Wacky Campaign Concepts: Adventurer School!

The idea of a campaign where the players are students at a School for Adventurers is one that I have occasionally pondered, usually concurrent to my being reminded that the Harry Potter franchise exists. Its full implementation would be necessarily somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as it depends on the idea of The Adventurer as a recognized societal role necessary enough in quantity to support a familiar education structure. That is, of course, where the fun lies, in the intersection of the expectations of a dungeon-fantasy type universe, and the players' own educational experience.

As this idea percolates around a number of elements - Xcrawl style dungeon-courts as practical exams is always a winner - one area that's always come up short is the actual sitting in class part of going to school. Happily, Skerples over at Coins and Scrolls has recently been thinking along similar lines, and recently posted some thoughts about a similar conceit using his Magical Industrial Revolution* setting. Of course, his version is a little more collegiate, but the system of a pass/fail roll that varies in difficulty based on the difficulty of the course is really quite intriguing. My only modification would be to encourage players to take the more difficult courses by offering small perks upon successful completion - perhaps  a +1 or advantage on checks against getting lost for those who've passed "Unusual Cartography", for example. It's very tempting to rebuild the whole course list with requirements for various classes - can you really be an Assassin if you fail to pass "History of Poisons"?

On the other hand, the whole 1d100 course list is such a fine example of the kind of style this concepts requires it would be a shame to mess with it. "Nonessential Salts" indeed.

One Day Left For Latest ACKS Crowdfund

 

Being the sort of person who usually prefers fighters and thieves to spellcasters in D&D-type games, I had initially not paid much attention to the latest Adventurer, Conqueror, King System* supplement to be crowdfunded by Autarch. I'm glad I finally did, though, because the magic of the Almanac of Unusual Magic is very unusual indeed.

The 56-page book covers four new ACKS classes, three of which - gnomish alchemists, dwarven geomancers, and warlords - slot in well to a fantasy milieu. The fourth, however, is the Terran Engineer - apparently riffing on a character option in Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu* for lost spacemen who, if the illustrations are any guide, basically hail from Starfleet. The Engineer class, then, reflavors magic to be the "jury-rigging" ability of an engineer like Scotty to create fantastic devices, albeit not necessarily temporary ones. Of course, being an ACKS product, this new class (as well as the others) is broken down into its component parts for further customization, in a very Engineer-like manner now that I think of it.

Still needing about $450 to fund at the time of this writing, the GameOnTabletop campaign for the Almanac also offers an opportunity to add on ACKS rulebooks at a discounted price. I've backed an Autarch project on this platform before, and for not being Kickstarter or IndieGoGo it worked very smoothly. I highly recommend giving the pitch a look if it tweaks your interest at all.

Sol Survivors

The terms "OSR" and "Hard Sci-FI" may not seem especially congruent at first glance, but they combine like peanut butter and chocolate in Termination Shock, a nascent setting from Niklas Wistedt, aka Paths Peculiar.

Set in the early 22nd century, Termination Shock is the story of the recovery of Earth's space infrastructure after a passing particle wave put all the ships and stations on the fritz. It's a constrained setting in some ways - mankind has yet to leave the solar system - and yet there's enough planets, moons, asteroids, and stranded ships to keep a group of space adventurers busy, and that's before they inevitably land on Orcus.

Although he hasn't yet written a lot for the setting - just the initial pitch and a description of a typical outpost - was is there is very evocative. It helps when the premise can be illustrated with such cool maps as this one, and there are several like it on the original post. Not to mention the occasional spaceship:

This is the Swedish ”Cricket” modular starship. Presented with ”Puncher” rocket module, ”Hauler” cargo module and ”Viggen” gunship module. For my Termination Shock #scifi setting (https://t.co/K5AiesjKmL) #ttrpg #dnd #osr pic.twitter.com/jVUi2DhH39

— Paths Peculiar (@PathsPeculiar) June 18, 2020

It'll definitely be worth keeping an eye on the Paths Peculiar blog to see how this setting develops. I'm especially keen to see what's on Orcus . . .

Questing for OSR News

Ever since G+ went offline, the Old School RPG scene has been somewhat fragmentary, with different subgroups congregating at different places on the web. Ben Milton, author of Maze Rats* and Knave* as well as the Questing Beast YouTube channel, has announced his intention to try to alleviate this with a free newsletter:

To be named The Glatisant (top marks for consistent branding), the first issue has yet to be released, but can be signed up for here.

