Retreat Forward

Some time ago, the One Page Dungeon was the rage amongst all the OSR bloggers. I must admit that I find the concept intriguing. As fun as flavor text can be to read in an RPG book, I don’t think that “read aloud” sections of adventures actually work in gaming sessions. If I have to read anything more than a few sentences or a short paragraph to my players, I notice their eyes glass over. Worse still, they often miss key information, simply because reading verbose prose aloud is not a very good way to rely fine detail. Emotion, maybe, but fine detail? No. What I like about the One Page Dungeon more than the template itself is the idea behind it. Namely, anything you have to use as a referee of a roleplaying game should be presented as clearly, concisely, and quickly as possible. That’s why monsters in older D&D are easier to use than 3.5. No matter how well designed the statblock, it still takes a certain amount of brainpower to parse all those ability scores, a...

There is a really cool scene in the Fellowship of the Ring in which the heroes, floating down the river Anduin into Gondor, pass two giant marble statues. These are the Argonath, a pair of statues carved in the likeness of Isildur and Anarion. The statues mark the northern border of ancient Gondor and serve as a visual warning to her enemies as well as a reminder of Gondor's might. The Argonath aren't essential to the plot; they're little more than scenery, but the statues serve another purpose. Their presence reminds the viewer (or reader) that Middle Earth is an old world with thousands of years of history. The Argonath show us that Gondor was once a much larger and more powerful nation. They also tell a little something about Gondor's culture. A GM would do well to include such man-made wonders in his campaign, for many of the same reasons that Tolkein included the Argonath in his book. They make the world feel more alive; they're interesting to vi...

I'm running solo playtests of the upcoming DCC RPG on weekends here on post. Since I don't have a gaming group to speak of, I run everything myself; the player characters and the monsters. Last time I ran things in the comfort of the post library. For a change of scene, I decided to play in the food court today. As I was sitting there, rolling Game Science dice and scribbling notes on a piece of loose leaf paper, I looked at the table across from mine and noticed a bunch of percentile dice surrounding this: “Are you guys playing the Marvel Superheroes Roleplaying Game?” I asked. They were. Not only did I chance encounter a trio of gamers, but they were playing the last game I expected to see anyone playing over here. I've been searching for a month for people playing the most likely games: Pathfinder, 4E, even Warhammer 40K. But Marvel Supers? From 1985? That's unexpected. It turns out, one of the three players (one was even a GIRL!) does run Pathfinder. Em...

I've gotten off the d20 band wagon. It's kind of sad, in a way. As silly as this sounds, I think I was literally one of the earliest adopters of D&D Third Edition. Way back in 2000, I was an active reader on Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D Third Edition News. I can still remember the excitement of those times. If I think hard enough, I'm mentally transported back to the radio station where I worked as an overnight DJ. During down time, I'd surf onto Eric's site and read snippets of the upcoming 3E. I remember how new and different it all felt. Reflex saves, Base Attack Bonuses, Feats...all that stuff that is part of the gaming lexicon now was exotic and new. It was a new age in gaming, one that we'd never seen before. The grognards will tell you that the golden age of D&D was the late 1970s, and they're right. The early 2000s, though, was the age where the gap between the game designers and the players all but vanished. The internet was sti...

I watched the movie Super 8 last night. I enjoyed it, although I thought that it had the makings within it of a much better movie. Super 8 felt like the Goonies mixed with a modern, slightly scarier, ET. I don't want to give the wrong impression; the plots weren't the same, just the feelings. A group of ragtag kids run around in an adult world while scary government agents do X-Files stuff in a small town. Super 8 is trying to be more realistic than the movies that inspired it, the movies that producer Steven Spielberg made back in the 1980s. The result is more realistic but less memorable characters. The Goonies were almost archetypes. They even had evocative nicknames that reminded the viewer of their personalities: Chunk, Mouth, Data, even Sloth. The characters of Super 8 have normal names. They seem (with the exception of the improbably brave and clever protagonist) like kids you might know. More real? Yes, but less memorable. At the same time, the fantastic element...

Now that I have the characters , it's time to put them through my pseudo-adventure. As I said before, I'm playing the part of all of these characters. This isn't a real adventure, but a series of planned encounters meant to simulate the sort of things one faces in a real D&D session. We begin with the PCs just outside the entrance to the Barbarian King's tomb. Dusk is falling, and they know that there are goblins inside. Their plan is to creep into the tomb quietly, hoping to get a jump on the goblins and defeat them as quickly as possible. Before they begin, Dog lights a bit of tinder and gets ready to put flame to his flask of lamp oil. The PCs then creep along the outside wall of the cave before bursting in. I have the party roll an Agility check, based on the PC with the worst modifier (+0). The result is an 8. The goblins, who are just inside the tomb's entrance, roll an opposed Intelligence check to see if they notice the PCs. I figure goblins ...

As I mentioned earlier , I'm playtesting the new DCC RPG from Goodman Games. I don't have a gaming group here in Korea, nor any friends to speak of at this point, at least not of the gamer persuasion. However, I do have dice, paper, and a nice quiet library. For this first playtest, I created a group of characters and put them through a simulated adventure. Basically, I planned out three set encounters that I think reflect the sorts of things that happen in a typical D&D adventure and then put the characters through them to see how the game handled things. I'm not trying to break the game at this point or put it through any kind of stress. What I'm mostly doing is familiarizing myself with the rules to see how they work and how they differ from the versions of D&D that I usually play. The Funnel One of the really fun things about the DCC is the way it turns character creation into part of the game. Back in the day, the rules told you to roll up your...

Goodman Games, makers of the very popular and prolific Dungeon Crawl Classic adventures for 3E and 4E D&D have decided to produce their own RPG. You should click  here to read more about the DCC RPG. Like Paizo did with Pathfinder, Goodman Games are releasing an in-progress Beta Version of their rules as a free download. I've decided to throw in my efforts and playtest the game myself, at least to the best of my abilities all by myself in Korea. If you were are too lazy to follow the above link, allow me to summarize what the DCC RPG is all about. I quote the site: "What if Gygax and Arneson had access to the Open Game License when they created D&D? What if they spent their time adapting thirty years of game design principles to their stated inspirations -- rather than creating the building blocks from scratch? What if someone were to attempt just that: to immerse himself in the game’s inspirations and re-envision the output using modern game design princip...

I see little point in "edition war" arguments where one side tries to convince the other that they play a superior form of D&D. That isn't to dismiss debates on the merits and flaws of different games. Nor am I saying that no one should not be able to gripe and complain from time to time. That's pretty much the purpose of most blogs, if I'm not mistaken. No, I'm against useless debates where one angry fan tries to pass his opinions and preferences off as some kind of fact, as if he's going to convince someone else to change their own feelings via an internet message board. While I've been guilty of contributing to these sorts of ego-driven discussions in the past, I would very much like to avoid doing so in the future. This got me thinking about other common behaviors that I'd like to avoid, if I can. I thought it might be useful to write these down and that it might be amusing if I did so in a fashion similar to the Soldier's Creed or...