#RPGaDAY 2023: Day 1 thru 15

First RPG Played This Year? Savage Worlds Deadlands.

First RPG Game Master? My old buddy Todd back in 1991. I was a sophomore in College.

First RPG Bought This Year? Harthbreaker. An OSR + Powered by the Apocalypse hybrid.

Most Recent Game Bought? Shadow of the Weird Wizard. It is on Kickstarter right now and you should back it too.

Oldest Game You've Played? Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition.

Favorite Game You've Never Played? WitchCraft from Eden Studios.

Smartest RPG You've Played? I don't know what this means to be perfectly frank. I'm going with Numenera for some reason.

Favorite Character? Billy Ray Cordite, a Pathfinder 1E Paladin that wore cowboy boots.

Favorite Dice? My friends bought me those really expensive Sapphire Anniversary DnD Dice that are metal.

Favorite Tie-In Fiction? West End Games had at least one novel for Bloodshadows that I really enjoyed.

Weirdest Game You've Played? Skyrealms of Journey at Gen Con in 1993. Strange setting.

Old Game You Still Play? Marvel Super Heroes/FASERIP from TSR

Most Memorable Character Demise? I had this Monk in 5E, an eladrin, he was just a combat monster and I was it hard to make him unique so I leaned into an existential crisis where he is tempted to join the cult of Iuz because he thinks he is a remorseless killing machine. However, first he discovers a Deck of Illusion and just loves the chaos of it. Then he discovers and then later wishes for a Deck of Many Things and he gets a magic belt from Kord and he begins to believe that the deity worships HIM. He goes off to defeat a Black Dragon in one on one combat but then decides to seduce them. He was almost holing his own in the fight but a grenade a gnome tinkerer gives him blows up on a count of 2 instead of 3 and the Dragon then finishes him off. It was crazy fun.

Favorite Convention Purchase? I have the Castles and Crusades White Box from years and years ago.

Favorite Module/One-Shot? Any thing published by Schwalb Entertainment. They are short and succinct.

 

If You Build It They Will Play: Hedrons

I started playing Magic: the Gathering with the Antiquities set...so 1994, I guess? I've always found many of the game's Planes fairly interesting and Zendikar is among them. In the setting, a geomancer, created these floating monoliths or Hedrons, to imprison the game's riff on the Great Old Ones known as the Eldrazi.

Since the Craglands have been dealing with the threat of expansion of the Far Realms I decided to use the Eldrazi as a change of pace.

The Hedron appears, passing through a newly formed Rift, moments after an unexplained explosion within a nearby mine and immediately begins floating at about 15' in the air where it remains stationary and vibrates at a frequency that is just barely audible, DC 13 Wisdom (Perception) check.

The Rift, which appears as a night-black oval set into the ground, is a slightly larger than an average human and is 15° cooler than the rest of its environment. Looking directly into the Rift requires a DC 12 Wisdom Saving Throw which causes a level of Exhaustion on a failed roll.

Anyone who succeeds on a DC 12 Intelligence (Arcana) check knows what the Hedrons are and that they are rare on this Plane. If the total is a 15 or higher then it is known that the Mage King Suleiman III of Khersia wrote that our Plane and Zendikar's were somehow linked during the sinking of Hem-Hoomod, the Ivory Seat of the Woodeel Empire, which marked the end of the 7th Age and the beginning of our current one. With a total of 18 or higher it is known that Ur-Hukar, the High Vizier to the Ivory Seat, came upon the Invector Prima, a foul tome devoted to the Higher Ungods, the name of the Eldrazi during the 7th Age, which corrupted him body, mind, and soul. If the total is 20 or higher then it is know that that Hussars of Vim use a strange form of magic to detect, track down, and destroy Hedrons and then cleanse the area via the Meteor Swarm spell.

If You Build It They Will Play: A Simple Start

A few months back I put our Tuesday Deadlands game on pause and started a Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition game with mostly the same players.

I chose 5E because two of my players hadn't really had much of a chance to try it, DnD Beyond is a HUGE time saver, and if I'd run B/X or ADnD I'd have used a fair number of house rules to make it somewhat closer to 5E.

I decided having a good introductory adventure to get things moving worked really well with Deadlands so I looked for something similar for 5E. With DL I used a sandbox setting but I feel more comfortable with DnD fantasy so something simple would just fine. We were starting at Level 3 and I chose the 4th Level adventure A Deep and Creeping Darkness from Candlekeep Mysteries because two of my players had play tested the 3rd Level adventure before. 

Without going into too many details the adventure gave me two locations the town of Maerin and the abandoned village of Vermeillon. Additionally, I know that I will be dealing with the Feywild and the Far Realm. I cut the part about Candlekeep and have the Players being hired by an older woman who is looking to return her Mother's ring to enhance the dowry of her great-grandaughter.

