CR 25 Hypermitotic Dungeon Master

Magic Missigyny

2012-02-13T21:54:00.001+11:00

So, Monte Cook posted a new Legends & Lore article! In Uniting the Editions, Part 3, he polls the community on features of old editions they'd like to appear in 5E D&D Next. Even ones he thinks are a bad idea! In his words:

"For example, it would be difficult to imagine that THAC0 would make a comeback. Armor Class values going down to represent them getting better. System shock rolls. Racial level limits. Gender-based ability score maximums. Lots of bonus types. And so on. But here's the thing: if I'm wrong about that, get involved in the open playtest when it starts and let us know. If you would like to see things like that be a part of the core rules set, or if you would use rules like that as optional modules, that's the kind of information we are looking for in order to make this a game you want to play."

Seriously though... scroll down and read that list. See if you can guess what's wrong with it!

No, no, I'll wait, it's cool.

A hint: It's got five words.

Worked it out yet?

Yeah, that's right: Magic Missiles that Never Miss.

What the fuck? Why would you even put that up as an option? Is this seriously something that the community needs to be polled on?

Look, that shit is amazing. When you cast magic missile, and it hits, which it always does, you feel absolutely fucking mondo. Why would you take that away? Magic Missile has never missed in every single edition that matters. Shit, look what happened when it did - in 4E that stupid immersion-breaking MMO-CCG power card quasi-narritivist disassociated sports game for dumb gamist babies, it became a situational spell nobody liked because nothing the Wizard could take to increase their damage actually worked on it when it mattered. Why would you want to go back to that?

Besides, what about verisimilitude? For the uninformed, verisimilitude (a subset of simmersionilitudism) is basically realism. And though we don't like to talk about it in today's "politically correct", it is a scientific fact that magic missiles never miss, that they're supposed to be cast by wizards. It's a historical fact that in past civilisations, magic missiles were treated as spells that never miss. You might not like it, but it happened, and they were cast by wizards. Is it really so bad to put that in a game for the sake of verisimilitude? No - I've gone into verisimilitudinous detail about the magical culture of the human tribes in my D&D setting, based off real-world history, and that doesn't make me some kind of spell-resistance-stacking missigynist who wants to cast magic missile all the time. Besides, I've included all sorts of other distasteful things for the sake of verisimilitude, like disease and child mortality rates (those who have read my multi-paragraph articles on the magical culture of my setting will know which footnote I'm talking about).

And you know what? Maybe you're a spell who doesn't want to never miss, and someone said to your face that magic missiles never miss. That's important to you, certainly. Important in a "that's a shame" kinda way. But you're implications are hyperbolic and there's no reason for you or anyone else to assume that other spells have had the same experiences and they are simply indicative of being a spell that deals force damage. The anecdote about your sorcerers in particular is not something that bears any relevance. you got prepared/cast by your caster. Yup. Everyone has. It's nothing to do with RPGs. The "villain" in that story seems to be your designer with her intent on imposing traditional spell role values.

Actually, fuck it. Look: many of you may be here in response to the banning of the vancian subcastits, looking for the next target of your ire. The fact is, you can take down an outlet, but you cannot take down a source. The source is wizards. As long as you are a magic missile spell, you will be smaller than us, weaker than us, and used by us to fulfill our desires (casting spells that don't miss). Subcastits like SRS attempt to soothe the cognitive dissonance created by this indisputable truth.

The idea that something was accomplished today is beyond idiotic. The fact remains that any time you appear on a scroll, any time you are seen by wizards, they objectify you, they hunger for you, they dream of writing you down and preparing you, and many of you will get the chance to let them act out those desires (to cast spells that never miss) before your time is through.

So let me say this clearly one more time: You. Are. Whores. Most of you just use your bodies for bartering as opposed to cash.

Magic Missile is supposed to never miss. End of story. What is even the point of putting such a stupid argument-igniting option on a poll if you're clearly not going to follow through on it?

UPDATE: Looks like the poll was taken down and Mearls posted a revised poll without the offending option and issued an apology. And there's no mention of gender-based ability score maximums either I guess.

Meet Some Of Your Fellow Designers!

2012-01-11T23:56:00.000+11:00

So, by now you're aware 5E was announced. Well, they have the basics down and something you can playtest eventually, we probably won't see it for a year at the least and basically nothing is known about it whatsoever besides "playtest!", but holy shit, 5E! All those people who have been claiming 5E is just around the corner for seventeen months are finally right!
And they want you to playtest! That is like personally having a hand in designing the game! This is a glorious day for fans of Dungeons & Dragons! (Subtext: So shut the fuck up about how WotC isn't listening to you!)

Oh yeah, and you're teaming up to design a game with these entitled assholes:

The Bibliophobe
"ok so they change ALL the rules and FORCE you to have to buy all new books if you want to keep playing the game with new material? What they did was a scam, plain and simple and I have never forgiven them for that."

A new edition? Oh god! My books are going away! Sure, I'm playing an edition of tabletop game which has already received thousands of times more support than plenty of other good elfgames ever get, but if there aren't new, compatible books on the horizon, all of my books are invalidated and WotC black ops teams will shoot me in the genitals if I use them!

The Bibliophobe was apparently not aware that new editions are a thing that happens.

The Amateur Designer
"Each class should have their own XP charts. Just hear me out..."

The Amateur Designer actually does have mechanics they'd like to suggest. They don't have an agenda to push, or simply want WotC to pander to them, or have any axe to grind.

They're just really bad at this.

The Indignant
"By not acknowledging the problems with 4E and by not apologizing for the damage 4E has done to the D&D brand, WOTC is sending me the message that they don't truly care about what I think."

5E isn't enough. 4th Edition was WotC taking a metaphorical shit on the fanbase's chest. That one advertisement they ran jokingly acknowledging that previous editions, including the one they made, had their problems and 4E's designers were setting out to try and fix them? Unforgiveable mockery! Nerd blackface! Not making the game I like? CRIME OF ALL CRIMES!

5E trying to cater to everyone isn't enough. The Indignant needs a personal apology from Mike Mearls for 4E ever existing, tattooed on his cheeks as he firmly presses his lips against The Indignant's left buttock.

(The left, because 4E wasn't right!)

The Tito
"So you are admitting 4.0 was a colossal failure that destroyed the game and fractured gamers into a thousand pieces?"

The Tito knows 4E was the worst thing to ever happen to tabletop gaming. They've been saying so for years! Why can't anyone see it?! All they need is some kind of proof that the game they don't like literally destroyed the hobby. Some sort of proof, like...

A new edition! Perfect! The Tito is now Cassandra's curse broken, and their words ring true. I mean it's not like a new edition was coming along eventually, right?

The Paying Customer
"I really truly believe that 5th edition will just divide the fan base further, because so many of us are happy with the rules we've already been using for years. Why is it that I should feel "wrong" for wanting to continue playing 1E? I spend a ton of money on my hobby through eBay and Amazon. Why doesn't WOTC want my money?"

The Paying Customer has money! Why isn't WotC falling over themselves to gently fetch it from his outstretched hand? He has money, and money is good for business! Market research conducted by The Paying Customer glancing at a forum he and his like-minded friends congregate in assures him that WotC could easily support past editions and new ones simultaneously, perhaps with fairy sparkles.

Fuck Corporations
"Paizo has shown itself to be honest, open, and trustworthy with its fans. WotC on the other hand..."

Fuck Corporations knows what really destroyed D&D: It was Ha$bro! I mean really, a game owned by a corporation? That is just asking for it, like a dinosaur wearing a short skirt. Anything produced by a company is dead and soulless by definition, motivated only by profit! They're exploiting us!

Paizo is, of course, a grassroots gamer movement not interested in profit. Honest. Compassionate. Buzzword.

The Xaositect
"So D&D is: an immersion to adventuring by playing a team of balanced adventuring roles in the same fantasy world, presented by the DM."

This guy could be the world's greatest designer and you'd never know, since everything they say is completely incoherent.

Seriously, what the fuck?

Peanut Gallery
"Personally I hate 4th ed. I think WotC failed on this one. I hope 5th edition is better but regardless I'll be sticking to Pathfinder."

They're not going to play D&D anyway. They just thought you'd like to know.

The Pupal 4E Grognard
"Im am done with you guys. I have a entire youtube and facebook dedicated to 4th edition. I have battled for you all year and spent $1000 on books. Chris Perkins said there will be no 5th edition. Everything the trolls said is true. What a joke, Mike Mearls and company has destroyed the legacy of the greatest RPG ever."

Despite the best efforts of whoever owns D&D at the time, every edition will inevitably have its haters. Sometimes, it's possible to spot them in advance. There's something about that twinkle in their eye, the way they've already decided 4E is ruined before actually seeing any 5E material. One day, if they're lucky, they might look at themselves in the mirror and realise what they are becoming. If not?...

No, John. You are the grognards.

(On a serious note: Really, if it's possible for you to participate in this, do it! Even if it's optimistic as hell, there's a whole lot to gain in trying. What's the worst that could happen?)

CR25DM, 2E

2012-01-02T18:42:00.001+11:00

To celebrate my 62nd post, I am changing the layout to something that lets me have wider posts. I find it more readable.

It's a little hacked-together now; I need to redo the title and side images and the footer image is gone for now. There are a lot of other little changes I'm probably forgetting, too. Also, it just inserted line break tags all over that post I just made and I need to work out how to make it cut that shit out.

Any suggestions and comments about how it's not REAL CR25DM any more are welcome!

Everything Is Doomed Forever

2012-01-02T18:36:00.000+11:00

So recently The Escapist published a series of three articles on the past, present and future of D&D. These surprised me - partly because I didn't know The Escapist still publishes content that isn't Zero Punctuation, and partly because they are a dumb-as-bricks extended serenade to the Good Old Days with as little rational thought as possible.

Part 1: The Glory Days

I knew how most of it was going to go when I read the second paragraph:

Confidence in the official Dungeons & Dragons is at an all-time low; on forums, at conventions and at your local game store, players are split into various camps, viciously defending what they believe is the "true" D&D."

Oh man, people are arguing about which edition is better? This hasn't happened before! It must mean confidence in 4E is lower than any other edition!

If articles written by grognards made me laugh out loud I would have busted up by the second page, which basically fellates Ryan Dancey (the guy who has been predicting D&D's demise for years ever since they let him go) and the OGL, WotC's little open source project of good intentions ruined by stupid ideas.

The OGL "boom" did jack shit for the RPG industry in the end. Sure, everyone thought it was a golden era because all those d20 books (like the Book of Erotic Fantasy) clogging store shelves gave the illusion of growth, but once the inevitable d20 bust hit it turned out it hadn't really been doing anything eexcept sucking air away from non-d20 systems. Dancey's goal of having other developers fill "niches" to supplement WotC's content failed as people realised that instead they could just publish their own thing with d20 mechanics. Hell, usually when I hear someone defending the OGL, their first point is "It got us Pathfinder!" Yeah, creating competitors by enabling someone to copy-paste your rules into a new book and encourage people to buy their product instead of yours sure was a smart move on WotC's part! Way to "ensure [the division of 2nd edition vs. 1st] did not repeat" and then hand someone else the tools to encourage the division of 3rd vs. 4th!

And we're only two-thirds of the way through the first article. The last page is basically ignorant grognard talking points ("hurf durf 4E is WoW! WotC is ruining the hobby") dressed up with pretentions of rational thought, with one last tug of Ryan "WFRP is a clever derivative of d20" Dancey's dick because the guy who spied on his coworkers at GAMA is apparently a visionary. What a tone we've set for this series!

Part 2: 4E Sucks! Oh nooo!

So, what we've apparently learned from the Past article is that the OGL was great, Ryan "D&D is doomed any day now!" Dancey is a genius and we haven't explained why yet, but 4E is destroying the hobby. I can't wait to see what the Present article has in store!

Turns out it's an even more thinly veiled grognard rant than the last one.

"But as result of Hasbro's desire to turn D&D into a $100 million business, and the success of fantasy MMO videogames like World of Warcraft, the release of the 4th edition in 2008 changed more of the game than many fans were comfortable with and despoiled the goodwill Wizards of the Coast had built over the last decade. The Ghost of D&D Present still haunts the industry."

The mating cries of the grognard: "4E is WoW!" "Change is bad!" Oh no!

"While 4th edition offered elegant tactical combat and an equanimity between classes never seen before in the game, many of the people who played Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons in the 70s and 80s didn't understand why concepts they held to be sacred were axed."

"While 4th edition is a good game, it changed Gygax's vision!!" Oh nooo!

Oh, and the hot quotes! From "people who actually work at WotC" we have a couple of meaningless half-quotes from 4E designers on being young and modern, followed by half a page of non-WotC people explaining what they think of the new edition.

Apparently Chris Pramas (president of Green Ronin publishing, thinks WotC made some "curious choices" in 4E by changing the cosmology, adding new races and altering existing settings to fit. This happens every fucking edition, but this is 4E! Change is scary! R.A. Salvatore thinks 4E makes roleplaying/writing harder, because I guess I missed the sidebar tellling people not to roleplay. Erik Mona gets a quote, and I have no idea why. "Hey, let's ask the guy who works for WotC's competitor and encouraged people to be afraid of 4E and buy Pathfinder before 4E came out what he thinks of 4E! What a source!"

The second page does get back to actually canvassing people who work at WotC for their opinion, if only because Greg Tito got the opportunity to fill entire paragraphs with Collins talking about how he was disappointed in the GSL sprinkled with more Ryan "EVE Online monocle fiasco" Dancey babble about how great OGL was.

Then it devotes even more time to Erik Mona pimping out Pathfinder. Holy shit, really?

In December 2007, WOTC released Wizards Presents: Races and Classes the first of several preview documents that outlined some of the radical changes to the rules, and initial feedback from fans was not encouraging. "All of a sudden our subscribers started begging us not to convert to the new game system," Mona said.

"Feedback from WotC previews was not encouraging! For example, Erik Mona - the guy who works for a company whose business strategy mostly consists of exploiting a niche market of people who don't like 4E, who was telling people to be scared of 4E before it came out - says Paizo subscribers were begging them not to convert to 4E!" (A quick Google search turned up a Paizo forum thread on this very subject... from October 2007. Clearly, it was WotC publishing 4E previews from December onwards that resulted in the feedback Erik Mona received, not the usual "now I haven't read or played the new edition, but change is scary!" mindless edition warring every single edition gets!

On the upside, the next part about pimping out the OSR isn't terrible and Tito at least mentions he is working on an OSR fantasy heartbreaker, like I couldn't already guess he's a grognard. On the other hand, why do OSR dudes keep mentioning Lamentations of the Flame Princess? Raggi can't write for shit. (Seriously, go here and search for Death Frost Doom for an RPGnet poster's Let's Read of one of the worst OSR adventures ever made if you're bored and the Something Awful paywall isn't up.)

Page 3 is basically more "4E is a videogame! World of Warcraaaaft!" idiocy:

Paradoxically, one of the most frequent complaints with 4th edition was that the rules too closely mimicked World of Warcraft or EverQuest. The concept of certain classes described specifically to take or deal damage in 4th edition mirrors the role of tank or "DPS" in MMOs.

4E roles are just the fighter/mage/rogue/cleric dynamic of previous editions with a different name. Certain classes being good at taking or dealing damage is nothing new. MMO roles can trace their roots back to D&D anyway. The people making this "complaint" are talking out of their ass..

Coinciding with the release of 4th edition D&D in 2008, Wizards of the Coast launched an advertising campaign that reached out to MMO players. "If you're going to sit in your basement pretending to be an elf, you should at least have some friends over to help," the text of one ad read over a shot of a bored young man in front of a computer. Paradoxically, one of the most frequent complaints with 4th edition was that the rules too closely mimicked World of Warcraft or EverQuest. The concept of certain classes described specifically to take or deal damage in 4th edition mirrors the role of tank or "DPS" in MMOs.