Adventure Lookup - Intriguing DM Tool

I'm a big sucker for lists and databases, and my recent discovery of Adventure Lookup is squarely in that wheelhouse. It is, in essence, a big list of adventures for the various versions of Dungeons & Dragons - from the Basic set to 5th Edition, with options for Pathfinder, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and various OSR rulesets. But not only is it possible to filter the list by system, but by player level, setting, publisher - even by what treasure is included or what kinds of monsters there are to fight.

Once an adventure is located, most entries will have some kind of indication of where it can currently be obtained - often a direct link to DriveThru or some other host (However, many that were originally from Dungeon magazine just have the issue number, and only a couple include a link to the Internet Archive Dungeon collection). After that, well, it's all up the the DM . . .

A New Game for the New Year

A link on the Twitter #OSR hashtag recently led me to the Spanish-language RPG publisher grapas&mapas, and more particularly to their thus-far only English-translated work, Vieja Escuela Pulp! Translating roughly to "Old School Pulp", it is indeed a lightweight (48 pages, including the adventure) OSR take on early 20th-century adventure fiction, which is what is usually meant by "pulp". Now that the '20s are here again, it's the perfect time to check out some of the examples of this genre.

Like most other games that fall under the OSR banner, Vieja Escuela Pulp! uses the basic six-attribute, class-and-level, d20+ modifier system we're all familiar with, with some tweaks to fit the author's taste and to emulate the genre. Some of the changes that I especially noticed include:

• A six-item skill list that largely replaces attribute bonuses as modifiers for rolls.
• A simple mental health/sanity mechanic based on the Wisdom stat.
• A Pulp! points mechanic to activate class talents as well as mystical and super-science devices alike.
• A streamlined advancement system that automatically incorporates a degree of multi-classing.

All in all, my impression is that the rules take more than a few cues from more modern designs, but they are so well streamlined that they would be easy to integrate into other games, even ones from more traditional OSR genres.

The adventure, "The Swamp of the Snake God", is a nice, if a little sparse, search for a crashed WWII bomber that turns into a lost-civilization adventure. The final dungeon, in particular, could be easily borrowed from the South Pacific and re-used anywhere a small pyramid might be found.

And the best part of all? Vieja Escuela Pulp! can be found for free at the publisher's website, linked above. Happy New Year, everyone!

And Now For A Word From Our Sponsor

So, I'm sure if you're at all interested in RPGs in the 21st century, you've heard of DriveThruRPG*. It's basically the Amazon of digital gaming, both in its retail dominance, self-publishing empowerment, and affiliate program, in which participants can get a small percentage of the price of any purchase made through a particular link, for example the one above. This percentage does not increase the price of a purchase, rather it comes out of DTRPG's take.

I've been using DTRPG affiliate links for some time now, usually marking them with an asterisk that leads to a footnote summarizing the above for transparency purposes. Instead of that, I've decided to make a page with that information.

And now for a demonstration: earlier this week, Lamentations of the Flame Princess* announced a sale reducing all their PDFs sold through DTRPG for just $2.00 each, or $1.50 each for their LotFP Everything Bundle* (this works out to about $82.50). This includes the full (NSFW) art version of the core rules*, Ken Hite's excellent Vietnam-War-inspired setting Qelong*, award winners like A Red and Pleasant Land* and Broodmother Skyfortress*, basically every weird, fantastic, and downright horrific book the company has ever produced - right up to their most recent Gen-Con releases*. Believe me, $2.00 is practically a steal for some of these, but the sale only lasts until the end of the month. Once it's October in Finland, it's back to full price.

D&D Ability Scores Explained With Tomatoes

Based on a much-shared Reddit thread and brought to life by artist Max Marcil:

Also available as a PDF. And remember, if your first instinct is note that a tomato-based fruit salad is a salsa - you're the bard.

Breakthrough in Gygax/Tolkien Studies!

The question of how much Gary Gygax was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien in the writing of the first few versions of Dungeons & Dragons is one of those topics that generates a great deal of chatter on the Internet these days, usually producing more heat than light. Personally I hold to the idea that Gary was fairly indifferent to Tolkien's fiction, but included the Middle-Earth elements at the insistence of his players. However, it did occur to me recently that in addition to the occasionally-superficial borrowing of monsters and classes, there is an element of old-school play which is closely modeled by The Lord of the Rings - the Appendices, even! - than any other source I can think of.

As is well known, D&D characters who attain high levels gain the ability to build strongholds and accumulate followers. The precise rules for this vary by edition - some retroclones* being especially well-known for expanding on this playstyle - and by class, but it's a pretty universal element.