I'm going to take a step back and share that some goals this campaign: I want this campaign to be 99% player drive and since I have some very active players they make this easy for me to accomplish.; I'm not looking to make the Big Damn Heroes who have to save the world; the rules are far less important than fun -- again, my players have all kinds of ideas if sounds good why not do it? For example: our wizard had an idea to distract an enemy and while he knew Color Spray he didn't have it prepared, so I let him make an Arcana check and since he succeeded he was able to cast it. I think there should be some extra incentives for utility spells that might get overlooked and I've enhanced this process by giving him a magic item with several utility spells he can cast once per day.

We are couple sessions into this campaign and I've been sketching out the setting as the Craglands. There is something sinister trying to turn a nature portal into the Feywild into a hole to the Far Realms and they have met someone from 50 years in the future of Vermeillon whose exposure to the aberrant energies of the Far Realm have twisted him physically and impaired him mentally and there has been some concern about Hill Giants making deep forays from their mountain strongholds.

More soon.

Dungeons & Shivan Dragons: Sword of War and Peace for B/X D&D + Old School Essentials

Sword +3, War and Peace

Grants special benefits of healing and protection from against fire and evil creatures.

▶ Healing a living subject: The wielder gains the following benefits: 

• Healing: Restores 3 hit points of damage. This cannot grant more hit points than the subject’s normal maximum. 

▶ Protects against evil: The wielder gains the following benefits: 

• Save bonus: Gain a +1 bonus to saving throws against attacks and special abilities of affected creatures.
  
• Defense bonus: Affected creatures gain a -1 penalty to attack the wielder.
  
• Magic protection: Affected enchanted, constructed, and summoned creatures cannot attack the wielder in melee but may make ranged attacks against them.

▶ Protects against fire: The wielder gains the following benefits: 

• Normal fire: Unharmed by non-magical fire.
  
• Save bonus: Gain a +2 bonus to all saving throws versus fire-based magical or breath attacks.
  
• Fire-based damage: Is reduced by 1 point per damage die rolled. (Each die inflicts a minimum of 1 hit point damage.) 

Clerical Work: The Gods of Conan Part 2

 

Ishtar’s Midnight Courtship, 

from Ishtar and Izdubar, 

the epic of Babylon, 1884.

The British Library/flickr

I recently picked up Modiphius' Conan Bundle and was reading through the Nameless Cults and thinking about using the deities presented it for a Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition campaign. I figure I'll work a few each post.

Derketa

Alignment: Neutral Good

Domains: Grave, Life, Order

Erlik

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Domains: Death, Grave

Ishtar

Alignment: Neutral Good

Domains: Order, Twilight

Mitra

Alignment: Lawful Good

Domains: Knowledge, Order, Peace

5E vs the OSR vs What is Best for Our Group

I've spent the last year working on combating my Gaming ADD so that I could run games that would last more than 2-3 weeks. I'm glad to report it's been working. My Deadlands game is 9 months in and sadly had to go on hiatus as one of my players is buying and moving into a new house.

We decided to run a different game while he is unavailable and I started looking at the OSR and 5th Edition. On one hand, I'm royally pissed at Wizards of the Coast for their shenanigans and would like to support creators who actually care about their audience. But on the other hand I have some players in this game that want to play 5E, have never gotten to play it, and love DnD Beyond.

I did some heavy thinking about this and what I came away with is that I tend to agree with many of the 5E changes that were made while also altering many OSR games to be closer to 5E. And when I look at what has been successful for me as a DM in the last 9 months  is focusing on story and fun over game system.

In fact, when I look back at my Gaming ADD it always comes back to finding that perfect system. The 3 games that come closest to perfect for me are Castle Falkenstein, Shadow of the Demon Lord and Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. Right or wrong, 5E captures my vision of DnD as a game designer. I like Bounded Accuracy and Sub-Classes. If I were designing DnD it would look a lot like 5E.

After looking at all of this I went back to 5E and for my players and for me it was the right decision. I'm not giving WotC any of my money and I'm picking up excellent 3rd party products. I'm also backing Kobold Press' Tales of the Valiant as I feel that Kobold is doing some of the most exciting work on 5E.

My group is invested in 5E and I'm invested in them. They are my best friends and it's great that I get to run a game for them. I still am angry at WotC and I'm sure that will affect things at some point but honestly, I have enough material for 5E to use the engine for years to come.

I hope someone knocks WotC off of their block but in the meantime I'm going to enjoy DMing my friends.

Clerical Work: the Gods of Conan part 1

I recently picked up Modiphius' Conan Bundle and was reading through the Nameless Cults and thinking about using the deities presented it for a Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition campaign. I figure I'll work a few up each post.

Adonis

Alignment: Neutral Good

Domains: Life, Nature

Anu

Alignment: Neutral

Domains: Knowledge

Bel

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Domains: Trickery

Bori

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Domains: Order, War