Greg Tito's quality journalism continues with a quote from Collins pointing out that 4E took inspiration from all kinds of games, citing European board games and card games as just examples. Tito can't even get his thinly-veiled 4E-bashing right, though, and blows a chance to write some "4E is totally a board/card game, oh nooo!" bullshit in favour of changing this to:

"Pulling from so many different sources, especially videogames, may have worked against the reception of 4th edition D&D."

and plastering it on the page in big letters just in case Collins making a coherent point distracts from Tito's "4E is WoW!" screed. Oh, and then we have Pramas talking some more about 4E being a videogame. Is this article even trying any more?

The rest of the article mentions that 4E does have fans and does sell well, though suddenly citations are needed when you make broad statements about tabletop games. Not when you're saying 4E is responsible for every time someone at WotC is let go though!

"The negative response to 4th edition was not without consequences for the people who made it. Rob Heinsoo was laid off in late 2009, and Bill Slavicsek, Director of RPG R&D for more than ten years, left earlier this year. (...) In May 2010, Andy Collins was asked to vacate his position at Wizards of the Coast as design and development manager of D&D."

Also holy shit, this is the best way to end the article.

"Old school gamers rejoiced when Collins' successor was named, but it remains to be seen whether one man can turn the tide."

"Did I mention new things are bad enough yet? We need to turn the tide!"

Part 3: Nerd Rage

Daunted by the release of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2008, the future of the roleplaying game industry is unclear. The core books of 4th edition sold well, and the game is still popular among a large section of players, but detractors used memes like Hitler's speech from Downfall to illustrate their rage , while game designers like Justin Alexander carefully examined why the dissociated mechanics of 4th edition didn't work for him. The nerd rage has dulled a bit in the three years since 4th edition, was released, but the tabletop RPG industry is still reeling.

I really should stop reading here. Seriously? You're championing Justin Alexander's dysfunctional rambling about how this "disassociated mechanics" bullshit he made up is bad for D&D, when his own definition ("mechanics which have no association with the game world. These are mechanics for which the characters have no functional explanations") applies to most of every edition of D&D ever?

Afterwards we have some quotes from Mearls, and I honestly can't tell which of the dumb parts are Mearls or Tito.

"It's all about player power now - the DM is just the rules guy - and the DM can't contradict what the players say. [The game] is taking away from the DM, and that's where I worry because other types of games can do that better. I might as well play a board game, 'cause I'm just here enforcing the rules. Without the DM as the creative guy, what's the point?"

Yeah, the DM can't be creative any more! 4E lets the players overrule the DM!

Seriously, was Mearls smoking something when he said this or is Tito twisting his words? Get fucking real.

"Mearls admits 4th edition might have gone too far in creating a perfectly balanced game. "We've lost faith of what makes an RPG an RPG," he said, admitting that in trying to please gamers with a limited imagination, 4th edition might have punished those with an active one. "There's this fear of the bad gaming group, where the game is so good that even playing with a bad gaming group, you'll still have fun.""

...

Neither of those Mearls quotes have anything to do with imagination, or balance, or anything Greg Tito says Mearls is "admitting".

What the fuck?

Also, 4E punishes people with an active imagination? Get fucked, Tito. What part of 4E do you think punishes imagination? Easy power reskinning to fit any character concept? Better game balance that doesn't punish people for picking non-casters or trap feats? Faster, easier encounter design with less focus on pointless number-crunching?

It sounds like a previous edition killed your creativity, and now that 4e asks you to use it, you are lost.

Most of the rest of the page is about WotC exploring new options and ways to appeal to more audiences, which is odd, because there's nothing here about how WotC is alienating true gamers by going against the holy word of Gygax.

You have to go straight to page 3 for that!

"With all of these options, it seems that the biggest hole in WotC's catalogue would be a product for those players who grew up with the game."

"But with products like Paizo's Pathfinder, the many games of the Old School Renaissance, and Chris Pramas' RPG lines from Green Ronin already serving their communities well, it will take more than lip service from Wizard of the Coast employees to heal the loss of hit points that 4th edition caused."

"A lot is going to depend on whether D&D can rebound from its current state. The game has had a troubled few years and it'll help everyone if WotC can turn things around," said Pramas."

"Paizo will continue to innovate as well, while still holding onto the principles that made Pathfinder successful.

"said Erik Mona, publisher at Paizo. "I hope Paizo is still at the vanguard of the tabletop hobby in 5 and 10 years, pushing forward with new ideas and new expressions of the game, but always focusing on story first."

"The vitriol seen during the launch of 4th edition now just leaves a bad taste in gamers' mouths."

"D&D, and by extension the whole role-playing industry, has been through a rough patch in the last few years, but there is a glint of great things ahead. Like the characters in any fantasy adventure story, passing through the dark times will only make us stronger. Despite the anger and resentment fostered by the release 4th edition, optimism on the future of RPGs has begun to bubble to the surface. We are on the verge of a golden age of tabletop gaming we haven't seen since fantasy roleplaying roared out of the minds of Gygax and Arneson and took over imaginations of gamers everywhere."

If D&D - not the RPG industry, D&D - has a problem right now, you know what it is?

Shit like this.

Arrogant grognards who think that D&D needs to cater to them and it's more important to preserve "sacred cows" than actually try to make a good game, who are less interested in the hobby actually growing and improving than they are in polluting it with conceited horseshit about how the "good old days" need to be preserved for their sole benefit and fuck everyone else. It's a vocal minority that WotC - hell, every developer - needs to ignore, and I hope to God that if I ever become this groggy about an RPG they leave me in the dust and do what they think is right.

This isn't an insightful series on the past, present and future of D&D. It's a poorly-disguised rant by yet another grognard upset that someone changed his RPG, with the same stupid rhetoric and incoherent talking points grognards say every single time there's a new edition. And it's on The Escapist, which claims to be "the internet's home for high-quality journalism and insightful commentary".

There are not enough laughing acronyms in the world.

In Which I Am Terrible At This

2011-12-23T22:25:00.001+11:00

I don't play D&D any more.

Okay no, that is a dramatic lie. I did finally wrap up the years-long campaign sequel to my last campaign, though (YES!), and for various reasons, that was the only actually-D&D game I'd been running. (It's also going to be the last 3.5 game I ever run, with any luck!) Other than that I've been running Eclipse Phase and various games in BESM 3e (which I have since decided isn't that fun to run). Once those wrap up I plan to move into FATE and 4E.

Anyway, the point is I haven't actually been playing much D&D, and the D&D I have been playing is mostly 3.5. I think that's one edition too late to jump on the OSR bandwagon and start producing god-awful retroclones, so what the shit am I supposed to write about?

Also, okay: I have been busy elsewhere, writing pages and pages of whiny horseshit for FATAL And Friends, a Something Awful let's-read thread in which people pick terrible (or obscure) RPGs and mock/praise them as appropriate. Specifically I have been covering the run of CthulhuTech, a particularly heinous piece of trash, and it turns out I can write a lot of words about how not to handle rape in a tabletop game. If there's interest I might repost it here (perhaps in a cut-down version) so non-SA posters don't have to hope the paywall stays down to read them. If you do have an SA account: holy shit, go read the thread. It is great. Also, pick a game to post about!

That aside, it really shits me that a) I never finished my worldbuilding articles and b) my RSS feed still shows posts from a year and a half ago. I have to post something. I might start putting up (three-years-late) thoughts on 4E, or dedicate a few more posts to fellating Eclipse Phase. Actually, some anonymously cool dude had an idea on my last post two months ago:

"Hey Ettin you should discuss 40k. Especially now that Space Tomb Kings were leaked."

I think I will, because it would be hilarious. On the one hand, I have to confess I am not a fan of 40k for what I'd going to assume are the usual reasons for not liking 40k (in the grimdark darkness of the dark grimfuture there is only grimdarky grimmles). On the other hand, when this was suggested I spent an hour trying to find a book titled "Space Tomb Kings".

So, yeah. Tapping out for the rest of the year, then I'm going to ride this mondo blog-tiger and see where it goes. I promise 2012 will have far less posts about how I haven't been posting anything. Really!

Before I go, though, I want to mention two things:

First, How Not To Run A Game Business, an awesome blog about the RPG industry. Even if you don't agree with it, it is thought-provoking as balls. Also, grognard blogs hate it. What other reason do you need?

Second, I just checked what search terms led people here this week and I swear to God these are real:

• dnd goddess having sex
• dolphin sex is frustrating

An Eclipse Phase Fanfiction

2011-10-13T14:03:00.002+11:00

As the bullet blew their mark's brains out, Taco wondered why all of their carefully-laid plans always went to shit.

The human slumped against the wall. Taco frowned at the splatter for a few moments, then squatted by the corpse, grabbed the remains of his head, pulled it forward and sliced at the back of its neck. A bit of sawing into the spinal column, some pressure in the right place, and the human's cortical stack popped out like a blood-slick grape. He had backups, but no resurrecting with memories of today for you, baldy.

Taco wiped it on his fur and looked around the office. "How's it going?"

Dash was fixated on her scanning equipment. Her blue jumpsuit had already closed itself over her wounds. "No cameras. Dumb motherfucker."

7-11 finally hacked his way into the quantum computer and started sifting through data, his tentacles pulling up a storm of AR screens. Taco couldn't have asked for a better hacker.

[Confirmed,] the octopus said eventually. [Twelve of LamarCorp's researchers are forks from the Singer Institute.] He turned a screen towards the group.

Taco whistled. "He was in this up to his eyeballs, huh?"

Dash grinned and tossed her rainbow hair. "Told you."

Taco leaned against the wall and lit a cigar. The bonobo watched as Dash produced a couple of grenades and set them to cover the entire room. DNA chaff. Forensics were going to find a room packed with skin flakes from a thousand bodies and the remains of a cigar Taco hated. Perfect.

Taco took another puff, found where he'd put his metal detector and ran the wand over the body. "Anything else there, Double-Prime?"

[Just LamarCorp's finances.] The octo's body took on the vibrant tones of a very pleased criminal. [Mind?]

"Go for it." Taco lowered his goggles and began to carve into the man's back.

Dash watched his remaining blood do its best to plaster itself across Taco for two and a half seconds before deciding she had reached the optimal time to ask. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Taco changed vision modes and crammed his fingers into the hole. "Pretty sure the little shit hid a life recorder in here."

7-11 watched numbers fly as LamarCorp converted its profits to crypto-cred and made some very definitely legitimate large donations to various Argonaut groups and Firewall fronts. [Once this is done I'll nuke the box, just in case.]

"If it's quick," Taco agreed, dropping the cyberware in a hidden pocket and standing to admire his handiwork.

Dash nodded. "We should be getting out of here at least 20% faster. What's next?"

Taco made one last sweep of the room. No surveillance. Infosec was taken care of. Corpse dismembered. Mondo.

They might have fucked up their actual plan, but when it came to last-minute balls-crazy contingency plans, he couldn't ask for a finer team.

Taco smiled, and queued up a funky song in his head.

"I feel like a fuck."

* * *

Ettin peered over the GM screen.

"Sorry, what?"

"Now that we're done with the adventure, Taco goes to a brothel," Eric explained. "We're on Mars, right? There must be like fifty of them."

"You're a bonobo," Ettin replied, lowering his eyebrows a fraction.

"Neo-bonobo," Eric corrected. "Sex is a big part of bonobo culture, right? Says so in Panopticon, page 109."

Ettin's eyebrows raised again.

"You can't remember how to roll initiative but you can quote page references for monkey sex?"

"Don't judge me."

"What about Dash?" Ash asked. "They had some romantic tension."

"And you're a dolphin!" Ettin accused.

"In a human body! A polysexual dolphin," Ash said defensively. "At least I don't know what page number dolphin sex is on."

"110," Eric said.

Ettin threw up his hands. "Fine, fine, but I'm not rolling dice for it. It happens, move on."

"How about 7-11?" Paul asked. "Any chance of an octo-lay?"

"Are you asking me to make GM rulings on whether or not your uplift characters can get some nookie?"

"What?" Paul folded his arms. "Love and the desire to mate are natural, even for uplifted octopi."

"Besides, EP is all about the sex anyway," Eric said.

"It is fucking not, you dorkapotamus," Ettin said. "It's a game about transhuman conspiracy and horror!"

"It so is!" Eric replied. "What about the hookers, and Parvarti, and Carnivale in Gatecrashing? And neotenics, even!"

Even Paul stared at him.

"How do you even remember all that stuff?" Ash asked.

"That's your problem with what he just said?" Ettin did what could only be described as an angry mannerism. "Every setting has sex in it, that doesn't make them some kind of erotic roleplay adventure!"

"Oh yeah?" Eric sniffed. "What about Eberron?"

"Don't you have a blog entirely dedicated to sexy things you can do with changelings?"

"But nobody reads it," Eric sniffed.

"Forgotten Realms?" Paul asked.

"Alustriel and half the things Elminster does ever, for a start."

"Dark Sun?" Ash asked.

"Naked bald dudes in leather chaps."

"Fine, what about Pathfinder?" Eric asked.

"Sorry, I only play good games. The point is, there's a big difference between something like Eclipse Phase and something like CthulhuTech."

"What's wrong with CthulhuTech?" Eric asked.

Ettin pulled up the relevant PDF and showed it to him.

Eric threw up on his dice.

"Now stop reading creepy sexual stuff into everything," Ettin said.

"Does that mean it's okay for our characters to get laid if it's not creepy?" Paul asked.

"Fine, fine. Just... offscreen, okay?"

They nodded. Well, Ash and Paul did. Eric wept into the table.

No complaints. Eric was taken care of. Problem solved. Tubular.

Ettin smiled and queued up another song from his gamemastering playlist. It was a sexy song, it was a funky song, it was a song about dinosaurs eating people. But really, it just a metaphor for fucking people.

Because sometimes when you fuck somebody you feel like a dinosaur.

Eternal September

2011-09-30T19:21:00.001+10:00

Yugtaf the Warrior approached the door carefully.

This was it. The final encounter.

He and his companions had travelled far - over ten thousand miles, in fact. They have braved sky and sea and land, too, just for the hell of it. They had faced terrible creatures, horrible trolls and Magnavox the Wizard's insistence that he try out some of the "ethnic food" while they were here, but their journey was almost, finally, over.

Yugtaf took a deep breath, steeled himself for glorious battle, and then kicked the door's shit in.

The wizard was tucked away in his workspace. Surrounded on three sides by a cluttered L-shaped desk and a haphazard row of shelving which seemed to be designed to annoy people who wanted things on it, and almost entirely enclosed on the fourth by an orange bed which smelled like a chimpanzee that knew how to keep itself clean, he was an easy target.

The wizard started and turned to face them, the glow of too many computer monitors reflecting off his glasses.

"What the shit?"

"Ettin!" Yugtaf bellowed. "Update your blog!"

Ettin stared. His face was clean-shaven - left unattended, his face swiftly sprouted a crop of hair which made him look like a Greyhawk fan twenty years older - but in that anime t-shirt, he clearly wasn't expecting company. After a few moments to collect himself, he reached up and took his glasses off his face dramatically.

"What the fuck are you guys doing here?"

Xufwyp the rogue (okay, his player) placed himself in the corner gap between bed and desk, sealing off the escape route. He was not particularly intimidating, as such, but he looked a little like Stephen Fry and Ettin stayed where he was out of respect.

"You haven't updated it since the ENnies!" he said.

Yugtaf nodded. "And you never finished your series on Worldbuilding, or annoying your DM! Or player. Which is it?"

"Both," Ettin said, sliding the glasses back on his face. Taking them off was a stupid idea. Years of Nintendo 64 as a child had rendered his eyes incapable of registering anything on their own except that he existed in a place and there were colours. "Sorry, sorry. I've been a bit busy..."

Yugtaf leaned over to look at the monitors. On one, a library of incomplete Steam games was taunting all who laid eyes on them. On the other, hastily tabbed to over some weird French pornography, sat an almost-complete novel draft.

"Wait, is this why you assholes weren't here for the game yesterday?" Ettin demanded.

Yugtaf ignored that. "Dude! Have you been playing Deus Ex this entire time? Christ!"

"No! I've had work. And other things. Plenty other things. How did you even get past the drop-bears?"

"Well, drop whatever you're doing right now and sit down and make a post," Xufwyp said.

"Yeah," Magnavox said through a mouthful of burger. Australia was blowing his mind. "So you guys have Burger King, except you call it Hungry Jack's?"

