Campaign Ups and Downs

Last night's session was a bit of a mixed bag. Jonathan brought in his third replacement PC. I'm starting to believe that he plays a character until he has proven to himself that the stats he's assembled can break the campaign in half, then he moves on to an equally system-straining character. I will give Jonathan credit for his kung fu showdown with one of the Serene Magma Buddhas. By proving his martial arts credentials he allowed the party avoid a general melee with all five of the Buddhas. That would have been a hell of a fight, as the Five Serene Magma Buddhas were built as 20th level Lava Children Monks with Vows of Poverty. I first read about Lava Children in the original Fiend Folio, they're these weird elemental guys who are completely immune to metal. Swords and stuff pass harmlessly through them.

The real fight of the night was against 4 Lava Golems and a pair of Lavawights. The Lava Golems were built starting with the Lead Golem from (IIRC) Tome of Horrors, advancing it 5 hit dice and adding the Elemental (fire) template from AEG's Monster's Handbook. I like the Lead Golem because it's attack is 4d12+Str bonus of "pulverizing fist". How can you not like that? The Lavawight is a creature from the Epic Level Handbook. The 3.5 stats for it can be found in the SRD. Here's the thing that makes an encounter with a Lava Wight particularly memorable:

Blazefire (Su): Living creatures taking damage from a lavawight’s attack find themselves ignited with blaze-fire; they must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 35) or permanently lose 4 hit points. The DC is Charisma-based. The opponent must continue to save every round for the next 6 rounds (7 rounds total) to avoid being permanently drained of 4 more hit points each round. The lavawight heals the same amount of damage whenever a creature is drained of hit points, gaining any excess as temporary hit points. These temporary hit points last a maximum of 1 hour. If an opponent is slain by blazefire, only blackened ash remains of the victim. Hit points lost to the blazefire never heal naturally and cannot be magically restored—they are gone for good.

That's pretty harsh stuff. Doug's PC Angus the Half-orc permanently lost 16 hit points due to blazefire. Folks around the table discussed the possibility of using wish or miracle to restore the hit points, but in retrospect those spells already existed when the Lavawight was written and yet they are not mentioned as possible cures. Looks like the intent was that nothing can bring those hit points back. (BTW, the Blazefire quote above is from the The Hypertext d20 SRD, an absolutely wonderful reference site.)

Members of my group has been gaga the last few weeks over the new Wizard's book Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords. A copy was passed back and forth last night. We discussed using Nine Swords in an Eberron game, possibly as the next big campaign we play. I haven't read it yet, but since it bears the name of Mike Mearls, our group's patron saint, it ought to be loaded with awesome. Doug held up a copy opened to this illustration. Everyone at the table was all "Hey! The Caves of Chaos! How cool is that!" Well, everybody except Jonathan. We had to explain the Caves of Chaos to this young whippersnapper. Now I can't make up my mind whether for our next campaign to once again dust off B2 The Keep on the Borderlands or to buy 0one Roleplaying Games's Caverns of Chaos map and stock it myself. Both options have their advantages. I'm not sure I could capture all of Gygax's finer touches stocking the Caverns, but it would allow me to put a lot more of my own twist on things.

Now THAT'S a monster

It seems that Goodman Games, the folks who brought us the excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure modules, has gotten into the metal minis business. The Dungeon Crawl Classics Miniatures feature a nice mix of old school PCs (no dungeonpunks need apply), special characters from the DCC adventures, and some absolutely fabulous monsters. Check out this amazig otyugh sculpt:


This critter neatly sums up what makes the DCC line so great. Goodman doesn't just repackage the Good Old Days for nostalgic consumption. They take everything that was great about the bygone eras of dungeon hacking and builds something new and exciting with those materials. Just like this otyugh re-interprets the classic beasty without losing the essence of the monster.

PS: If anybody from Goodman is reading this, please hurry up and get Belly of the Great Beast out the door! I'd love to use it in my current campaign dropped in between the current adventure and the next one, but I can't hardly run it after Ragnarok. That'd be gauche.

Centaur Sex: the DM's response

Jon, the DM for the World of Alidor, got around to reading my post speculating on centaur/PC sex in his campaign. He sent me an email response:

A little physiology:

Mare centaurs have a natural breeding season. Increasing daylight stimulates receptor centers in the brain, which in turn trigger the production of reproductive hormones. These hormones initiate the pattern of regular periods of 'heat", or estrous, that characterize the breeding season each spring. These periods continue throughoutthe summer, and cease during the autumn.

