog like creatures off the main trail in the woods. Sounding like someone we might be interested in we headed off that way.

We traipsed through the woods a bit and came across an enormous tree where we encountered a few goblins, several of which tried to sneak up on us after we had already engaged the first few.

With those goblins dispatched we found a hole that seemed to lead into an area near the tree roots. My dwarven barbarian promptly went in and we encountered several giant centipedes. The fight was a bit on the tough side with Merisiel getting poisoned multiple times, but we were victorious.

Unusually enough we found two boggards who had been prisoner beneath these tree roots. We quickly realized their feet could have made the prints we found in town. With information from the two we found we plunged further into the woods.

We met a trio of people that we thought could possibly be bandits but it never came to blows, so we simply used information from them to further close in on the boggard camp. As we headed that way we did encounter an abandoned building of sorts which we checked for more clues, but found little else than a series of traps!

With that we reached the final encounter. Up until this point all of the encounters had been fairly balanced. It seems X is a chip off the old block and is a firm believer in tough final encounters. Turns out these six boggards had a boss. Their boss just happened to be a young black dragon!

We fought and we fought hard, but in the end the party fell one by one, finally losing our cleric which soon led to my barbarian falling in battle as well. We actually managed to take the dragon down, but the remaining boggards made easy work of a bruised and battered party at that point. I think this encounter worked out to the ballpark of a CR7/CR8 encounter. Just a tad much for us!

All in all X did a great job running this adventure. Frankly, given the number of mock battles he likes to play through on his own, I expected it would be one encounter of random monster after another. He surprised me with opening with an investigative scenario and handling the investigation questions pretty well!

From there he dropped in some roleplaying encounters on the road (ideas he said he picked up from the Game Master’s Guide) before reaching our first actual combat encounter. He chose interesting terrain for that encounter and the dug out opening under the tree’s roots was a nice touch. His dropping some boggard prisoners in there was a great link to the actual enemy who had been causing the town’s problems.

The final encounter was a little overwhelming, which I chalk up to inexperience. We’ve all been there I think where an encounter turned out a little tougher than originally intended. The fact the boggards had a big boss orchestrating the whole thing was great though!

To me this really helps show how awesome the Pathfinder Beginner Box is. It enabled an eight year old boy with an interest in the game to learn the rules to the degree of actually being able to run a session himself. He did this with only a few questions of me as he studied the rulebooks and pieced it all together himself. I fully consider the Pathfinder Beginner Box a success in bringing the game to people new to the hobby – both young and old.

Playing RPGs Online

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photo by Kurainisei

Gaming has come a long way from the time when I started. Having grown up in a very rural area it was quite difficult finding a reliable group, much less one where we had a convenient location to play. Persistence paid off though and through many of my school years I had a group to play with despite the logistics.

Even today I still live in a rural area. I have a major city within thirty minutes, which helps, but it does mean hosting the game at my house is a rare opportunity. The difference between my youth and today (besides better modes of transportation) is that the opportunities for gaming online option exists.

Here at The Iron Tavern I have covered Play-by-Post gaming through a series of advice posts for a successful PbP game. This is still a great option for those that have scheduling issues. But as we all know, PbP gaming is slow, bordering on tedious. Luckily today we have even more options for online gaming.

Virtual Table Tops

Virtual Table Tops is certainly one of the game changers. Providing the ability for connected users to view a battle mat, move tokens and in many cases resolve combat via a series of clicks. Built in chat, frameworks for enhanced system support are features of many of them making gaming via the Internet much easier.

I’ve toyed with many of the VTTs out there and have played actual games on both TTopRPG and MapTool. Others such as Fantasy Grounds are nice VTTs as well, but I tend towards the free VTTs when possible as I find it lowers the cost of entry. Among the freely available ones I prefer MapTool for several reasons.

photo by benimoto

MapTool works on both Windows systems and Mac systems, which is a tremendous, plus for it. MapTool can be as easy or as complex as you want it. If you want easy, it can act as just a battle mat to move tokens on. Or you can use a framework for the system of your choice and use vision blocking and fog of war for a complete experience.

I have also used TTopRPG in actual gaming situations. It only runs on Windows but is pretty easy to get up and running. The macro system is simple, but easy to get the hang out. The lack of support for the Mac is the biggest thing that keeps me from investing my time into this VTT.

Voice Communications

There are several ways to handle voice chat over the Internet these days. The more popular options include Skype or Ventrilo. There are pros and cons to each. I like Ventrilo because it seems to consume fewer system resources. Skype seems more familiar to people. I have played with both. Despite my preference for Ventrilo, I have probably played more games over Skype.

Wizards of the Coast has a VTT in beta that has voice chat built in. I have heard good things about it, but I have not used it to comment on the quality of its voice chat. While I prefer a modular approach, there could be some advantage to having the voice chat built in to the VTT itself.