Ettin ignored that. "Fine, but what the fuck am I supposed to write about?"

"Worldbuilding," Yugtaf suggested.

Ettin sighed and leaned back against a pile of wires and discarded computer accessories that might have had a shelf underneath it. "Ben, nobody gives a shit about published WotC settings. Who's going to care about Otherworld?"

"Hey, fuck you, Eberron is awesome!" ~~Yugtaf~~ Ben protested.

Magnavox swallowed. "What about posts where you're really angry about something?"

Ettin gave Magnavox a look he normally reserved for child molesters and people who talked in the cinema.

"Yeah," he said, "that sounds great, Darryl. That's always popular! I could call myself The Angry Game Master or Doctor Rage, or something, and write a little subtitle about how I'm oh so crazy! Or spunky. Or edgy, or that I have an attitude. I don't know which sounds sexier. And you'll know I'm edgy or whatever, because I say fuck and say I'm edgy, right there on my blog. That sounds so original and interesting!"

~~Magnavox~~ Darryl frowned, but decided not to note the irony.

"It's not, really," Ettin added. "It's a stupid idea. For dumb babies."

"Well, what about grognards?" he suggested. "People being wrong about tabletop games, and women. And you were doing a good job pretending to hate Pathfinder. That was funny."

~~Xufwyp~~ Kyle nodded in agreement. "Remember when James Desborough was mad at you because you posted about some wannabe rapist he knew? That was great!"

Ettin pinched the bridge of his nose. "I could just link people to grognards.txt, you know. Anyway, finding nerds who are wrong about tabletop games or hate women on the Internet is like trying to find your own feet, and also you're Bigfoot."

"Yeah, but if you post about that yourself, maybe people will be mad at you," Darryl continued.

Ettin shrugged. "So what? People who are mad on the Internet are a dime a bitcoin."

Darryl shrugged back.

"Maybe you could turn it around," Kyle suggested. "Pretend you hate 4E, and write long posts about "4e zealots", or how Pathfinder is outselling it even though nobody has actual sales figures to prove it either way, or..." he floundered.

Ravioli the sorceress called out from Ettin's lounge, where she was seeing what Australian TV looked like. It was mostly imported American shows and slice-of-life dramas in funny accents. "Make up some bullshit words and write essays about them!"

Kyle nodded. "Actually, that sounds good! Pick some really old edition of D&D and write about how you didn't like anything after it and you're scared of change, only use words like "realism" and "verisimilitude" instead of actually saying it. People eat that shit up!"

Ettin opened his mouth. Darryl interrupted. "And you could make up words! Like "disassociated mechanics". That was a great one. That got a whole essay, and it doesn't even make sense."

"Or "storygame"," Ben suggested, prodding the walls with his axe as he searched for secret doors. "Just make up a word for games you don't like and get really mad if people call you out on it."

"GNS Theory!" Ravioli changed the channel. "Write about narritavist gameplay!"

Ettin finally threw up his hands. "GNS theory is a stupid idea which was shoehorned into game design so people could swap psuedo-intellectual horseshit with each other instead of actually having a discussion that makes any sense!"

Ben clapped him on the shoulder. "So write about that! See, I knew you could do it!"

Steve nodded. "Focus that rage, Ettin! Have an opinion on the Internet!"

Ettin thought about it, and slapped the table. "Yeah... yeah! I'm gonna do it! I'm gonna write about my opinion like it's objective fact! I'm mad! On the Internet!"

Darryl pressed a button, and his smartphone started playing Eye of the Tiger.

Ettin adjusted his glasses, the glow of the monitors reflecting menacingly, and got to work.

Yugtaf nodded, and they filed out of the room. The campaign was over. Their adventure was a success.

Ravioli had found their reward in the lounge. A locked wooden chest, containing a holy avenger, a golem manual, australian, a robe of the archmagi and an amulet of the planes.

Yugtaf smiled. Now they could skip the flight back to America.

ENnie Awards, 2011

2011-08-07T10:32:00.000+10:00

Best RPG Whose Place In The ENnie Awards Is Even Remotely Interesting
GOLD: The Dresden Files RPG (Evil Hat Productions)
SILVER: Pretty Much Everything (Not WotC or Paizo)

Best RPG Book Which Should Have Won More Awards
GOLD: Gatecrashing (Posthuman Studios)
SILVER: Literally Everything Else (...by Posthuman Studios)
Honorable Mention: Anything not by WotC, Paizo or Posthuman Studios

Best Dungeons & Dragons Product
GOLD: Dungeons & Dragons (Wizards of the Coast)
SILVER: Pathfinder RPG (Paizo Publishing)

Best RPG I Really, Really Hope Hasn't Died Since I Last Heard Of It
GOLD: Planescape (sob)
SILVER: CthulhuTech (Wildfire still publishes that, right?)

~~Best~~ Most Terrible Forum
GOLD: /tg/ (4chan)
SILVER: ENworld

Loudest, Dumbest Fans
GOLD: Paizo Publishing
SILVER: Wizards of the Coast

Worst Cover That Somehow Got Nominated
GOLD: Shadowrun: AtTITude (See What I Did There)
SILVER: Well The Rest Were Alright (I Guess)

Best Category I Know Nothing About
GOLD: Best Miniatures Product
SILVER: Best Podcast

Best Category I Should Probably Know More About
GOLD: Best Blog
SILVER: Best Podcast

Best Company I Couldn't Actually Tell You Anything About
GOLD: Cubicle 7
SILVER: Catalyst Game Labs

Best Place Ettin Has Never Been But Probably Should Go Sometime
GOLD: GenCon
SILVER: That Thai massage parlour on Main Street which is very clearly a brothel

How To Annoy Your DM: Actually Playing The Game, Part 1

2011-07-25T18:10:00.000+10:00

Looking through blog stats to see what kind of searches have led people here is enlightening. For example:

Variations on "challenge rating 25" and "cr 25 dm" (in 7 of the 10 top spots, meaning I should have named my blog something better(
Various phrases with the name "Kurlianchik" in them (different ones now that there's an entirely new clusterfuck dramabomb that isn't about his rape posts)
my little pony marathon
dungeons eastern europe
how to read 1.4e+10
strahd von zarovich posters
rich burlew is an asshole
how to annoy your dm

That last one shows up a lot. In fact, How To Annoy Your DM: Character Creation is still my most popular, apparently, even more than How To Fix Planescape and the one where I scream incoherently at kender.

So what the hell, let's finish that series.

Going Into The Game

So you've created a character thanks to my handy guide and, since that was written three years ago, you have almost certainly played him, her or it in a game. And completely muffed it, because I wasn't here to show you the way.

Let's fix that.

Let's say you're going into a new game. Any edition, it doesn't matter. 2E, 3E, 3.5, ~~3.5~~ Pathfinder, 4E, a completely different game because let's be honest D&D is nowhere near the only game in town, whatever.

First things first, you need to deal with the Game Master (or local equivalent). Here:

The GM is your enemy.

MEMORISE THIS LINE. BE PREPARED TO REPEAT IT VERBATIM.

Sure, some people might say it's a collaborative effort, that the GM's job is to make sure the game is fun for everyone, himself included. Some people have even claimed this in their sourcebooks, treating the sacred bond of GM and player like they're playing some kind of game.

Well, that's horseshit.

This is a competition. You play to win.

It's best to assume the GM is out to get you at every turn - personal experience suggests this will be true eventually. Houserules? Keeps the power and the cool things in the GM's hands. Restrictions at character creation, on basic things like your level? A sham. (It's best to play along as much as you can at the start, though.) Not letting you do things, like when you kill quest NPCs and guardsmen show up? Choo choo, all aboard the railroad!

Just... try to keep a straight face until the game starts.

The Opening Sessions

This is when the fun begins - the DM sets the scene, everyone introduces their characters, and haha, no, I'm just kidding.

This is where you set the scene.

The GM's job is to paint the backdrop. You're the actor - the lead actor, to be precise. It's your job to write the script and set the props. Don't be afraid to fill in a few details the GM might have missed, like important elements of your backstory or major NPCs in his setting you have probably interacted with (I am assuming you're running the standard world-famous hero adventurer; if you are going with a lone wolf or other good character, disregard advice as appropriate.)

Pay close attention to the GM's opening speech and take notes as necessary. Don't be afraid to make suggestions if you don't like the content, plot hooks, tone of voice, setting, genre or system. Even if you're here to win, that doesn't mean you can't help.

Establish your dominance by appointing yourself party leader. If anyone else wants to be party leader, or doesn't want you to be for some reason, continue arguing in favour of your character leading until they give in. Leadership should go to the person who wants it most, after all.

After that, look at your starting situation and find a way to take a few things out of the GM's hands. He doesn't need to control everything - he should thank you, really. This is something you're going to have to do yourself, because different situations call for different responses, but here are some pointers!

Are you being hired to perform a quest? Demand triple the reward. The DM has to say yes, or call off his adventure.
Do you start in prison? Try to break out. Attack some guards.
Are you being given a task you don't like by a king, mayor or someone else in a position of power? Use your character's contacts (which he clearly should have) to influence world politics, or just start a revolution.
Are you in an inn? Seduce the barmaid, wait until the other PCs are done introducing themselves, then let them know you've hired them as servants.
Is the premise sound, but there's nothing for you to use as a strong start to establish dominance? Provoke someone into a fight. Quest NPCs are best, but PCs will do in a pinch.
Are there kender in thr setting? MURDER THEM.

Knowing Your Party Members

Until the GM agrees to run the solo game your characters deserve, you're stuck with a bunch of jerks. Might as well find out how they can best complement your character, right?

Like the list above, this is something best learned yourself. I can't do everything. But broadly, you want the party to look like this:

You:

The leader, decision-maker, etc.
The "face" of the party.
Most important combat role for the campaign.

Everyone Else:

Running errands.
Supporting you.
Supplementary combat roles.
More errands.

If they don't seem to fit, complain to the GM that their character is "ruining your gaming experience" and demand they reroll before a few sessions pass and it's too late. If they almost fit, help the character roleplay: Tell them where to move in combat, what to say, that sort of thing. Just smooth rough edges out. If they fit, well, congratulations!

Closing Remarks (for now)

Above all, take it slow. You don't want to blow your load and win the campaign in the first few sessions. Just bide your time, make sure you're on top, and get a good idea on your head of how you're going to win by about halfway through the first dungeon.

For more on how to win, see the upcoming Part 2! I can't wait!

Not Even Remotely Funny

2011-07-11T19:53:00.004+10:00

Well, that was fun. Long story short it turns out that guy liked Googling his name to find places to send his supporters to defend him, so I was totally a Z-list internet celebrity for a whole ten seconds. If only my post wasn't garbage.

Anyway, I promise to no longer write silly posts about people in the greater D&D community posting misogyny on the internet and people flipping out about it that I bumped into while perusing my usual D&D fora.

Instead, I have a less badly-written piece on why making D&D versions of commonly-used real-world cultures bores the shit out of me!

Unfortunately I'm busy finishing up a Machine of Death submission, so it's not done yet. Instead, have this silly post about people in the D&D community posting misogyny on the internet and people flipping out about it:

Here are a couple of ENWorld threads about a campaign that revolves around a struggle between an order of knights that "sexually liberates" women by abducting them and taking them to mind-control rape camps and their totally different opponents who herd women into forced breeding camps, in which the author asserts that women both deserve and desire to be raped.

And here's some slightly less horrifying posts about enforcing arbitrary stat changes to each gender and how women are supposed to be submissive.

No, I'm not making any terrible jokes about this.

I am just kind of leaving that there.

EDIT: The original point of this silly post was to have a giggle at the way forum moderation handled these posts (they didn't). However, in part thanks to the chaps over at grognards.txt, the rules have been changed to say that sort of shit is Not Cool. So, out of respect, I redacted this section. I'd paste the deleted text for the sake of completeness but nobody gives a shit.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Non-Offensive Blog Post

2011-06-20T20:50:00.003+10:00

So, if any of you three readers who aren't my mother haven't heard about it - and let's be honest, you have, because this story is bigger than New Zealand - Wizards of the Coast pulled one Uri Kurlianchik's article from their website after a lady called Kynn posted screenshots of his public Buzz feed.

I could write something about it, but I'll just let the man's Twitter feed do the talking, because he says it better than I:

Today was a victory for darkness, for BADD, for Mary Whitehouse, for Joseph McCarthy. Utter defeat for diversity and freedom of speech.

I used to have a shock humor buzz shared only with a few friends. Deleted it when realized others were reading it too. It was a silly joke..

..it was printscreened, kept for months for the sole purpose of "punishing" me some day. Posts were Cherry-picked to find most inflammatory.

So, this buzz was a joke taken off the internet half a year ago and preserved on someone's PC - only select bits of it, of course.

And if you don't know what Poe's law is, I very much suggest you read about it now...

It's really sad some people are unable to tell the difference between a report of observation and a suggested course of action. Is vs should

Example: "40% of people killed in car accidents in are Arabs" - it's a fact. "Arabs just can't drive" - it's bigotry. See difference?

This is why his article was pulled? Because of a few joke posts about domestic violence being the woman's fault and wanting to murder people and rape their daughters reposted by some fuckwombats copy-pasting only the juicy bits?

Come on, Wizards. You published Book of Vile Darkness and Hero Builder's Handbook, and this is where you draw the line? Please.

Luckily, Uri is capable of defending himself, explaining clearly that it is a joke while accusing his detractors of robbing him of his freedom of speech, aka the right to express his personal opinions. If the internet trolls out there aren't curb-stomped by this two-pronge attack, his back can be considered had by James Desborough, author of The Quintessential Temptress, Slayer's Guide to Female Gamers, Encyclopedia Arcane: Nymphology and Hentacle, who has dealt with women's issues and touchy subjects in tabletop gaming before.

As well as pointing out the Poe's Law trap wizards has fallen into, he compares Uri's posts to comedy sketches like this one, where over-the-top bigotry is clearly the joke.

And that's what this is - over-the-top bigotry.

The problem is, on the internet, it is hard to tell when someone's being serious, because you can't add a laugh track or a disclaimer to say you're joking. So really, all of those people up in Uri's grill for jokingly pretending to be an anti-feminist who wants to rape women need to realise that it's a joke, and you can't be offended at jokes.

He makes an even better point later, when Sarah Darkmagic advises James to stop attacking his assailant's gender identity or she won't be his wingman and help him score some transgendered ass.

Basically, it is acceptable to direct offensive slurs towards someone provided you don't like them.

So what the hell is the big deal? If I'm a mysogynist, I hate women, and I can talk about them crazy bitches all I want because that is kind of my thing. If I'm not a mysogynist, and I'm clearly not because I said so, then I just think talking about them crazy bitches is funny. And who would care about that?

Crazy bitches, that's who.

Anyway, this is great, because I can get something off my chest now.

Ever wondered why there are no black people in my setting?

Sure, I've said it's because my knowledge of many real-world cultures beyond the broader strokes could fit in a chimpanzee's ear-hole, but I say a lot of things.

No, I just don't have any because I don't like Muslims.

Not many people know this, but a relative of mine was arrested years back as part of a sting which took out a Sydney terrorist cell. A few years later he was finally released, partly because he only happened to be a friend of the ringleader without realising he was a dirty terrorist and partly because while he was Muslim and had a beard, he was one of those white Muslims.

9/11 had already warned us about the dangers of Islam, but it took a relative being detained for years without trial to open my eyes: The threat was on our doorstep.

I'm sorry, but I'm just no longer comfortable with Muslims. They give me the willies. So I've been avoiding putting them in my setting, instead using more wholesome topics I can get behind like catering to my huge maid fetish.

So, yeah, no black people in my setting.

Hope that's cool.

There's more I want to say, but I have some Duke Nukem Forever: Balls of Steel Edition to enjoy. I'll catch you crazy bitches later.

The Complete Moron's Guide To Being A Grognard

2011-06-04T16:18:00.001+10:00

With the invention of the internet by Bill Clinton in the late 90s, one side of D&D has been given a whole new level of accessibility:

Piracy.

Wait, no.

Edition wars.

Never before could so many people tell so many other people their game preferences were garbage. As the internet lay across the world like an invisible, bodily-fluid-stained bedsheet, one type of gamer found ascension.