Art by Ted Nasmith

Universal in the game, at least, but perhaps not so much in the inspirational literature. I've read a bit of discussion around AD&D's Appendix N, including Jeffro Johnson's tome on the subject, and don't recall seeing this ever mentioned. As for the Appendix N works themselves, well, we have Conan famously becoming king-by-his-own-hand of Aquilonia, and maybe John Carter becoming the Warlord of Mars if we stretch the definitions some, but these both of these involve taking over an existing power structure rather than carving out a new one. For that, the best example I can think of is the later careers of Legolas and Gimli:

"After the fall of Sauron, Gimli brought south a part of the Dwarf-folk of Erebor and he became Lord of the Glittering Caves. . . . Legolas his friend also brought south Elves out of Greenwood, and they dwelt in Ithilien, and it became once again the fairest country in all the westlands." - The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A

Now, despite my clickbaity headline, I doubt this passage had much to do with what we call the "Domain Game" of early D&D. In fact, I would tend to think the concept as driven more by gameplay needs than anything in fantasy fiction at the time, though I welcome further examples. Still, it's a remarkable correspondence in concept, and one that I certainly wouldn't mind exploring at the table someday.

*Affiliate link.

Requiem For Google+

Well, it's finally happened. After much sound and fury, the Google+ social media experiment is officially over. Being something of a late adopter to things like this I was only on for the last couple years, but during that time I saw a number of informative, amusing or useful things, some of which I was able to salvage:

The Circlet of Fungal Power

A new magic item for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.

The Circlet of Fungal Power presents itself as a typical golden crown with a velvet lining colored purple with white spots. If worn, it transforms the wearer into an Amazon warrior woman with the following attributes:

Height: 6'2, Weight: 170
STR: 9, DEX: 17, CON: 11, INT: 11, WIS: 11, CHA: 18

All other characteristics, including class, remain the same. Upon removing the crown the wearer reverts to his previous appearance and attributes, but there is a cumulative 1% chance the wearer must make a Save Vs. Transformation or have one attribute (rolled on a d6) permanently altered. The accumulated chance resets with each save, but the seventh failure results in the wearer completely transforming into Amazon form (as per the Polymorph Other spell), in addition to gaining the firm conviction that they are the heir to the throne of a far-off kingdom of intelligent toadstool people.

Inspired, of course, by this. I'm not even sorry.

Kickstarters Coming and Going

With the advent of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms, it seems there's always a neat gaming-related project running. To illustrate this point, I'm going to highlight a couple that I'm currently backing, one that's just started and one that's almost out of time.

First off, Secrets of the Nethercity by Autarch is ending in just a couple of days. This project is actually two books, a city guide and a "kilodungeon"* filled with the remnants of a necromancy-fueled elf culture, both obviously intended for use with Autarch's Adventurer, Conquerer, King System** but easily adapted to the OSR system of your choice. While it's reached its funding goal, there are several stretch goals to go that will add details to the city setting, many of which will be unlocked in just a few thousand more dollars.

While I'm a bit behind in reading it all, I've been a big fan of Autarch's output thus far. I can also vouch for their customer service, having had a small problem during the fulfillment of their last Kickstarter, which was remedied within a day. So if you want to uncover the Secrets of the Nethercity, I certainly encourage backing it.

As for the new one, what it lacks in direct RPG content it more than makes up for in style and good ideas. I'm speaking of Cirsova Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, which is currently in the process of funding its 9th and 10th issues.

 Or rather, it's funding Volume II, since the editor of Cirsova, P. Alexander, has said that even if the Kickstarter fails to fund, these two issues will be released on Amazon. Still, the Kickstarter price for these two magazines starts at just $1 for digital copies of both, so there's incentive to back now instead of later.

So what do you get for your $1? For the past few years, Cirsova has been publishing some of the best short fiction available in a pulpy/Appendix N/Weird Tales mode. While it tends towards Burroughsesque Planetary Romance, strict genre lines take a backseat to action and plot - the latest released issue includes cyberpunk, urban fantasy, and space pirates, while the first three issues available for free on the website include swashbucklers, Lovecraftian sword-and-sorcery, and weird Colonial-era yarns. No matter your taste in fiction, there's probably something here for you.

And as for gaming utility, there are a few stat blocks and one-page dungeons scattered throughout the magazine's run, but the real utility is giving a GM a wide variety of incidents, characters, and details to work into their own games - much as the original Appendix N did, and continues to do.

Like with Autarch, I'm a happy previous backer of Cirsova magazine. Neither of these fine publishers have any idea I'm writing this, my only benefit is that more backers means more and better content for everyone. So if either of these interests you, by all means help them out!

*Because it's big, but smaller than a megadungeon, you see.