Video Communication

Some people prefer video for when they play. I tend towards just audio, though that is largely due to bandwidth constraints on my end than anything else. Skype has a video chat option, but you have to pay to do video conferencing with it.

Enter Google Plus with its Google Hangouts feature. This enables group video chat for up to ten people I believe if your bandwidth will support it.

Other Battlemat options

Some find the VTT option a little overwhelming or they do not want to deal with troubleshooting connections to the person hosting the server.

One that I hear mentioned frequently is Twiddla. Twiddla is a free online whiteboard that does have some interesting features. I played with adding an image to the whiteboard and adding some tokens and it seemed to work well. The advantage to this approach is that people connect to a shared whiteboard instance and do not need to connect to a server running VTT software at someone’s house. It makes for a lightweight solution.

Another option is to share Google Drawing document, which also allows you to place tokens on an image (i.e. of a map) in the Google Drawing document and allow people to move them as representations of their character.

Bringing it Together

As you can see there are a lot of pieces to gaming online. Using the applications mentioned above you can combine them in several different ways. You can go with a full on VTT and Skype with just voice. You can go with a VTT and Google Hangouts with video chat. Or you can go all Google Hangouts and maybe just share a Google Drawing or use Twiddla to meet your needs. There are a lot of choices out there now to meet your online gaming needs.

One other factor that comes to bear on your decision of what tool to use is your game system of choice. If you tend towards the more complex systems that lend themselves to the use of battlemats then a full on VTT might be the best option for you.

If you use a more rules light game where combat is less reliant on a battlemat, then simply using a Google Hangout with only voice or video might serve your need.

In any case, gamers today have much better opportunities to game today than we did just a couple of years ago. You are no longer limited to gaming with people within driving radius of you, but you have the whole world to find gamers to game with!

New Year, New Games

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photo rights to canonsnapper

The folks over at Gnome Stew are hosting a New Year, New Game blog carnival as part of their 2012 New Year, New Game contest. This post is The Iron Tavern’s participation in their blog carnival.

New year, new game. Sometimes groups get in their groove and neglect checking out new games. I am extremely guilty of this. In fact, of the people in my local weekly gaming group, I am likely the one most guilty of not playing a lot of new games. I tend to get pretty focused on a system and not drift too much from that.

I always have good intentions of course. But with what limited gaming time I have, I try not to spread myself too thin or not want to give up a gaming night to another system that I would be learning from scratch. This results in me sticking with my game of choice at the moment.

Now over the course of 2011 I did get to play some games outside of my normal preference of the fantasy genre. The Kingmaker game I am running went on hiatus for a few months and this presented a great time for others in my group to run a few things. So we saw Supernatural run, Call of Cthulhu and a mini-arc Star Wars campaign. Okay, I admit, I’ve played Star Wars before, but the others were new to me. I had a good time playing the different games and I should make a more conscious effort of trying games outside of my norm more often.

Given the routine I get in, let’s look at some of the things that do get me interested in breaking that rut and trying something new.

The biggest thing? One-shots. Tell me the game is a one-shot and I am much more open to trying a game. The risk with a one-shot is minimal, if I don’t like it I only spent one evening on it and still managed to hang out with friends. If I do like it, then we can go from there and maybe work the game into rotation more frequently.

Next up is the excitement from the person proposing the new game and how good they do selling it. Want me to be interested in trying out a different game? Tell me how it is cool, what makes it unique? Do you seem excited when you tell me about it? The pitch for the new game is a big factor in how warm I am to trying it. Sell me on it.

Finally, I like for the person that will be running the game to know the rules pretty well. A lot of questions come up in one-shots. How does this work? I want to do this, what do I need to roll? What skill do I use? Do I want to roll high or low? Quick answers to these questions keep things moving quickly and keep things from getting bogged down during play.

I have been pretty spoiled by our de facto RPG expert in our group. He is very well versed in all things RPG and is an encyclopedia of rules knowledge of a myriad of systems. When he’s pitching a new game system I am much more apt to say yes.

Now that I have covered what gets me most interested in breaking my routine and trying a new game, let’s look at what I most want to try out in 2012. I have three games on that list. Fiasco, The One Ring, and Dragon Age.

Fiasco interests me because I keep hearing great things about it on various social networks. It is also outside my norm from what I understand, yet it still intrigues me. My RPG expert in my group is familiar with it, now I just need to talk him into running it!

The One Ring is a game I have purchased and also have interest in either running or playing a small mini-campaign in. Followers of The Iron Tavern have seen me talk about the game before, but it looks like it does an excellent job of painting a Tolkien world through game mechanics. The combat system also looks interesting too me and quite different than many of the d20 systems I am used to.

And finally, Dragon Age has recently caught my eye. The artwork on the cover of the upcoming 3rd set is very impressive and I downloaded the Quickstart Guide as a result. It looks very promising and might be a viable option for remote play over Google Hangouts or Skype due to less dependence on a battlemat.

In closing, here’s to breaking out of your normal gaming routine to try something a little different in 2012!