The grognard.

What's a grognard, you ask? It means "old soldier who complains a lot" in French, and to the average gamer, by which I mean the average gamer who plays Dungeons & Dragons or another roleplaying game which isn't as important, it's someone who prefers older editions.

Really prefers.

Now, this isn't necessarily an old people thing - I have several hip young grognard friends. But it's not something you can just fall into. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, perseverance, and assistance from other grognards.

I can't teach you everything. There are some things you have to learn yourself. But this is a start.

STEP ONE: You Really, Really Prefer It

First, obviously, you pick your edition.

It has to be an older edition. Newer editions are, by definition, terrible. So if you're a D&D player (non-D&D examples postponed until I can play a White Wolf game without thinking the word "yiff"), you want to go back to the glory days of 3.5, or 2E.

Now, start liking it. Start liking it hard. Picture this: I really like Eclipse Phase. If Posthuman Studios showed up at my house, I would make out with each and every one of them.

You have to like your edition at least three times that much.

If your edition were Godzilla, you have to be Ms Godzilla. Your edition is so awesome it eats dinosaurs and shits lasers. If your edition were a tornado, your ability to hate it would be Missouri.

Once you're feeling the love, it's time for...

STEP TWO: Everything Else Is Worse Than Hitler

This isn't just a game. It is an religious experience. Changing the game is sacrilege. Liking another edition is motherfuckin' blasphemy. Anyone who likes another edition is not only wrong, they are committing edition genocide.

Read that paragraph, feel that paragraph, until it actually makes sense. Hitting yourself over the head with your core books helps.

It is not enough to really like your edition. You have to hate all others. You have to get out there and tell people, with cleverly reasoned logical arguments, why they are wrong and their editions are awful. You have to show people the light.

If you're having trouble, here's a quick reference for the kind of thought patterns you should be going through.

Older Editions: Good but flawed games, a part of (insert tabletop game here)'s long heritage of excellence and quality. There are rule and balance issues, but nothing that can't (and shouldn't) be fixed.
Your Edition: Streamlined and perfected previous editions to create the tabletop equivalent of an orgasm. Any flaws are either imaginary or trivial matters blown out of proportion by haters.
Newer Editions: Dumbed-down stupid games for babies. Perfectly fine rules ditched in favour of making the game more like an MMO. Way too complex, full of glaring rules errors caused by its unnecessary simplification in the name of "balance".

Which brings us to...

STEP THREE: Love Conquers All, Especially Logic

The following is an actual argument for why 4th Edition's writers are terrible designers from a real person. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Sister_Acacia> Warlock curses have to be used on the nearest enemy. Enemy == Any creature that is not an ally. You are specifically stated to not be your own ally. Therefore you are your own Enemy, so must target yourself.
Sister_Acacia> It's STUPID. We KNOW how it's SUPPOSED to work. But that isn't what they wrote.

Here is the thing: Your edition is the best. Why would you even play the other editions? Therefore, nobody should expect you to even play other editions to know how they are wrong. Skimming the core books, reading about them on the internet, or asking someone else what they are like (preferably a fellow grognard - we'll get to this in a bit) is perfectly fine.

So seriously, write what you like. Think 3.5 fighters are perfectly fine and wizards aren't that powerful in comparison? Go ahead, post that. Is your main arugment for hating the latest edition that it just doesn't "feel" right? What the hell, knock yourself out.

The best part is nobody can prove you wrong. If someone posts a response which appears to, say, find glaring logical contradictions in your argument, or point out Gygax never said that, or make a convincing counterpoint to your proposals, well, fuck them.

Never "admit" you are wrong. This is the Internet. Do you know, really know, who you are talking to? Can you prove they are not some kind of internet vampire who drains the life force of those it perceives weak? No. No you can't.

So if you happen to come across a post like this, take a deep breath and post as many of these as you can:

I am simply stating my opinion. Opinions cannot be wrong.
This is just how I feel. This is what it feels like to me. You don't understand me, mum.
You are such a corporate sellout, just like (insert company here).
That's just your opinion, and your opinion is wrong.
I'm sorry (favoured edition here) was too deep for you.
If I wanted to play a videogame I would resubscribe to World of Warcraft, you MMO-loving turtlesurfer.
My edition is clearly the best, despite its "flaws". Therefore, you are wrong.
Show me one person who agrees with you/who actually likes this! (Or some variation. Increase number as needed to at least n+1, where n is the number of sources damaging to your case.)
Thanks for misinterpreting my post. Nobody understands me.
Really? Because my group tried playing this game, and we stopped after ten minutes.
You are a heretic!!

Honestly, you would use the keyboard to wipe your bottom and then use your hands to press the POST button once you have recovered from the pain and it would still be just as solid an argument as, say, anything a WotC developer posts about why they made the game-destroying rules changes that they did. Probably better, really. On that note:

STEP FOUR: You Are The Core Audience

You bought the core rulebooks. They owe you, now.

Something a lot of people forget when they are talking to a grognard is that they are talking to a true fan. If you weren't a true fan, you wouldn't have purchased all the older books, would you? You wouldn't have been around for that. You probably would have been off writing wanky meta blog posts, or something.

And who is most important to the company? The true fans.

When you make a new edition, you are trying to bring in more fans. Same reason Blizzard pumps out more WoW expansions. The problem is, unless you consult the community and listen to reason from long-time fans of your game, you are clearly going to make mistakes and alienate your core fanbase.

Well, that's what they did. They have abandoned you, and by extension they have abandoned the core principles of the game and sold their souls to the roleplaying game devil (sacrilege, remember). Therefore, you know better than them.

If you're complaining about the game, especially on the Internet (which is, let's face it, where you are anyway), be sure to mention this. A lot. "Open letters" to the developer of your choice, calls to have whoever came up with this garbage issue a public apology before being fired and demands for a reprint of all your favourite books (they sold so well the first time) are all good.

Don't be afraid to give the company of your choice financial and business advice. If they knew how to do business, they wouldn't have lost yours.

STEP FIVE: Grey Is A Stupid Colour For Dumb Babies

Learn to think with binaries.

There is a right and wrong. Specifically, there is your way, which is right, and then there is everything else, which is wrong. No middle ground.

You cannot like the latest edition and the older ones. You can't say there are huge flaws in a product and like it anyway (unless you're a hipster, which makes you wrong). You can't have broad tastes; once you have found the perfect edition, why like anything else?

It helps if you can come up with a condescending nickname for people you don't like. Broad categories work - equating opponents to animals, pre-sapiens homo, or the disabled is fine. Depending on your tastes, there may already be a special, clever, mature term for people who like the edition you don't:

4rries
3tards
2dimensionalobjects
1flyingoverthecuckoosnest

If you're up to it, you could also come up with some arbitrary terms to define what is and isn't an RPG, at least to you. Don't worry if they make no sense. The important thing is that things you like are covered by the "good" term.

STEP SIX: Finding Fellow Grognards

Once you've started to get the hang of it - you might want to start by practicing in a mirror, or shouting at a teddy bear or small yappy dog - you want to find an online community, if you haven't already. People to sympathise with you, pad your ego, and mentor you in the ways of the grognard.

This is tricky.

Ideally, what you want is an active community with a large percentage of people who share the same views as you and a low percentage of people who disagree - forums who ban the latter are perfect, but good ones are harder to find for some reason.

There are plenty of places who are fine with you grognarding it up, though:

Paizo Messageboards: Perfect for the pro-3.5 grognard, you cannot swing a lolcat around this forum without hitting someone who believes Pathfinder is "true" D&D and Bulmahn is Gary Jesus. You'll have to be familiar with Pathfinder's product, but let's be honest, if you bought Wizard's books you already are. EDITION WAR SLAMWICH!
ENWorld: Here the posters you're looking for are not so much "grognards" as "rubbish". Amidst the sea of awful posts, you will not attract too much attention and ire. Perfect for the starting grognard or fourteen year old.
RPGnet: If you post something grognardy here, you will get sucked off faster than Jason Bulmahn would if he asked for one on the Paizo boards. Oh, and if you like actual RPG discussion this place will suffice too I guess. (What is wrong with you?)
TGD: The Gaming Den is basically ENWorld for people with self-diagnosed Asperger's.
Blog Communities: There are quite a few shitty D&D blogs nobody reads out there. Make friends in the comments pages! If you find a grogblog that resonates with you, maybe the author hangs out in some other community and you can go there to find some new friends.
/tg/: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT GO TO 4CHAN! ABORT! ABORT!

REMEMBER: Practice Makes Perfect!

Obviously, I can't teach you everything. I am but one man - though I hear the ladies prefer the term "one sexy chunk of man meat" - and grogging is one of those things that takes a while to master.

Don't worry too much about it. What's important is, you're playing what you enjoy, and that's a good thing. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Fuck that other guy's game choices though.

Godmodding: Things I Find Creepy About D&D

2011-05-14T14:54:00.003+10:00

Like prostitutes and Eskimos, D&D has some things you just don't want to get in it.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Everybody likes sex, but most of the time it is best kept to C://Users/Ettin/Documents/CleverHiddenFolder/DinosaurSmut like everyone else.

A while ago I slapped together Valen, a love goddess, because I happened to need one for a few bit parts. Not long afterward it came up in a game of mine, and this happened:

Player: What's she a cleric of?
Me: Valen. She's the local goddess of love and beauty
Player: So she's a sex goddess.
Me: ... No, she's just a goddess of
Player: Sex.
Me: ...
Player: (Strokes flourishing neckbeard sagely)

Sex and D&D are somewhat intertwined, but in a behind-the-scenes way, like the way your spleen is part of your body but you don't take it out and show it to everyone. Whenever I read something like Ed Greenwood's orgy adventure, or this real post someone actually made on the Internet:

Now we have given our NPC a present, lets give them a past. To complete the picture of any NPC, I give them a sexuality. This fleshes out the character, as any living creature has some sort of sex life. Following the example, Drazar's fetish is Gay. I remember to note that nosy players poking around at night in the smithy will hear him quietly massaging his prostate with the handle of his +1 Hammer of returning. This acutally came up in an IRC game I ran- once the Rogue found out what Drazar was doing, he felt that he should respect the character and not steal a weapon that was steeped in history out of respect of its owner. I wager that he would have thought nothing about killing the smith and taking his belongings otherwise

It's acutally an epic DM secret- when creating any hero or villain, think to yourself "How are their sexual appetite's satisfied?". This instantly adds a layer of depth to the character with little effort. One recent villain I created was a druid who controlled wurms. I chose it because I thought wurms were cool, but could not justify his use of such creatures when he had more powerful entities at his disposal. In a masterstroke I realised while looking at the image for the Century wurm (Fiend folio) that I could justify his actions by implying that they appealed to a primal sexual festish- cock vore. Once the players found his diary and why he had attacked them using such creatures they were all to happy to desecreate his grove and corpse. The paladin almost fell due his treatment of Balthazar the Wurm king, but I let it slide *Sweatdrop*.

I get really, really uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, most of my games are online these days, which means one of my players could very well end up being the sort of lad who openly wants to play a "drow shota" or roleplay an intense desire to be spanked with a frying pan. So if I want a goddess of love, we're going to have to divorce it from that kind of love.

At least in public.

So!

Developing Valen

Valen started as a fairly standard love deity. I have yet to see one which wasn't eerily similar to a lot of the others, and probably red-haired too. Unfortunately one of her original inspirations was Sune (or was it Sharess? I always got those confused), which I have since realised is vaguely connected to Ed Greenwood, so now we're going to redo that shit.

What else can you do with a love goddess? Well, she was a goddess of love and beauty, so there's that. There are more beautiful things in life than bodies, like sunsets and Eskimos, or art and music. So to protect her from neckbeards, she's the bard goddess.

She has come up in a few more recent games. A player of mine is a bard who worships her and associates with the Hopesingers, a group of bards and other classes with ranks in Perform who are trying to change the world through song and benefit concerts. She has had a few paladins as well, which is pretty neat. There's also been Polyquet, a ghaele follower who once described something as "like, totally mondo", which tells you everything you need to know about her.

What else can we do? Let's look up real-life love gods!

Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty and sexuality. Kind of a bitch. Seems to be designed to give neckbeards erections. Damn it. Relationship with a war god is pretty interesting though. So is spawning from another deity's balls, but not for the same reasons.
Venus, who like most Roman gods is a Greek one with the serial numbers filed off. Not very related though. Possibly related to Friday, which was a song I actually thought was decently mediocre. Ceasar claimed to be related to her. Definitely probably lying.
Through my brief research I found out there was a Roman goddess called Cloacina. This is the most unfortunate-sounding goddess I know of. I must make a note of this.
The Norse had Freyja, a goddess of love, beauty, fertility, some kind of crazy Norse magic, war and death. She rides a chariot drawn by two cats, because she is allergic to horses. May be connected to valkyries. Will probably be killed by a giant wolf or something.
The Babylonians had Ishtar. Love, war, et cetera. Possibly a bitch. Her cult had prostitutes. Let's avoid that part.

For some reason I am now imagining bards as war reporters.

Putting this stuff together...

Valen!

During the early ages of man, when the first great cities had formed, the god of civilisation looked upon the work of Man and remarked thusly: "Though I am duly impressed by your efforts, I am Wary; for the work of Man yet pales compared to that of the Gods." The ancient city of Bragropolis heard his words, and replied in kind: "Oh yeah? Watch this."

The bards and artists of Bragropolis banded together and laboured for four hundred nights, and painted the god a daughter. As a song breathed life into her, Valen stepped forth from the canvas.

She was happily taken in as a daughter, though Bragropolis was warned to stop being such smartarses. Since then, Valen has inherited the portfolios of love, beauty and creativity.

Valen appreciates lovers, good art, good music, good food... actually, there isn't much she doesn't appreciate. Her followers see her as a muse, or a heroine, or a lover if they're a little weird. In older times, she was seen as a goddess of war (and the art of war, ha ha) as well, but after a phase a couple centuries ago where her followers started telling people to make love instead and stick flowers on people's crossbows other war gods become more popular. She still retains a few war-minded followers, though, particularly in bards who seek out great battles to compose songs and stories about them, and though she is not martially-minded she stresses that this doesn't make her an idiot. Her followers, particularly her paladins, are free to punch evil in the face.

Valen is most popular in human lands, but was quickly adopted by the elves once they encountered humans and has since risen to prominence in their pantheon, though they tend to associate her with flowers. She has a slightly higher proportion of non-human races than most human deities, as she can easily appreciate the beauty in, say, an orc, or a goblin, or an Eskimo.

Valen is considered a friend to almost every good- and neutral-aligned deity, and even the evil ones have to admit she's sort of nice. Her greatest enemy is Malcanthet, the Queen of the Succubi who has hated Valen since they accidentally showed up to a failed attempt at a pact between the gods and the demon lords wearing the same dress.

She also has several "daughters", the most prominent of which is Seokore, but as she has yet to form any long-lasting relationships of that sort it is likely she created them from art and music.

The details vary, but Valen is usually depicted as a beautiful young maiden of any race or ethnicity (usually human) with a long mane of brown or red hair and emerald or heterochromic eyes. She wears flowers in her hair, expensive jewellery and loose, bright clothing. She is usually carrying one or more symbols of creativity - musical instrument, a theatre mask, or a paintbrush and palette. Sometimes, though, she has a rapier.

Bam!

Since I have yet to run a long-lasting 4E game despite my fear that sticking to 3.5 would make me a grognard, Valen has the Charm, Good, Luck and Protection domains, and of course I'll allow any other arts-themed domains. War might be possible, depending on how the cleric worships her.

And now I must go! Next time: More gods, or possibly complaining about a few things that have been bugging me. Who knows!

Godmodding: Paiia

2011-05-04T23:23:00.002+10:00

This month's excuse for a late post:

My Little Pony marathon.

A really long marathon.

So, I've been bouncing around a few ideas for posts over the last few weeks as I play Portal 2 and squee over ponies, and I've decided that rather than worry over them for days I will post as many as I can.

So, a while back I made a couple of posts about religion in my eternally-in-progress homebrew setting, and the pantheon I've been trying to set up. I've decided to put some more work into it and post about it, in the hope that

a) The process might make a good read;
b) Someone might point out something which blows that I've missed.