In Alidor you are past the breeding period so, well... Offspring are not possible at this time of the year. As for promiscuity, I figure centaurs are like dolphins and since you are now considered part of their group, you can partake in group activities. I supposed they are just as curious as you are, so if you want to James T. Kirk a centaur you could. If your relationship lasts to next spring we can check for viability of offspring though genetically there will be a high probability of miscarriage.

Odd never had to answer that one before...

That's a nice, reasonable response considering the nature of the original line of inquiry. Some DMs would have just ran screaming for the hills, and not without some justification.

Bob the Fighter welcome here

Over at theRPGsite.com (pimp, pimp) there's a neat little thread going called Originality in Fantasy: deeply over-rated?
which has drawn some comments from one of my alltime favorite designers, S. John Ross. (You can find all of S. John's latest awesome work at his site Cumberland Games & Diversions. He occasionally posts a comment here, which always causes me to audibly squeal with delight. It's pathetic, really.) Originality in game design is sorta a pet subject for Mr. Ross. He developed a specific and idiomatic approach to the subject quite some time ago, which you can find in the general RPG stuff section of his Blue Room FAQ. The Blue Room is Ross's personal page for non-commercial stuff and it's chock full of great stuff.

Anyway, today I wanted to riff on a snippet S. John's comments in the Originality thread. I'm going to quote him completely out of context and build my own position from there, basically because I have no journalistic standards whatsoever. Here's the quote:

nobody who just wants to play a Human Fighter need ever feel like the poor cousin in the party

Ross is writing specifically about how he made his nifty Uresia setting broad enough to allow for totally weird character concepts, but grounded enough in the fantasy staples that any of the old guard of fantasy archetypes fit in just fine. So in Uresia a party could be composed of something like a Sailor Scout, a Ninja Pastry Chef, and a Surly Dwarf with an Axe. No big deal. Note that this is one of the virtues of Eberron as well. Richard Baker made it a design goal to find a place for all the core D&D stuff, then built a whole new edifice upon this foundation.

I think this approach is exactly why I find both Uresia and Eberron compelling. From a practical prospective I can pitch these games as "everything you already know about traditional fantasy, plus extra added awesomeness". That's a lot easier to get people onboard for than, say, Arcana Evolved ("trad fantasy with every class and race replaced by new ones") or Tekumel ("what if JRR Tolkien obsessed on Mesoamerica and India rather than Western Europe"). It's not that AE or Tekumel are less rad, just that the learning curve is tougher on the newbies. From an artistic* perspective I'm not ready to abandon orcs and elves because I feel like I still have plenty to say with them. And from a social perspective setting-intense RPGs and the kind of GMs who run them can be a pain in the ass.

On that last count, I think it comes down to this: I want the guy who makes Bob the Fighter to be welcome at the table. Bob may have no backstory, no discernable personality. He's probably nothing more than a Walter Mitty vehicle for putting the player into the adventure. And in my book that's just fine. This hobby needs Bob's player just as much as they need the players who write fanfic about their own PCs. Some games and some GMs want to talk down to Bob's player, telling him things like "You'll need to develop a background compatible with the setting before Bob can come in." or "Bob is a terrible name. Here's a list of names appropriate to the setting. Please pick one." I understand the impulse at work here, but in my opinion elevating the setting over the PC is the exact wrong approach to take in D&D. If you're playing a historical game I can see the concern, but if your D&D game can't endure one or two PCs with lame names and no personality then either your setting is too rigid and/or you're being a control freak. Stop picking on Bob.

On a completely unrelated note, today I discovered that John Kim, keeper of the incredibly neat-o Encyclopedia of Role-Playing Games, also maintains an RPG livejournal. Cool!

*Yes, I said artistic. I side with the "RPGs aren't art" crowd, but I'm not blind to the art in roleplaying. I just loathe any attempt to elevate the artistry above other elements, such as the social aspect of the hobby or the sheer fun of playing silly games.

old files from the hard disk

From an ancient quote file:

I got my Grandparents to buy me the full kit: The Player's Handbook, the Monster Manual and the Dungeon Master's Guide. They of course read them to check for suitability and were surprised that I should want any book which had a harlot encounter table! You don't really get quality like that anymore in RPGs.

-Steve Dempsey

This is from a WordPad file full of brainstormings for con one-shots:

The Corellian Caper - Star Wars heist film featuring Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, Greedo, Chewbacca

The idea was that these guys work together to steal the Pink Panther Diamond or the Kaiburr Crystal or something. Then the double-crossing begins! Why was Greedo looking forward to toasting Solo in Episode IV? When Han says "That was a long time ago. I'm sure he's forgotten all about it." en route to Cloud City, what was he talking about? The Corellian Caper is meant to generate answers to those questions. Someone please steal this idea! Include a high stakes sabacc game if at all possible.