**DriveThru affiliate link - generates a small percentage paid to me at no additional cost to you. Thanks in advance!

When White Stars Are Right

Over at Tenkar's Tavern, the latest entry on the rumors table is that White Star* and White Star Companion*, the Swords & Wizardry-derived Space Opera RPG from James Spahn and Barrel Rider Games, are now priced on DriveThruRPG as Pay-What-You-Want. If you haven't already, I can highly recommend checking them out, as I think that White Star is my favorite entry in the admittedly well-trodden "Space Opera OSR" sub-genre. Certainly it's the one that has taken off (heh) the hardest, with a variety of other supplements available from both Barrel Rider Games* and others*, not to mention all the fan-made content in the OSR Blog community (a self-referential example). Much of this is designed with an eye towards tailoring your campaign to a specific sub-genre, or even recreating a specific franchise.

In a way, that gets at the heart of what I find so endearing about the system, or rather the implied setting. While most RPG settings, I suspect, have at their base the attempted emulation of a favorite genre or piece of entertainment, the implied setting of White Star is a glorious mash-up of influences, with only the tiniest effort made towards disguising their origins. I mean, you want "Star Knights" and their evil counterparts "Void Knights"? Check. "Qinlons" and "Assimilants", or alternatively Assimilants and "Cannicks"? Check. Something more classic, like "Thronks" or "Wellsians"? Check. All of these together? Go for it! And toss in anything else you can think of - heck, there are even two different versions of Ewoks, "Fluffs" for random encounters and "Yabnabs" for a PC option (capped at Level 4).

If you have even the slightest interest in the genre, there's really no reason not to check these out. It's even got me pondering some new ideas for a mashup setting based on not filing off those serial numbers . . .

*Remember, folks, that any DTRPG links on this blog are affiliate links that pay me a small fee when you use them. Relax, it doesn't cost you a thing.

Blog Zeitgiest Roundup: Pulp Middle-Earth

Perhaps it was the release of the Players Guide for Cubicle 7's official 5E Dungeons & Dragons Middle-Earth adaption* at the end of August, but it seems to me that in the last month or so there's been a lot of good discussion in the vein of playing Tolkien's masterpiece with a decided Howardian bent.

While some had explored similar ideas earlier this year, it was really Trey at From the Sorcerer's Skull that really kicked things off, with his post "Middle Earth with More Pulp":

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Númenor and the gleaming cities, and the years of the Fourth Age, there was an Age undreamed of, when realms of Elf, Man, and Dwarf lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars. . . Hither came Aragorn of the Dúnedain, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a ranger, a wander, a chieftain, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the thrones of Arda under his feet." 

- The Red Book of Westmarch

Pitch-perfect bit of writing, that. And I'm not the only one who thought so, as Joshua Dyal at Dark*Heritage was inspired enough to not only dig up some of the most perfect artwork for a project like this, but to brainstorm some of Middle-Earth's pulpiest bits of history.

Frank Frazetta's Gollum

As the month went on, both Josh and Trey revisited the idea specifically to address what to do about the non-humans - Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs (Hobbits being lumped in with the Big People) - and come up with some pretty neat ideas.

Finally, at Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque CJK points out something very familiar in what's supposed to be a Lovecraftian symbol:

Oh, Ftghan.

Which brings up, at least to my mind, a whole other point - Howardian Tolkien is one thing, but Lovecraftian Tolkien? Quite another. From a slightly different perspective Gollum seems very ghoulish, for example, and just what is up with that thing Watching the Doors of Durin, anyway?


*Disclaimer: This, as well as most if not all other links to DriveThruRPG on this blog, go through an affiliate link that pays me if you click it and then buy something.

Interlude: Fantastic Heroes & Witchery - "Weird Tales" Style

Before we go on to the magical next section of the Great Multi-Year Retro-Clone Read-Through, I'd like to take a minute to revisit one of the things I glossed over when talking about Fantastic Heroes & Witchery, namely the "Weird Tales" character creation mode.

This intersects nicely with the recent completion of  Hugo Award-nominated blogger Jeffro Johnson's survey of First Edition Dungeons & Dragons' famous Appendix N, which I highly recommend as containing lots of meaty analysis of both the individual Appendix N works and the overall relevance of the list to fantasy gaming, both then and now. Right now, in fact, it's easy to see how FH&W's Weird Tales options (nonhuman races include Primates, Reptilians, and Winged Folk, while classes include Psychics, Riflemen, (Technological) Savants, Sky Lords and Wild-brutes - and that's not even taking the supplemental material into account) line up with the more gonzo, less categorized style Jeffro describes. One important innovation is the implementation of "Earthlings" as a sort of human sub-race - many of the Appendix N entries rely on this "modern-day human gets transported to the Weirder setting" setup.