I got a couple of pieces of advice from the last two posts:

Study real religions and see what they do, instead of copying D&D and D&D clones, if you want to be unique.

This is actually a good tip, though I don't agree with the last part. Copying is copying, using real life just improves the quality of your sources. Then again, that is just me being an asshole on the wording, isn't it? Don't listen to me, listen to this man.

tl;dr, but I did skim through enough to say this: you've got a moderate to severe case of Lovecraftian Naming Syndrome. Srsly, Yzzyx? I love Colossal Cave Adventure as much as the next person, but (...) The only cure for Lovecraftian Naming Syndrome is spending half a decade learning linguistics or spending 5 minutes looking up the names of people and gods from extinct civilizations and then mashing the letters around. Then again, what do I know?

This one, not so much. The only lesson here is that if you don't read posts before you comment you'll end up looking silly, because the post containing the one name Anon here took exception to was also the one which contained Seo kore.

So, yeah. Two pieces of advice there, actually. Be careful with your naming, using "tl;dr" seriously is for chumps.

Anyway, today's deity.

Developing Paiia

Paiia's origins were less than noble, but a fine way to make a deity on the fly if you have to. This is how it went down:

I liked Pelor, in a sort of all-purpose good deity way, but did not find Pelor himself interesting.
While flipping through Deities & Demigods years ago I thought Taiia, a different four-armed sun god, looked kind of cool.
I made Pelor a four-armed woman and mashed their names together.

Bam.

That was a good start, anyway. I needed more.

First... Pelor fit in Greyhawk because, well, it's Greyhawk. When you think of it you think of a charming 70s/80s fantasy setting where everyone worships Gary's friends' characters and bad guys can be the kind of unbelievable fuckbears who fill dungeons with deathtraps and other traps that turn you into a naked girl. Somehow Pelor is an icon of D&D to me, which is why I don't really want to use him here.

So, I need something that fits into Otherworld. That isn't too hard, because it's my setting, so I sketched out an idea of what a sun god would be like:

Should be fairly important, which is common in mythology as far as I know. The Sun is one of those things it's hard to ignore.
Looks forward to each new day, treating it as a chance to ditch yesterday's problems and start a new adventure.
Since I liked the parts of Pelor about searing your enemy's face off and smashing evil undead into sad little piles of ash, I kept that part.
While I was there, another setting I used to run used a deity of prophecy as the principal "human" deity. Since I quite liked that one and prophecy seems like a good portfolio for a goddess who always looks to the future, I threw it in.
Later, I heard of Sarenrae from Pathfinder, who is associated strongly with redemption. Since that fit nicely, once I was done being surprised that Pathfinder has something which wasn't printed by Wizards of the Coast already I threw that in as well. (EDITION WAR SLAMWICH!)

I have a rough idea what I want to do, but it could still use work. So I look up sun gods.

The Norse had Sol/Sunna, who was prophesised to be killed by a wolf during Ragnarok. I am pretty sure this is what happens to everyone in Ragnarok though.
The Romans had Sol, who was blatantly stolen from the Greeks in clear violation of copyright law. I am pretty sure this is how the Romans did everything, though. Had bitching Christmas parties, was associated with the moon goddess, later became Sol Invictus and was portrayed as a companion to the Emperor in what I can only assume was ancient Roman self-insert fanfiction.
The Greeks had Helios, who carried the sun around in his chariot (his big, hundred-times-the-size-of-Earth chariot) except one time he let his teenage son Phaeton borrow his celestial car and the kid wrecked it so bad Zeus shot him in the face. This is the sanest story in the Greek pantheon.
Helios was heavily associated with Apollo, god of light and prophecy and a lot of other things that aren't relevant. Greek gods had massive resumes.

At the moment I'm still unsure whether Paiia has a sister, but I feel this is enough to go on.

Paiia!

The sun goddess Paiia is one of the oldest deities around. In the early ages, curious of the fate of creation, she plucked a star from the sky and compressed it into the Third Eye of the Cosmos, which sees all futures.

And then the Eye predicted things she didn't like.

Paiia didn't take that sass, though. Instead, when it predicted a disaster or great triumph for the forces of evil, she set out to do something about it. When it predicted that Asmodeus would trick one of her greatest priests into committing an atrocity, she slipped him a warning note. When it predicted that her demise in the distant future would come at the hands of a monstrous demonic wolf, she killed it and hid the body. When it predicted she would lose her keys she made a spare set.

So far, Paiia is winning.

To her followers, the sun goddess Paiia represents the warmth of good, compassion, and healing. She's a goddess of prophecies, but urges her followers to make their own destinies - each sunrise heralds a new adventure and a new beginning. Planning and foresight is great, but you must back it up with action. Paiia is a fan of redemption - it's a new beginning for everyone - but is never hesistant to redeem evil's face with her fist.

Paiia is most popular among humans, especially in the older lands of Aldanath and Kaldoria. Sects of hers can be found almost anywhere humans reside. She also has a number of dwarf followers in mountain communities who like the cut of her jib, and almost any race which lives near humans can be found within her ranks if you look hard enough.

Paiia has allies in most good-aligned deities and is willing to talk with anyone, usually to barter for her services while she tries to convince them to change their ways. On the other hand she's never afraid to give bad news and will give vague or even wrong answers at times, usually to evil beings, to further her own agenda or just for fun. More gods seek her out for company than her services.

Paiia appears as a golden-haired woman with four arms. In her lower left she clutches the Third Eye of the Cosmos, a shining white orb, and in her lower right she carries a flaming sword. She can summon a blazing light from her hands, which can hurt or heal as necessary.

She also throws bitching Christmas parties.

Bam!

I've written out a bit more, but I won't bore you with the details. She does have the Good, Healing, Luck, Knowledge and Sun domains, because I still haven't gotten around to converting to 4E yet (and some of my current players aren't fans, I believe). Other than that it's mostly details about her servants (like Unforgivement, the ancient intelligent glaive who insists that was totally a word five hundred years ago), holy texts, et cetera, and it's best to not set them in stone until I need them.

That's all, for now. With any luck, I'll churn out a few more of these (and possibly improve this one) over the next week.

A Brief Essay On The Sad State Of Wizards Of The Coast

2011-04-01T20:13:00.003+11:00

Coming very soon to this blog is a brand new series of articles. I Want My Familiarity Back! is designed to bring the wonder and old-school feel of Vancian magic into 4th Edition, and will present the new class - the Caster - and convert every single wizard/sorcerer spell from 3E. The first article will introduce the series and present the Mage itself, and the many subsequent articles will delve into the spells themselves, paragon paths, named Mages of lore (mostly my old PCs), and so much more.

I'm pretty much throwing the 4E design ethos out of the window on this one. The spells will have their old school mix of offense, defense, utility and more; effects will be varied and interesting rather than "do some damage and apply a condition (save ends)", save-or-dies will be back to bring a swift and dramatic end to encounters in less than a round, the old schools of magic and specialization are back (although slightly different), and the spell names will be colorful and evocative - think Strahd von Zarovich Touches You In A Naughty Place, Sir Brian Consumptington's Gentlemanly Witticism, and Imix's Logically Inconsistent Grognard Rage rather than vampiric touch, charm person, and fireball.

Why am I doing this, you ask?

Because 4E is dying the slow death it deserves.

There's hardly been an original article or adventure in Dragon/Dungeon that hasn't been a preview in the last several months. (This might not be true; however, it feels that way and adventure support is certainly well down.)

This is beyond pathetic.

There are good things coming out of Wizards, but the U-turn they made on their release strategy, which has left its established customers with no products to buy for months now, hints at massive trouble within the company. I'm wondering now how much of it is due to Bill Slavicsek.

The release of D&D Essentials presaged a massive change at the company as to how it dealt with D&D. It's far more compatible with 4E than the 3.5e revision, but it did add in a few interesting wrinkles to the system, especially with the new rarity system for magic items. Unfortunately, no sooner had it been released than the Powers That Be at Wizards changed their mind again about the future direction of D&D. Just after spending a lot of time and money working out a new direction for D&D (Essentials), they changed their mind.

This actually derailed the integration of Essentials into 4e, particularly with the loss of Heroes of Sword and Spell and (more significant from my point of view) Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium. More significant? Yes, because I would have expected it to give lots of common and rare items, which we're currently missing in the system. The new magic item system in Essentials? Doesn't work without the information from this book. I'm also a DM, so player options don't mean as much to me.

I really feel that support for D&D 4E is currently stuck in limbo, and despite good design work, there's a lot of other departments at Wizards not pulling their weight.

Personally, I'm glad I haven't played 4.0. I hear it is more accessible than 3.x (and doesn't have the problem of 3rd-party supplements) but I'm still not interested in having to plan out my character in advance, or having to optimise my character.

I don't mind any of these things in other games. I just don't want them in D&D. The only choices I want to see there are about what is going on in the game, not on the character sheet.

Mind, I have no issue with character sheets. It was the nature of choices I had issue with. I want my decisions to be about what is going on in the game - do we trust the kobolds? how do we get through the secret door? Is that treasure worth the risk - rather than what happens at level up - do I spend that point on dodge or listen? what feat do I need to take to get improved disarm? is quickdraw worth taking?

I can't get that from 4e.

Thus, the only story games I can wholeheartedly recommend are ones which attempt to capture the pure RANDOMNESS of reality. It is perfectly acceptable as a DM to have a bunch of random, shocking, absurd and frequently violent events take place at your gaming table without any rhyme or reason constrained by 'story'! This is how DMs have always done it!

Why is this so hard to get across?

I mean, If I want to play a good game, I've got plenty on my shelf, from traditional style crunchfests, to the latest indie darlings.

But if I want to play D&D (not just play an RPG where I can dungeoncrawl, but actually play with the aim of playing D&D), then AD&D, AD&D 2nd, D&aD 3.0, D&D 3.5 and 4e do not fit my play style preferences.

4E in particular sucks dick for basically destroying RPGs and remanufacturing them as copies of MMOs.

In fact, the 4E designers themselves stated that 4E mechanics were built to better interface with video game design.

If you like WoW on pen and paper, you have 4e. Timed actions, If/then actions, very one sided characters in regards of what you can do, the 4e is for you.

Heck even Chris Perkins (D&D Line manager) admitted that 4E was an attempt to compete with computer games, as a way to attract WoW-kids. Problem is RPG’s can’t compete, heck they shouldn’t even try.

Yes there are some things that the edition got right like rituals, but OVERALL, the FEEL, yes FEEL, (not a specific rule, the FEEL) is that of a video game transported to a table top RPG. And that's fine if it's what you want, I don't.

I like video games, but I can play those, by myself, anytime. When I get together with my friend to play an RPG, I want there to be a difference - no wire-fu moves, no outrageous amounts of required magic items, no 3 million GP requirements for treasure (Astral Diamonds, really).

I like a BIT of realism in my D&D and up until this edition it was easy to drop certain things, or ignore add-ons to get it to that sweet spot. It's nearly impossible to do so without altering the rules to the point of re-writing the PHB and really, who wants to do that. So, is THAT clear enough?

RPG’s should focus on the things MMO’s can’t do: Indepth story, easily designed encounters, character interaction & design flexability.

What RPG’s should not do is try to compete directly against the strengths of a computer game & thats exactly what 4E tries to do.

Of course, I think 4E will make a very good video game. Much better than 3E or any previous edition of D&D.

The biggest problem that I have with 4E is that it is definitely tailored to Power Gaming and Munchkinsism. Role play is possible in 4E, but it naturally tailors itself much more to ROLL play than all previous editions of D&D.

This is the time for WotC to start work on their next thing. 5th Edition is going to need a lot of development and talent. WotC has a LOT of apologizing to do and they might as well start now.

And it will be Pathfinder. Pathfinder is the game that has the soul of what D&D was coupled with proper changes for the modern game. That is what I want to support. Plus, I love all the people at Paizo and I love what they are all about. And the community is just second to none.

Pathfinder is the way to go for sure. I no longer ban druids and bards from my games, (monks still dont belong in fantasy but it has nothing to do with the rules). They fixed much and did it with great artwork and quality.

I gave 4E a real try, I really did I purchased the main book and a module or two. Even bought Martial Powers. 4E just wasn't right for me. At some point I the classic line from Network "I'm mad as hell. I'm not going to take it anymore" made me give up D&D and stopped gaming for a while. I utterly despised 4E and thought it took all the flavor and life out of D&D I had come to love. D&D had become its own fantasy world and I had come to love that comfortable fantasy world. 4E destroyed everything I loved about D&aD and made it unfamiliar and uninteresting like a watery soup with no flavor.

If not for Pathfinder, I wouldn't be playing any version of D&D. I thank the gaming gods there were other people out there looking to preserve the traditions and tropes of D&D I had come to enjoy over the years.

I really thought that I would be stuck with no new books and no new version of D&D after 4E came out. It was the end of an era for me or so I thought. Here came Paizo with their old school thinking about adventures and new school tweaking of the rules. And I couldn't be happier. I hope they do outsell 4E. Maybe WotC would learn not to mess with tradition. It's like New Coke versus Classic Coke. New Coke lost out and finally they had to return to Classic Coke. Maybe the next version of D&D by WotC will realize that traditional D&D is the best and that new fangled 4E thing is only a fad.

I'm glad to see that D&D 4E hasn't had the same level of acceptance and success as 3E. Goes to prove that it isn't as good a game to as many a D&D gamer. So I don't have to listen to 4E fans like yourself that think 4E can do no wrong. To you it may be better than 4E, to me it is an abomination that destroyed the uniqueness the D&D game had.

Sorry, it's not as good as 3E. It split the community. And when such things happen, opportunity presents itself. Paizo took advantage. Kudos to them for saving a game a lot of still enjoyed playing versus WotC attempting to force feed us 4E.

So maybe you go have fun with your favorite edition of D&D and I'll stay here and have fun with my favorite edition. We can leave it at that.

All I know for certain, and this isn't even debateable, Paizo's Adventure Paths are many times better than WotC's 4E modules. Not even a close contest even if 4E sales are doing well.

May Paizo keep on being successful.

Stealing From Real Life Is Just Better

2011-03-26T18:23:00.002+11:00

So, I have been asked a couple times why I don't use real-world things as inspiration more often, and the truth is I do, really. I just tend to be subtle about it (combining names of places and gods, nobody notices), or I am incredibly unsubtle, like when I decided goblins in my setting were demon-worshippers and hipsters (they worship pretty obscure demon lords you've probably never heard of).

I do tend to not take as much inspiration from the real world as I could, though, mostly because I am certain that if I did I would end up with my nose buried in a book of Vietnamese mythology for five hours or on some kind of week-long Wikipedia binge.

However, because I thought it would be fun, I decided to pick an Earth country and sketch out a decidedly more Dungeons & Dragons-y version of it.

See if you can guess which one it is!

Sanggyeong

Situated on one side of a peninsula (or an island, I'm not sure) at the closer end of the Far Lands, Sanggyeong (full name Democratic United Republic of the People of Sanggyeong) is situated somewhere between the distant human lands of Kaldoria and Aldanath (main human lands in this setting) and Taishiria, the even more distant oriental lands.

Though it was once part of neighbouring country Kaesong, frequent invasions by Taishiria resulted in Sanggyeong's secession. Sanggyeong (or, at least, its leadership) is convinced that the reason Taishiria invaded was not because Kaesong is even better placed for trade than Taishiria's port city of Gaijinkyo, but because they are just an incredibly desirable and handsome people.

Industries

Sanggyeong is a communist state attempting to become a self-sufficient centrally-planned economy while catering to the whims of its leader and staging ridiculously elaborate performances to show the world how awesome they are.

It could be going better.

Aside from iron ore and coal, Sanggyeong has little resources, and most of its money goes into building up its military and erecting suitably grandoise monuments and temples. Its agricultural industry has upgraded itself from "laughable" to "passable", partly because enough people have starved to death to reduce the demand to very nearly almost definitely manageable levels.

These days every citizen gets free rations, housing, healthcare and education, as long as they do not mind that all of these things are basically terrible.