FLGS & WSJ

Today I forgot to bring the novel I'm currently reading to work. (For anyone that cares it's Winds of Gath by E.C. Tubb, one of the Dumarest of Terra series. Fun stuff.) I usually knock out a few pages while eating my lunch. I also forgot to bring my lunch. What can I say? I'm the kind of guy that can recite the FASERIP stats for Spider-Man from memory, but only forgets to take out the trash about every other week. Anyway, I decided to spend my lunch hour walking over to the Friendly Local Game Store for reading material and then getting a bit at one of the hipster cafes downtown. My hope was that the FLGS would have either Dungeon Crawl Classics #33: Belly of the Great Beast for my current campaign or Mastering Iron Heroes for my next campaign. No go on either. I pondered getting DCC #23: The Sunken Ziggurat (pictured at left). It looked pretty rad, combining a Sumerian archaelogical theme with good ol' fashion dungeon crawling. Eberron DM's might consider dropping the Ziggurat into the tomb-haunted continent of Xendrick for some Indiana Jones type escapades.

While I'm mentioning Iron Heroes in passing let me note that I've sorta been warned off of Song of the Blade, Malhavoc's first level model for IH. Word on teh intarweb is that it's a conversion from an unpublished D&D manuscript. I'm not against adapting one d20 product to another but I'm not going to pay good money and hope somebody else did the conversion to my satisfaction. Heck, I half talked myself into purchasing The Sunken Ziggurat as material to use in IH. More importantly, I have some doubts as to the plot. Apparently the opening to the adventure involves being sent by the mayor of a small town to find a hat. I wish I was making that up. Anybody got Song of the Blade who can confirm or deny this report?

Anyway, I left the gaming joint empty handed and headed down to the cafe. I ended up reading the Wall Street Journal instead. I work in banking but this behavior is really inexcusable. But I did learn something pretty interesting by reading today's WSJ. I don't know how many of you have heard about Socially Responsible Investments (SRI). I first heard about them a few years back in a nifty NPR report on Domini, one of the leading SRI funds. The basic idea behind SRI funds is to put together a well-performing mutual fund that avoids investing in companies the fund perceives as, well, evil. I've done some meager research into SRI funds because my wife and I have a small amount of money squirreled away for our daughter's college fund. Rather than have that money sit in savings, I was hoping to get it into one of the larger SRI funds, like Domini or Pax or one of the green funds. The idea behind going SRI was that I would be to grow the money while making sure Haliburton and Lexcorp didn't get any of it.

The article in question discussed how Pax shareholders were going to vote on changing some of their standard for what they consider ethical companies with who they will do business. Pax has been underperforming for the last year or so and maybe needs to make some changes. But that's neither here nor there and since this place is called 'Jeff's Gameblog' and not 'Jeff Bores You To Death Talking About Finance' I will get to the interesting part. The article mentions that the SRI funds as a whole are being radically outperformed by the Vice Fund, which sinks all its money into tobbaco, alcohol, casinos, and defense companies. I can't make up my mind if that's the best or worst thing I've read all day.

TV chit-chat

Last night I managed to watch some grown-up TV shows, at least if you count the wrestling show and Who Wants To Be A Superhero? as grown-up shows. As I returned from putting my daughter to bed I found my wife watching the last few minutes of Superhero. She's not a geek beyond owning the Star Wars films in multiple versions and formats, but reality shows are definitely her thing. Of the two finalists I was really hoping for Fat Momma to take home the prize, but earlier in the show I had liked Major Victory and Ty'veculus. I didn't really see enough of the series to make a fair evaluation though, a deficiency my wife plans to cure by buying me the DVDs. Rather than offer my own ill-informed analysis, I'll link to the commentary by Scipio of the Absorbascon.

Later in the evening I watched a pretty good episode of TNA Impact!, although there were some rough spots. Once again they tried to push Bobby Roode via promo package rather than putting the man in the ring, but at least he promised an appearance in the Impact Zone next week. The other big problem was the final sequence. Am I the only one who thinks the last segment on a wrestling show whould be the main event match? Instead we get a Jeff Jarrett/Jim Cornette talkfest. I've already emailed TNA regarding my concerns over too much Jim Cornette. Wrestling shows should always keep the focus on the wrestlers and the wrestling and each usage of Jim Cornette as the corporate guy blurs that focus. Also, Jarrett's use of AK-47's as props in the ring was completely inexcusable. Guns and wrestling do not mix! The old "Brian Pillman's got a gun!" angle should have been enough to convince everyone of that. Am I the only TNA fan who remembers that debacle?