But for this exercise, I'm going to be aiming for something a little, well, Weirder, and so using the 4d6-drop-lowest attribute-rolling method. My results are:

Retro-clone Read-through: Character Creation Part IIb

Hey, it's been a bit since we had one of these - continued from Part IIa. Overall, I think the tweaks that each rule-set gives to the characters it generates - some have more choices for equipment, some have more combat options - reflects my impression of the overall game thus far. Only time will tell if this continues to be the case, however . . .

'Zines Without Number

Well, perhaps not literally, but there are certainly a large number of fan-produced gaming publications that have started in recent years, many of which focus on one OSR game or another. I suppose this is no surprise, as it is my understanding that in the early days of RPGs that the Old School movement looks back to, this kind of thing was also common. Nowadays, of course, with desktop publishing and the Internet for distribution, it's easier than ever to do.

The other day, thanks to a tip from Tenkar, I picked up the latest entry into the field. The Sandbox #1 is a product from Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing, which has produced such gems as the Stars Without Number sci-fi OSR game, the Spears of the Dawn and Red Tide fantasy settings (the latter incorporating the Scarlet Heroes solo-hero rules), and - most recently - the Silent Legions Lovecraftian game based on the same ruleset. The Sandbox, Kevin says, is a vehicle for passing along a "passing idea or small notion" that could work with any or all of these.

 In this inaugural issue, we find four items:

• "The Last Prince", a custom class for Scarlet Heroes based on being the last survivor of a vanished people. Really, this is more of a background than a class, as it is "treated as a Fighter for all general purposes". It would be, I think, an interesting exercise to port over the more flavorful items onto other classes to create, for example, a Last Wizard or Last Assassin. The d8 Doom table looks useful for general backgrounds, as well.


• "Kickstarter Production Guidelines", taking up more than half the issue's pagecount, offers an inside look at the process that has made Sine Nomine one of the most reliable crowdfunding brands in the RPG market.


• "A Quick Backwater Spaceport" is a set of random tables designed for use with Stars Without Number or similar games (I get a very Firefly vibe from it) that, with just the teensiest bit of modification, could also be used for settings focused on regular ships - a pirate-era game, say, or a Pulp game based out of a tramp steamer.


• What's That Abandoned Strucure?" is a similar set of tables for, well, abandoned buildings.

All in all, it's worth taking a look at (especially as it is being offered for free), and in spite of the announced production schedule of "irregularly" I await the second issue with great interest.

Retro-clone Read-through: Character Creation Part IIa

And, it's time for another exciting episode of the Great 2014 Retro-Clone Read-Through, where we calculate HP, note alignment and saving throws, and go on equipment-buying sprees! Actually, in terms of equipment my plan is to outfit each character with approximately the same items, arms and armor of course excepted. These will be:

• A backpack
• A lantern, oil, and tinderbox
• Two week's worth of rations
• A hat (for use with the legendary B/X Blackrazor Random Headgear Chart)
• A ten-foot pole

. . . What? It's traditional.

Anyway, once completed the full character sheets can be seen on my new index page for the Readthrough, which also has links to all the posts in the series, and maybe a hint or two at what's ahead . . .

Retro-clone Read-through - Character Creation, Part I

Today, as I understand it, is the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, and thus in a way the entire RPG hobby. What better day, then to continue my series examining ten of the games that have been closely inspired by it?

Possibly the most important part of the rules, it's no surprise that all of the retro-clones I'm reading through have the character creation rules right up front. For the next few read-through posts, I'll be creating a character for each game, following the processes of each as closely as possible.

While many of them suggest various ways to generate it, all of them use the general "Six stats in the 3-18 range" mechanic. In order to test the rules as scientifically as possible, I'll be rolling one set of stats the traditional way - 3d6 In Order, of course - and applying them to each. So, without further ado, here are the numbers:

10, 15, 9, 9, 13, 9, 9

Not a bad spread, altogether, though the number of nines seems a bit of an anomaly - and yes, there's an extra at the end, I got a bit carried away with the dice-rolling and decided to keep it around in case any of the rulesets have an oddball stat or something. Anyway, let's take a look at what we can do with these numbers:

The Great 2014 Retroclone Readthrough

Over the past few years, a great many different versions of Dungeons & Dragons have been produced, several officially, but the vast majority being retroclones or house rule collections of one sort or another. The author of one of them (Grey Six) has assembled a vast and possibly even comprehensive list of variations, the scope of which underscores the creativity of the OSR community.

It also underscores the difficulty of keeping up with them all. For some time, I've had a bunch of different rulesets sitting around waiting to be read, and so I figured - hey, it's a new year, why not read the whole stack at once and do a comparison?