International trade is heavily restricted except in the small port of Janmadangdong, where limited amounts are allowed; in other towns, goods can easily be found in all-scale private markets, which the country has given up on stopping.

Sanggyeong's tourism industry is ludicrously terrible, ranked somewhere behind the mountainous necrocracy of Lichenstein and the 528th layer of the Abyss. It has a tourist resort, the town of Kamgetsum where very large and dangerous monsters are released in the belief that this would attract adventurers to hunt them, but so far there have been no takers. The native population of Kamgetsum is currently 2.

Very nearly half of the nation is in the military.

Government and Politics

The nation is controlled by the State Peace and Progressive Development Council, which really means it is a dictatorship controlled by Jung Oneriver, Grand Wizard (official title and name are decreed by law to go in that order). Technically, Oneriver, Grand Wizard is second-in-command, as the permanent ruler is Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy, but as Twohappy is dead and therefore unable to dictate government policy, Oneriver, Grand Wizard is in charge.

The offical story goes that Oneriver, Grand Wizard was born just before Twohappy ascended to godhood, and his birth coincided with the appearance of six rainbows and the creation of a fantastic new species of dragon. He has also completely mastered every creative craft, from theatre to weaponsmithing, and invented all manner of wondrous things from carriages to horses. Obviously, most of these aren't true, though in his defense Oneriver, Grand Wizard is really really good at theatre and weaponsmithing.

The rest of the government is divided between people who are fanatically loyal to Oneriver, Grand Wizard, people who are very good at pretending to be fanatically loyal to Oneriver, Grand Wizard, and people in prison camps.

Power Groups

The Grand Guild of Extremely Accomplished Mages: Sanggyeong claims to have the best wizards in the world, and of course Oneriver, Grand Wizard is so powerful he can summon dragons and control the weather, but strangely almost every single arcane caster in Sanggyeong disappears immediately after becoming powerful enough to learn, say, teleport.

The Royal Family: Little is actually known about Oneriver, Grand Wizard as the country is very reclusive and most of the things said about its leader are probably lies. If they are, Oneriver, Grand Wizard is a tyrannical little bastard who enjoys fine wine and ladies daily while half his country starves to death. If they are mostly true, Oneriver, Grand Wizard is the most skilled and charming man in existence, can create miracles with his magic, and is also a dragon. Everyone really hopes it's the first one.

The Church of Tongmu-Jung: The cult of personality surrounding the ruling Jung family is strong - there's a picture of them in every house, a monument in their name on every street corner. So strong, in fact, that they are literally worshipped as gods.

Religion

Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy is the official god of Sanggyeong, and Oneriver, Grand Wizard is revered as his son. His body is currently preserved in the capital city, in a temple so ornate the money could have fed a million Sanggyeongans for a year, and some say it is not worthy of his grandeur.

The church of Tongmu-Jung is currently led by Lee Ninelove (human cleric (Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy) 12), chosen partly for her magical strength and fanatical devotion to the Jung family brought about by years of government-run education but mostly for her sexy legs.

Clerics of Sanggyeong's deity mostly receive the Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy and Community domains.

Other churches do not exist in Sanggyeong - foreign deities are allowed, by as the Church of Tongmu-Jun tends to distribute pamphlets explaining how foreign gods are all sidekicks, weaker friends or mistresses of Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy, nobody wants to set up shop there. More local religions, mainly those of Taishiria and Kaesong, are officially frowned upon but thrive in secret.

Sample Characters

Park Fouranger (human fighter 7): Hailing from the military city of Taepodong, Fouranger considers himself a "traditional" Sanggyeongan: He deals with the hard times in his country by declaring that things were much better when Twohappy was in charge, and Oneriver, Grand Wizard is a corporate sellout who is ruining the country via his economic programs (most of which were started by Twohappy). He doesn't say much to avoid being executed, though.

Kim Threeflower (human cleric (Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy) 5): A moderately powerful (by Sanggyeong standards) cleric of Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy, Threeflower was recently promoted from the boring job of supplying food for his village (the farmers were mostly re-assigned and made to attempt making steel) to the much more useful task of becoming a missionary of Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy, spreading the good word of Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy to the unenlightened humans, dwarves and et cetera of the world who have not heard of Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy and converting them to Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy while beseeching foreign countries to provide aid to Sanggyeong, preferably in the form of food, and possibly to recognise Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy as a real religion. He will probably be dead within a year.

Dong Oneluck (human rogue 7): Oneluck runs the Provincial Bureau of Excellent Industry which oversees production and industry within the Anhwa region. Oneluck aims to one day run the Central Planning Command Control Committee, which makes economic plans for and supervises the entire nation; this may actually happen, because while Oneluck has the intelligence and economic skills of a plastic fish, he is really, really good at acting like a massive fan of Jung Oneriver, Grand Wizard.

Chung Sixdew (human bard 1/sorcerer 8): Sixdew is a beautiful actress and singer who is dearly loved by the nation, stars in its many plays (such as Sanggyeong Astonishes The World With Its Handsomeness, Lifetime Republic Member Jung Twohappy Loves His People: The Musical and Jung Oneriver, Grand Wizard Versus The Space Lizards), and is going to mysteriously disappear just after she figures out how to teleport.

So, yeah. Most of that was written out in a couple of hours, and I ran out of place name ideas, and I left out alignments to avoid alignment arguments oh god, and I will probably decide this is all really bad five minutes after posting, but hey! Maybe I will work on it and insert it into my setting for realsies.

Who wouldn't want to ~~adventure~~ have happy government-approved fun times in Sanggyeong?

Worry

2011-03-07T15:09:00.001+11:00

So let's just go ahead and lay this out:

I worry a lot.

About what? Everything, pretty much. Here's what I was doing since the last post:

Worrying about what to write next
Seriously considering deleting my blog and starting over repeatedly, on the grounds that I find any post I have written more than two months ago embarrassing
Being talked out of deleting my blog
Deciding my plans for the next post were terrible and starting over
Worrying about real-life business so much I forgot what I was doing, starting over
Worrying about whether to go back to drawing some comics because some asshole complained that he wasn't interested if there weren't pictures
Worrying about what kind of comic to draw
Worrying about whether to draw a comic again
Worrying about how real-life business so much I forgot to draw a comic
Worrying about how long this was taking
Just writing a damn post.

If you think this is weird behaviour try living with it.

When I'm DMing, though, I find it's pretty useful. See, nearly every bad gamer I know - every player who stops a game to complain if something he doesn't approve of happens, every DM who fills campaigns with her own author avatars, everyone who announces they are ragequitting the game forever if they don't get their way - have the same problem:

They never worry about whether anyone else is having fun.

A few years back I ran a game set in Paladinia, which you can probably guess the atmosphere of, where the PCs went on missions to find and kill devils, demons and daemons. At one point, a player's frenzied berserker cut off an ultroloth's arm, and he came to me with a proposition: He wanted to use the arm to get a fiendish graft for the sake of boosting his stats. Since asking around in this city would get few results, he planned to travel south to the local Evilwizardland, which directly opposed the city (and specific group) the party worked for, and get one there.

When it was pointed out that he would need a plan for replacing his limbs with demon parts without being thrown out of Paladinia once he got back, he revealed his master plan: Openly kill anyone who raised an objection. When the other players pointed out their characters wouldn't like it either, he claimed that his frenzied berserker could take on the rest of the party and win.

When the other players objected to that, he incredulously replied: "Like they get an opinion."

Yeah, he didn't get that graft.

Games are a group effort. You shouldn't play if you're not having fun, but the same mantra applies to everyone else, who are going to leave if you ask if there can be catgirls and tentacles in WoD.

When you worry all the time, especially about what other people would think, that's no problem. I mean, the worrying is a problem, but the other problems aren't my problem because they stop being a problem. I am constantly crushed by the weight of past mistakes and remembered NPCs, settings and adventures I find embarrassing, and everything is done with those in the back of my mind somewhere.

And when you can finally sit back, think "Are people going to enjoy this?" and feel good about the answer...

Well, that's just tubular.

Drawing Inspiration From Your Television

2011-01-14T17:44:00.001+11:00

I hope your Chrimbo break was good! Mine was.

We're not here to talk about that, though. On a slightlty less boring note, lately I have been wondering if my standards are weird.

See, recently I've seen a few games created with the intent of playing in the setting of some media series - telvision, video games, webcomics, et cetera. Homestuck is apparently a popular choice these days, and off the top of my head I can name Doctor Who, Dresden Files and every single superhero comic ever as settings that even have their own ruleset.

That sort of thing always makes me nervous, though. I can see the appeal, and I can agree it can be done - hell, I kind of want to play Dresden Files - but I'm uncomfortable with it. It feels like I'm sitting around a bunch other guys lazily narrating fanfiction, not playing an RPG. And depending on the source material and how it's played, I might end up just tagging along with the main characters of a story I didn't write, which is the same reason I don't play Forgotten Realms.

I actually have a friend who is into this sort of thing, and has run at least two Homestuck games, and we argue about this a lot. He argues that he just likes to explore other people's settings and play with the setpieces, and also that he is not very good at coming up with his own stories. I argue that he is not very good at coming up with his own stories. They're weird arguments.

Lately, though, I've started to wonder if my standards are too high. Apart from anything else, where exactly is the line between media series and campaign setting? I am totally fine with running in Planescape, for example.

Maybe all I need is a setting that hasn't been done a thousand times before, one where adventures can be had without involving someone else's premade characters and/or plot, and most importantly, one that is still interesting.

I wonder if there's a TV show that would work well in Dungeons & Dragons...

Sitcoms

Who doesn't like sitcoms? Oh, you don't? Okay, how about Britcoms?

Really?

Get out.

Seriously though, this shouldn't be hard. Sitcoms are a pretty broad category. Take some characters, put them in the same location a lot, make them completely dysfunctional, and send them on adventures. Bam, you've just described every adventuring party with a favourite tavern ever.

You could re-use the same settings and characters as the show in question, but the reason nobody's ever run Friends (apart from the lack of a proper system) is because nobody wants to hang out with the cast of Friends. Why not D&D-ify it instead?

Everybody Loves Wizards, Dungeon Improvement, Two and a Half Halflings, How I Skillchecked Your Mother, Black Spellbooks, Are You Being Healed?, My Mother The Scimitar...

Or, you know, you can just copy Seinfeld. Everyone else did.

The Muppet Show

There are rules for running businesses in D&D, and honestly you could just make them up if you wanted. It's not hard. So why not a theatre?

The best setting would be Planescape, because then you can play the Muppets and nobody would notice. Kermit? Surprisingly erudite green slaad. Fozzie? Guardinal. Gonzo? Gonzo. The Muppet Show's weekly guest stars could be NPCs from all kinds of campaign settings: Elminster, Lidda, Orcus, that one NPC of Greenwood's who has all those orgies...

The only problem I can see is that everyone is going to fight over who gets to be Statler and Waldorf.

Baywatch

An innocent swimmer, unaware that the beach counts as an aquatic environment and he has to roll on an encounter table, is attacked by an aboleth. The orc wizard on duty spots the danger, grabs her staff and runs towards the water in slow motion.

Elsewhere, two of the players describe a kobold shower scene in detail. The DM tries to ignore them.

Weird Foreign Pornography

I live in Australia - no, I don't live near the floods going on - and down here we have a TV station called SBS, aka Special Broadcasting Service or Sex Before Soccer. Ostensibly SBS is a foreign language service, but I mostly remember it for the sports and the creepy foreign movies. Channel surfing just isn't complete without suddenly stumbling upon a scene of a naked young foreign boy being forced by bullies to put on girl panties.

Several years ago I tuned in at the wrong time to find myself watching a group of nuns watching a couple make love.

Once they were done, a silence fell upon the group. "What now?" one nun asked.

Another nun had the solution: "I heard that in California, they do it on unicycles!"

At that point, all the nuns rushed out.

I'm not sure it's possible to make a game out of this, but I'm sure somebody on the internet has tried.

Jersey Shore

No.

How To Annoy Your Players: Villain Creation 2

2010-11-22T14:15:00.000+11:00

Apologies for the tardiness. I got a little busy trying to finish some other writing tasks. I now have a sore throat and am coughing up an impressive amount of mucus, so... karma, I suppose?

Anyway, let's carry on.

As established in the previous post, all players are terrible and never deserve anything good ever. I run Encounters at a local game store so I know what I'm talking about.

So, now that you've decided on your epic villain and what kind of campaign this is, we need to do some of the details.

Goals

We kind of already covered this, but it's good to get down:

What the villain wants to accomplish
What's in his way and how he will deal with it
Whether any of the PCs have female relatives he could bang

You know, what the villain's doing when he's not trying to kill the PCs. Actually, put down "kill the PCs" as one of his goals too. He'll want to do that eventually anyway, and as the DM you "WIN" D&D if you wipe the party.

On the other hand, you could also have the villain manipulate the players. Here's what you do: Set the PCs on a quest. Once they are done, reveal that whatever the players did helped the villain. (You don't need to think of a reason why in advance.) If you want to say something like "You guys are going to feel so stupid" and smirk, that's your right as a DM."

Construct a list of "steps" the villain needs to go through. For example, Tooldouche (our wizard from the previous example) might:

Establish his dominance over an orc tribe
Raid towns for resources
Bring some other orc tribes under his heel
Construct a shrine to Libertina's panties
Ally with some minor villains
Have them infiltrate the kingdom and do stuff for him
Kill the minor villains (if the PCs are fighting them, have him teleport in and out to do it)
Seduce the party cleric's sister
Take over a town in the kingdom as a base
Kidnap Libertina
Offer to make Libertina queen by his side
Send the army in to take over the kingdom

As the adventure goes on, check off each step and declare the villain has accomplished it. (The first one probably happened before the campaign started). Have your PCs go on adventures related to as many of these steps as you can fit in, but remember: your villain should succeed regardless. Okay, they'll defeat him in the end - maybe - but first you need to tell the PCs the story of how they got to that point.

Also, if you let them screw up his plans, he (i.e. YOU) have to come up with a new one. Bugger that for a game of soldiers!

Resources

What does the villain have and what does he need?

This covers money, items, friends, property, sheep, etc. You don't need to write down the details yet; "he is very rich" will do instead of "he has exactly 100,322gp, 34sp, 23cp". Get down the basics of what he has, then move on to what he needs. If his goals don't cover getting them, rewrite his goals a little.

For example, Tooldouche doesn't have money because he spent it all in his backstory, but he does have a nice collection of magical items as well as the Douchonomicon, the powerful spellbook that got him all that magical power in the first place, a (reduced) collection of Libertina's old sweaty footwear, a pair of her panties, an army of orcs equipped with standard fighter gear, and a sweet hat.

What he needs is a bigger army with better equipment, so he can take over the kingdom.

That wasn't hard!

Remember, though, you should also keep track of what I like to call reactive resources. Basically, if Tooldouche is fighting the PCs and could really use something you didn't say he already has, for example a wand of counterspells or an cloak that resists the party's attacks, then just act like he already had it. If the PCs ask why it didn't come up before, tell them you didn't think it was important at the time.

M.O.

M.O., gentle reader, means "mode of operation", or how the villain acts. (Knowing lots of words like this is why I'm writing a blog and you're not.)

Does he have other people do the work for him, and the PCs mostly fight his minions while hearing tales of how awesome he is? Does he do it himself, and the PCs see the effects of his actions and get hints about how awesome he is as they progress? Does he have a public image as a benevolent, powerful figure, and all the NPCs tell tales of how awesome he is? Does he like to take breaks between adventures to bang the party wizard's mom, who tells the wizard how awesome he is... in bed?

Really, this part doesn't have to make perfect sense. Just do whatever works. As long as he looks really, really cool doing it.

Stats

Ah, the fun part. This is where you stat the villain they're going to fight.

I can't help you sheet him - that's your job - but here are some pointers:

Think about what level the PCs will be at the end of the campaign. Make him a challenge for PCs of that level. Some DMs like to have him stay roughly in the PC's level range and level as they do to make challenging encounters throughout the campaign, but that is way too much work. Anyway, who doesn't like having a level 30 character curb-stomp your level 5 PCs?
Pick abilities you think would be fun to use on the PCs. With so many splat books they can read these days, it's too much effort to tailor the encounter to the characters. They can handle it anyway, probably.
If the system allows save-or-dies, those are always fun for you!
He doesn't have to be limited by normal treasure guidelines, but remember to have his best magical items only work on him, or crumble into dust if the PCs get a hold of them. It works for drow!
Never be afraid to give the villain cool abilities that the PCs can't get. He IS pretty special, and the PCs should be made to know that. (Bonus points: Banning something for the PCs, like warforged or psionics, so it's unique to the villain.)
Don't be afraid to change any of these stats on the fly if you want to. Hell, leave a few feat slots blank and pretend he took whatever feat he needs. PCs would do it if they could, why not you?

I've decided to make Tooldouche a 17th-level wizard, since I only plan for this campaign to run until about 11/12th level. I'll pick all the save-or-dies - especially charming spells, I love those - teleports, and some homebrew spells that let him summon horny succubi groupies. I'll pick some metamagic feats, and a homebrew metamagic feat that removes the level cost of metamagic for him so I don't have to bother with that. Maybe some flashy spells like fireballs that can hit everyone; honestly, though, I might just search the PHB for whatever spell is useful at the time and say he prepared it.

I'm going to give him the standard wizard gear - ring of protection +6, bracers of armour +7, robe of the archmagi, staff of the magi, cool hat, scrying mirror to explain how he knows what the PCs are doing, and boots of spider climbing. The boots are there so the PCs have something when they loot him and the powerful items turn to dust so they can't abuse them. I'll give him other magical items as needed.

Telling a Story

Now that you've made your villain, you need to plan how to use it.

As you've probably already gathered, the villain is the star of the campaign, and you need to use him appropriately. A gentle touch works - make sure the villain is known, and the PCs know how great he is, but he doesn't have to beat up the PCs and gloat every session. Every second adventure, max. And that is pushing it a bit.

Don't have him gloat too much, because some jerk PC might try to attack him mid-sentence. (A contingency Delayed Blast Fireball might put them in their place, though!)

(I might write about monologuing later, actually! Stay tuned.)

This is only a discussion about villains, though, not how to tell your story, so details will have to wait. I do have one specific area left to cover, but first, a tip.

Characters in Heroic tier need to be railroaded - the characters don't belong to the players until Paragon tier.

In non-4E terms, this means that you're going to have to hold their hands until about 11th level, otherwise they'll probably get themselves killed or screw the story up. After that they can have a bit of leeway, though I'd still keep them on a leash where possible.

Escape Plans

So you're telling your awesome story, the game is going pretty well, and the villain is lording it over the PCs. You know, a bit of D&D fun. But then, trouble strikes - the paladin scores a lucky crit on a Smite Evil or some bullshit, and your villain might actually be defeated before he's supposed to.

You, my friend, need an escape plan.

Realistically, you should be able to have the villain get away any time you want. My favourite method is teleport spells, homebrewed as free actions and the like if you feel like it, but I've also successfully used:

Escape corridors which seal off or develop impenetrable walls of force behind the villain as he escapes.
Having the villain disappear behind a building or other object and disappear.
Fudge the stats. Have the villain gain as much HP as he needs to survive, and new abilities that let him incapacitate the PCs before walking away.
Say your villain dons a cloak or something that causes all spells and attacks to bounce harmlessly off it, even area spells and dispels, and walks away. If the players ask, make up an excuse for why he didn't have it already.
Did the PCs actually kill the villain? Rehearse this line: "Well, since you didn't actually check to make sure he was dead, he didn't die. Don't worry, it'll be totally awesome though."

And that's the basics.

With a little luck and a lot of effort, gentle reader, you too can run games as mondo as mine.

(P.S.: Oh yeah, I caved in and got a Twitter. I will let you know the minute I need to take a shit.)

How To Annoy Your Players: Villain Creation 1

2010-11-01T23:19:00.000+11:00

Alright, back to completely serious DMing advice.

We're going to put down worldbuilding for now because I was tiring of it and go back to instructional guides and simple pieces, like that time I said Dark Sun sucked like an amorous vacuum cleaner, or that time I said completely true things about myself and made Planescape better, or that time I, that is, totally me and not some grognard, stated my opinions in a completely thought-through and not vaguely patronising way, or maybe that time I flipped my business like a bionic pancake over kender.

Specifically we're going to talk about villains.

First, let's establish something all DMs know deep in their heart of hearts, resonating deep within the vicinity of the left ventricle:

All players are basically the worst players ever.

Okay? Cool.

So. First, you should come up with a concept. I don't have much advice to give here. You can do this part on your own. Since we might need an example later, though, I am going to make up one now.

Our villain, let's call him Tooldouche, is a wizard. He leads a small army of orcs and would really, really like to burn the PCs' kingdom to the ground.

Good start? Sure, it's a good start. Now you need...

Motivation

Your players will want to know what your villain's motivation is. There are only two ways to do this: By not bothering, or by putting as much detail in as possible. Here is a bad example of a motivation:

Tooldouche had been rejected all his life. His teachers would mock him, his peers would bully him and his crushes would reject him. When he discovered a knack for arcane magic, this vaguely unlikeable nobody poured everything he had into mastering it and gaining acceptance as a master of the arcane. He became an archmage at only twenty-five, but when he was rejected during Mage Guild President elections, he snapped and roused an army of orcs to take over the kingdom and remake it in his image.

Sure, it covers the basics, but how are your PCs going to fully appreciate your efforts? How does this one paragraph justify you staying up until 3AM statting a really awesome high-level NPC to impress your players with as he kills their characters effortlessly?

It doesn't, what's how!

So here's what you do.

First, you can just not give him a motivation, which will make him even scarier. Like the Joker!

Tooldouche wants to destroy the kingdom because frankly he's kind of a dick.

The nice thing is that this gives you more time to decide what adventures the PCs will undertake to stop him, what they'll do and how he can teleport away if necessary.

The second way is to write a proper, epic backstory that suits your villain. If possible, have an NPC explain it in-depth at the nearest opportunity. If the players might get confused, bring a pamphlet.

Tooldouche was born Reginald T. Ooldouche twenty-five years ago in the town of Hootclaw, known for the owlbears which roam the nearby forests. He was a quiet, studious student who kept cats, collected stamps and had read every issue of WIZARDS! Magazine. Though he was smart, he was a shy boy, and his schoolmates would bully him mercilessly, just like Boris and his cronies bullied me at South West Sydney High all those years ago until I found out he had gotten a job as a pool cleaner on Facebook and emailed him a virus.

Tooldouche harboured a crush on Libertina, a young raven-haired maiden and a worhshipper of Valen, goddess of beauty. Libertina was beautiful, and had breasts so large Tooldouche could fit his head in one of her bra cups, and he was sure she had other good traits as well. He would often leave her roses, or love letters in her desk, or steal her shoes while she was in gym class and sniff them.

Then one day, disaster struck. First, Tooldouche was pushed down the stairs by a friend of the party fighter's who happened to go to the school which I will have to remember to tell him about in the pamphlet, and then Boris stole his favourite Pokemon card, the Charizard, and sold it to buy more cheeseburgers. Finally, his parents discovered his collection of Libertina's stolen shoes and socks.

Tooldouche was exposed. Libertina turned him down, and also she turned out to be dating Stacy, a cleric version of that cheating bitch from SESH. She did not let Tooldouche kiss her feet goodbye and she left for a church-run school. Tooldouche was the laughing stock of the school.

In his grief, Tooldouche locked himself in his father's attic and decided to kill himself. After realising he had locked himself in the attic without any means of killing himself, he rummaged around and tried to beat himself to death with one of his grandfather's books. Then he noticed it was an ancient tome of magic: the Douchonomicon.

From that day, Tooldouche spent every moment of his free time secretly learning magic, occasionally taking heavy drags of that one stocking he had stolen from Libertina that was too large to properly masturbate into to remind him of why he was doing this, and by the time he graduated he was able to secretly destroy Boris' life like that shit-faced pool cleaner deserves.

He applied to the Arcane Order's magical university and was swiftly accepted, rising to receive the highest honor the Order could grant: the Order of the Order. The moment his graduation papers were in order, Tooldouche joined the Order and swiftly rose to a position which let him order the lesser mages of the Order. His orders were often quite demanding; perhaps this was the start of darkness for the orderly mage.

By age twenty five he was capable of casting all sorts of amazing spells, and had risen to the rank of archmage. As he rose, though, he encountered opposition: Archmage Yutube, an older man who was tipped to win the next Arcane Order President elections. The President was basically the emperor of wizards and could advise the King himself. Though Tooldouche felt that young blood was what was needed to guide this kingdom's future, and also he wanted to rub it in Stacy's bimbo face, and even though he poured all his money into a campaign to become the President, he had lost.

Who can say why? Maybe it was because you aren't supposed to campaign to be President, maybe it was because the citzens he gave speeches to were not Order members and therefore didn't get a vote. Maybe because his name was Tooldouche. Maybe, frankly, because he was kind of a dick.

Whatever happened, Tooldouche was devastated again. He fled to his tower with tears in his eyes, the laughing faces of the Order's inner circle as he tried to explain that there must have been a miscount because he had polled very well in most of the swing towns reminding him of the faces of his peers when he was caught rubbing Libertina's panties on his face as I was led out of the girl's locker room and suspended for a week and my dad sold my Nintendo.

Tooldouche decided he had had enough. Gathering all his possessions, he quit the Order and set off north, there to mass an army to take over the kingdom himself. After defeating an orc warlord in single combat by virtue of that fact that he was a wizard and could fly and throw fireballs while the warlord was a fighter and could basically swing an axe, he took control of the orcish armies and began a campaign of aggression against the kingdom's northern reaches.

Now that's a backstory.

Remember: You worked hard on this, so make sure your players fully understand and appreciate its every detail by having it come up a lot. Take a session or two to have them watch a movie about it, even, if you can work it in.

Anyway, once you've done that, you need a couple other things. One of them is...

Scope

You need to decide if the villain is going to affect a town, a nation, a world, the multiverse, whatever. A dude who is trying to blow up the planet is a bigger threat than, say, a dude who wants to kick your favourite uncle in the balls.

Here is the short version: He should mostly affect the PCs. Also, everyone who knows the PCs should talk about how powerful he is, to intimidate them. A good baseline for villain power and scope is that of the character you created to defeat him for the PCs. Maybe a little less than that, actually...

What are the rest? You think magic like this can happen in only one blog post? I am giving you the guide, the absolute best and one hundred frigging billion percent factual guide on making the most bitchtits villain in the history of balls, and you want it done in one blog post? You know what's going to happen instead? Screw you, that's what!

Part 2 later this week. We'll work out how Tooldouche is specifically going to fight the PCs and teleport away, what kind of stories the players will watch unfold in his wake and perhaps involve themselves in, and whether the orcs will wield katanas.

Worldbuilding: Evil Dwarf Jamboree

2010-10-07T23:26:00.003+11:00

I might take a breather and write some non-worldbuilding posts for a bit after this one. First...

I was going through my emails recently. I like to keep emails from people who tell me my blog is great, because it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside and regular praise doesn't do it for me any more. I don't even get hard. Normally I reply to them, but it turns out I missed one and it's starting to get awkward, so:

Chris Devlin, if you are still reading, thank you for the email you sent in April 2009! I really appreciate it. It has a "favourite" star in Google Mail and everything.

If you thought that was going off on a tangent, prepare to be AMAZED as I go off on more tangents than an absent-minded professor of mathematics at a geometry convention in Tangent, Florida:

The last post was on the need for jerks in the setting, and while I was bouncing around some ideas, I thought of something I was missing: Evil dwarves. I had the broad strokes of how dwarves work down, but that was about it. Since I actually use dwarves a lot in one of the games I run I thought I would work them out properly and make up a few dwarf nations.

What I had put down was not well-articulated. The important part was the dwarf's core philosophy, something called the "harmony of opposites", which was about how everything was supposed to be balanced by its counterpart. Good and evil, fire and water, Wendy's hot dogs and food, etc.

Naturally, since I hadn't explained it well, it made dwarves sound like weird True Neutral fanatics who thought "good" and "evil" were both crazy extremes. Not what I wanted.

So, I did what everyone who creates things in a D&D setting does when they're not busy telling people stealing from real life is cool and original, which is steal from real life. Two minutes later I had worked out what I kind of knew anyway: Turns out the dwarves are sort of half-assed Taoists. I might as well work with that - some vaguely related concepts, like the Golden Mean, fit them nicely too. They're not huge True Neutral fans, they just try to do everything in moderation.

I will have to avoid making them too much like Asian dwarves, though, because I do not want to just replace the terrible image of a dwarf with an awful Scottish accent chugging alcoholic beverages so hard he is practically pouring them down his massive beard with a similarly awful image of a dwarf with an awful Chinese accent and a long thin beard smoking opium through a gigantic pipe. Also, I can't imagine dwarves moving into Aldanath en masse to open laundromats.

Religion-wise, I was thinking of having it be a dualistic religion. Two gods, yin and yang and whatever. Or maybe one god. Or maybe one god that is also two gods, and screw with everyone's head. At this point, though, to go further with that I would want to research more and I think if I open another TVTropes/Wikipedia tab I will be here all week, so screw that for now.

So, nations. What would they be like?

Dwarves live underground and dig mines in a lot of settings; here, the underground would be an "extreme" environment because the opposite to the earth would probably be the sky and there isn't any down there. Maybe it's an aesthetic thing and they think that makes it a cool place to live; in that case, they'd probably live on mountains and things too, where there's more "sky" than "earth". Mountain dwarves would probably encounter humans more, too, depending on trade routes, so perhaps the common image of a dwarf is a philosophical mountain-dweller. Maybe one who still likes to get drunk, who knows.

So, we have some dwarf lands in mountain ranges, some underground... perhaps some out in the ocean? Who knows.

I could see them having a lot of monasteries and monks, too. (Remember when 2e neckbeards thought the 3e monk was going to be overpowered?) Those are easy to make into both heroes and antagonists, like that monk dude in Neverwinter Nights who I never picked to join my party because he was a creepy little fuckwhistle. Maybe too easy. I want something bigger.

So, evil dwarf land ideas off the top of my head:

Sky Jerks

The longer I write this the more I think "don't say duergar, don't say duergar, don't...", so let's avoid the little bastards and set these guys somewhere duergar wouldn't be: the sky! They could live on floating islands or a metropolis supported by balloons and blimps or something. After spending so much time looking down on everyone else (literally) they have decided it is their destiny to rule the lands below, and their flying city is armed with -

Hold on. This is the setting of Bioshock: Infinite.

Okay, new idea.

Wet Jerks

The ocean idea sounded cool! Perhaps instead of living underground some dwarves live underwater, in big domed underwater cities. What would they be like? Maybe instead of being expansionist they just want to be left alone, but are evil because they consider themselves unrestrained by the desires and morals of the outside world and delve into forbidden knowledge and -

Regular Bioshock. Okay, third time's the charm.

Jerk Fortress

Maybe dwarves don't have a unified nation. Maybe they just have a big dwarf territory, and any dwarf can build a little keep and claim a tract of land. Running it is a pain, since there's no government around to help them, but if they can fend off the local fish and establish a well-running fortress then they could start digging downward, looking for forbidden knowlege and -

No, wait.

I did this for my other, more steampunky setting in the area known as the Dorf Holds.

That was a practice attempt!

Two Cities

Maybe we can try the dualistic theme again instead of weird locations.

Say the dwarves have two metropolises, one underground and one above... actually, no, let's put both cities on the surface right next to each other, separted by a narrow road or a river or something. One side is benevolent and one is a bunch of jerkshoes, though I would probably make it a little unclear which is which. Maybe they can each have a different theme in their architecture and culture, too, like one side favours blue things and one side favours red. Something minor like that. Naturally, if they live right next to each other, they'd fight for control a lot, maybe send spies to collect intelligence on the other or something.

Finally!! An idea. I can go to bed now.

Worldbuilding: Jerklandia

2010-09-16T20:56:00.002+10:00

I've decided to jump away from deities for a bit, because honestly those last two posts were just me posting ideas rather than actual polished product. They were alright for half-formed ideas, but I think I'll let them bake for a while and jump back to what caused me to write about deities in the first place: I was planning countries and cities for the setting and wanted to know what drove them.

So.

The reason I wanted evil deities in the first place is because, frankly, every setting needs at least one arsehole. It's not much of a game without challenge and opposition, and in D&D that usually comes in the form of someone to kill. Lots of someones, with any luck.

So, as I lay out an abridged map of the world, I should populate it with jerks.

But what kind of jerks, and where?

Jerks can take many forms. They could be moustache-twirlingly evil, flesh-eating cosmic horrors or just... well, jerks. I know plenty of people who proclaim loudly and proudly that they are trolls, foul-mouthed or just generally obnoxious on the Internet like they are expecting some kind of trophy, to various degrees of success, and I actually kind of like some of them.

(I may even have been that guy, earlier. I kind of remember casually trolling the Tao of D&D guy almost two years ago now over some post of his and then killing a few minutes by trolling one of his comments pages. A waste of time for everyone involved, probably, and so I will extend a sort-of apology by not getting the code for a link to his blog messed up this time. Hooray!)

I already have what I'd guess is the standard D&D fare as far as these things go: rogue tribes of orcs, goblins or whatever else is lying around, hidden cults that worship jerks and so on. What I could use more of are larger-scale threats: Countries with an outlook which would naturally oppose wherever the PCs come from.

So, nongood countries. They'd need government, religion (this is why I was thinking of evil deities), resources and a reason for existing wherever it is they exist in the first place. And, most importantly, some kind of theme. "These guys worship the Devil" is a little more exciting than "These guys star in a series of Youtube videos in which they are mean to people and are proud of it".

Let me use this space to jot down some different ways I could run a country of dickmugs:

Tool Casting [Metamagic]

Simply put, an evil magocracy. They don't necessarily have to dabble in necromancy, though they could be more open to it than others. They probably put power above anything else, look down on those who don't know them, and frequently dive into magics men were not meant to know, or preferably to know but not to fuck around with.

Off the top of my head, the first example that comes to mind is probably Thay.

The Necrocracy

Title stolen shamelessly from a TVTropes article which neatly explains the concept for me.

I kind of like the Real Life example though: North Korea's Eternal President, although he's just the normal kind of dead."

The Dicktator

Less about the country and more about the guy in charge. He's a villain, he wants to take over the world or something, and he happens to possess a respectably-sized nation with its own standing army. Is probably more likely to take over the world than the average jerk.

Has it always been like that, though? Did this guy sieze power and abuse a relatively benign country for his own ends or is it the kind of place that always was a pretty shitty place before he took over? Who knows.

Monster Island

Here be dragons! Or goblins. Or... Whatever it is, non-humans feature a lot here. Probably dragons, really. Any kind of dragon! Doesn't even have to be a chromatic dragon. Maybe a gold dragon!

This could just end up being the Necrocracy with non-undead, of course. Hmmm...

Soviet Orcia

A friend just suggested this. I have no idea what this would actually involve but it sounds awesome.

Honey Badgers

Maybe I shouldn't ask /tg/ for ideas.

The Church of Yog-Hadar, Democratic Party Edition

A theocracy. What kind of evil patron they would have I am not sure yet - maybe Zoxxoth, I hear that guy's church has a dental plan that will knock your socks off - but if I threw this in, it could be interesting. Off the top of my head, patron candidates include gods, demons, devils, yugoloths, demodands, hordlings, modrons, Far Realm weirdness, vestiges, Apomps the Three-Sided God, baernaloths, and 4th Edition oh snap!

Just A Different Outlook

They don't have to all be so evil they tie women to lightning rails. Maybe they're neutral-ish and just happen to be warlike. Maybe they're nice but practice slavery. Maybe they just don't see non-citizens (and by extension, everyone outside their borders) as having legal rights. Maybe they're non-humans with a legitimate claim to nearby human (or another nice people's) land.

Maybe they're just douchebags.

Nobody Here But Us Alignments

On the other hand, maybe they are evil and don't have a theme. Maybe they're not theocrats or mages or honey badgers. Maybe it is just a perfectly reasonable government which happens to be in the end of the alignment scale most PCs don't get to access.

Actually, this is making me feel like writing an actual post on villainy in general, but maybe I should put that on hold for a bit. Instead, next time I will see if I feel like actually using any of this.

Worldbuilding: It's Not Silly If It's Religion

2010-09-11T10:32:00.001+10:00

I've stopped to think, I've trawled through all my notes looking for any deities I made up for specific purposes, stolen from both D&D and real-world religions in my quest to not be original, and consulted some friends. Let's do this!

The strange thing about tabletop deities is that they seem to have a lot more deities for "adventurer"-type stuff than, say, farming and fertility. It's out of necessity, of course: That is how D&D rolls. It's not Farmville d20, it is about going into dungeons, finding some dragons and killing them to death. It might just seem that way because the player needs to know which gods will approve of his habits of kicking down doors, entering the lairs of evil beings and stealing their shit, anyway.

But having a long list of deities who are mostly about "commoner" things like farming wheat, protecting children and prostitution is boring, I guess. I will actually try and include some of that later, really, but let's start with some evil deities I whipped up to see how they work:

Soapizdun, The Immaculate One
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Domains: Destruction, Evil, Madness, Water

The Immaculate One was once known as Laundrethian, a minor deity of cleanliness and water humans would often say small prayers to as they did the washing. Laundrethian liked things to be extremely neat and tidy. One day he explored the dark realms beyond known reality - nobody is quite sure why, though as a deity he probably did it because he could - and vanished for a hundred years, returning as a twisted, evil mockery of his former self.

Soapizdun is an insane deity who wants everything to be as clean and neat as possible, devoid of any chaos or filth. As the usual culprit in any "dirtying" event is an intelligent being Soapizdun aims to ensure everything will stay clean forever the only way possible: The complete and total annihilation of all life in the multiverse.

In another world, the Immaculate One would be imprisoned by an alliance of deities and lie trapped in a prison realm somewhere, while insane cultists did strange things in strange temples and were stabbed in the head by adventurers trying to save the world. Unfortunately Soapizdun is already in self-imposed imprisonment, constantly cleaning and re-cleaning his own deific realm, and also it is theologically impossible to take him seriously. His followers are all insane and eventually kill themselves by scrubbing too hard.

Soapizdun appears as a handsome, extremely clean humanoid, constantly dripping water and clad in simple robes of pure white. He has tentacled arms and wears a set of trousers on his head. His holy symbol is a washboard.

Note: One of my players (let's call him Ferret) suggested this when I was trying to come up with evil deities. I am pretty sure he wasn't serious. Well, too bad. Also, I remember at least three settings which contained imprisoned evil deities and thought I would have one.

Yzzyx, the Dark Creative
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Domains: Creation, Darkness, Dream, Evil, Knowledge

Yzzyx is believed to have once been an oracle deity of a long-dead pantheon. As his brothers out, Yzzyx (if that was his name) decided to simply retire and spend his remaining days quietly contemplating the mysteries of the cosmos. After that... well, some say he just saw too much and became corrupted, while others believe that the original deity passed away quietly to wherever gods go and something crept into his dreams to take his place.

Whatever happened, the almost alien being now known as Yzzyx is a deity of nightmares and dark creativity. His flock are, mostly, monsters and extra-planar creatures, though a few bards Yzzyx has been working on in their sleep can be found across the land if you look hard enough. Unlike most evil deities, Yzzyx is not very active, and it is by choice: He is still content to meditate in his mysterious realm and contemplate unspeakable atrocities. Sometimes, his maddening dreams will touch the minds of artists and "inspire" them, and sometimes they will just spawn monsters of their own accord. Sometimes these monsters are said to emerge from the paintings of those he inspires, causing some to wonder if Yzzyx is inactive or just playing an extremely long-term game.

Yzzyx is portrayed as a handsome, bald man in golden robes, meditating with his hands on his knees and his eyes shut serenely. Around his head, a sickening purple void pulses around a single staring eye. His symbols are as varied as the creatures that revere him, but the most common variant is a spiral made from bristles.

Some old depictions also include a circle-within-a-box symbol on his forehead associated with two ancient deities from different dead civilisations - Dodoni, an oracle, and Boccaseus, a patron of cheesemakers. Mentioning this to a group of theologians is a great way to start an argument.

Note: Another pal of mine thought up the basics for this one, but I added a bunch of things. He did not like my suggestion that Yzzyx may be a sentient hunk of cheese left behind by Boccaseus, though.

Seokore, the Restless Lady
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Domains: Charm, Death, Earth, Knowledge

Seokore is one of quite a few lesser powers of death or the undead. She is the ruler of the Devamanteum, a mysterious realm associated with the deaths of gods and powerful extraplanar beings. From here Seokore watches over the remnants of these beings (though most think they actually end up on the Astral) and records their histories and secrets.

Seokore is not the original ruler of this realm. That was Thantis, an ancient lesser deity who used to guard the underworld realms. After being tasked to watch over the lone Devamanteum, Thantis grew bored and eventually kidnapped Seokore, then a minor deity of cats and leisure and daughter of an archon and the beauty goddess Valen, thinking he could get a wife and a pet at the same time. When Valen sent her strongest champion to retrieve her, Thantis made her eat some of the berries in his realm, claiming that anyone who ate food from the Devamanteum would be unable to return to the realm of the living.

Valen's champion declared that was the stupidest thing he had ever heard and broke Thantis' neck.

Since then Seokore has taken over the role, believing that if the Devamanteum were left unattended it might be plundered and the deities themselves would be in danger. Also, Thantis, who knew the secrets of the place better than anyone, could possibly use it to return to the world, and he would be extremely upset.

For now, Seokore watches over the Devamanteum, but she yearns to return to her mother's side and often leaves the place in the hands of her proxies while she visits the upper planes. Over time she has become depressed and sullen with the burden of her duty, though, and though she is glad her lazy daughter is out of her realm's basement and getting some experience, her mother is constantly searching for a way to free her.

Most of Seokore's followers are necromancers with some extraplanar heritage, though some just like her laid-back approach and lack of exposed rotting flesh. Though most of her followers are evil nowadays, she has a very small following of good-aligned people (who often worship Valen as well) who see it as their duty to remind the world of her goodness, much like Seokore makes sure the secrets of the dead are hidden but never forgotten.

Seokore normally appears as an attractive humanoid female with some cat features and long, dark hair, wrapped in tattered robes. Her appearance has been marred by sleepless yellow eyes and a sad expression, and she is usually drenched in cold water. Her symbol is a silver triangular mirror.

Note: Ex-patron of a player in one of my games, so here is a proper writeup. JUST FOR YOU, RAN.

Zoxxoth
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Domains: Death, Destruction, Evil, War

Zoxxoth is known by many names - The Heartless One, the Lord of Nightmares, the Black King, the Prince of Evil, the Eater of Hope, etc. Most of his names boil down to this: Zoxxoth is kind of a dick.

Lesser evil gods have tragic backstories, or at least a strange love of the evil deeds they commit. Not Zoxxoth. Zoxxoth was rotten to the core from the day he emerged from the void and every atrocity he commits is for one single reason: because he can. There is no point to seeking any deep meaning in Zoxxoth's teachings, which are seemingly designed to drive people to hopelessness and despair at a cold, uncaring universe. Zoxxoth is just a huge tool in every possible way.

Every one of Zoxxoth's followers, be they marauding barbarians or calculating aristocrats, is a douchebag. This would probably be a requirement if any deity actually used the word "douchebag". They believe that there is no point to anything that doesn't serve their own needs, and if they get their kicks from torture, rape and murder, then why not indulge themselves?

Zoxxoth has made an enemy of nearly every single other deity ever, but frankly he doesn't really give a shit.

Zoxxoth appears as a smooth, grey-skinned man reclining so hard in a black throne that he is sinking into it. He has an extra, longer set of arms in place of his legs and a gaping, bloody hole in his chest where a heart should be. His symbol is a human heart with a knife jammed into it.

Note: Sometimes you don't need a complicated evil god with a specific agenda or lofty goals or some kind of insanity. Sometimes you just need a tool.

Are these the deities I am looking for? Maybe. I am just throwing ideas out there right now. Hopefully some of them are alright and by the end of this I will take the good ideas and combine them into a cohesive whole. No lawful evil deities yet, but honestly I will probably do the usual and use the shit out of Asmodeus. That dude is a bro.

Oh, and I think I am going to ditch the "pantheons" idea for the most part and make nearly all the gods I describe universal - their faiths can be found in all sorts of countries and races. There will be lesser gods, of course, and a lot of regions might have their own lesser deities, but I really don't need to list all of them. Just the important ones will do.

Stay tuned, because I am going to try and get this done in, oh, let's say a week. That means posts!

To wrap up, I would like to present something I found in Wikipedia's article on Abbathor, dwarven god of greed, which may be the best thing I have ever read on Wikipedia:

The beard shirt of Dunforth

The legendary dwarf hero Dunforth wove his beard into a shirt, forsaking all other forms of armor. The dwarven god of battle, Clangeddin Silverbeard, was so impressed by this gesture that he invested Dunforth's beard with power, making it strong as chain mail. Abbathor conspired with Vergadain to trick Dunforth into gambling his beard away. Shamed as only a beardless dwarf can be, Dunforth tried to redeem himself by single-handedly exterminating an orc village. Though he slew thirty of his foes, the overwhelming number of orcs eventually felled the armorless Dunforth, and the beard shirt remains as part of Abbathor's hoard.

Worldbuilding: Deities

2010-08-31T23:36:00.003+10:00

Heh.

Yeah, I know. Long story short, I was busy entering writing contests. Also, I don't have a scanner of my own any more, and I can't really be bothered wrangling through using someone else's, so screw it!

Pictureless interweb log time!

So, deities. They are a pain in the butt. I like having a lot of them, but I hate coming up with a lot of them and I don't want some kind of dumb bloated pantheon like Forgotten Realms or people who worship dinosaurs. (Have you ever tried to worship dinosaurs? There are so many dinosaurs and you better pay your respects to every one of them if you don't want to show up in the afterlife and run into an angry Eustreptospondylus or something who wants to put its foot so up your arse it'll step on your breakfast.)

So far I have devised a system that goes something like this:

Unless I decide otherwise, all races have a large pantheon with at least several demigods, saints etc. in case I need something very specific, like a god of coats. I won't mention them much, though.
Some deities will show up in several pantheons. This is partly for convenience, and partly because I can easily see this happening as people travel around. Humands respecting the dwarf god(s), elves liking human gods, countries with different cultures sharing some gods, etc.
I will not have every member of a race worship the same pantheon. I find it hard to believe that you can have a bunch of humans who believe beehive hairdos are in led by a dude calling himself the Alchemist-King and a magocracy on the other far side of the continent who are basically the French with a fixation on robots, and then say they both worship Pelor or whatever. No, screw that.
However, I will not give each specific area its own huge fleshed-out pantheon, and since there's going to be a lot of bleed going on it won't come up much anyway.

What ends up happening, at least in my games, is that everyone focuses on the "core" human pantheon and everything else gets a passing mention.

Actually, one particularly odd thing that happens is I never really fleshed out the evil gods. All the villains have been demons and things. I should do something about that.

For now, I think I'll list some of the deities I have and why I have them, and maybe some ones I'm thinking of making (or cribbing):

Eironeous, The Archpaladin

Alignment: Lawful Good

Symbol: A raised longsword crossing a lightning bolt

Domains: Glory, Good, Inquisition, Law, Nobility, War

Favoured Weapon: Longsword

Eironeous is the paladin's paladin. On a perfect day, his to-do list would go something like: 1) have breakfast 2) right some wrongs 3) find a demon 4) kick it's arse 5) fist-pump 6) go home and read a good book. Eironeous encourages his followers to do everything they can to make sure good and justice prevail, and also to punch evil in the face when necessary. If you can do both at the same time, that's even better.

Most of Eironeous' exploits (according to the Book of Eironeous, anyway) usually involve the titular ur-paladin encountering an evil being and then curb-stomping it in a variety of entertaining ways, like drop-kicking a pit fiend into the sky. He is a force to be reckoned with and feared if at all possible, and his followers like it that way. Speaking of, his followers are mostly paladins, but he counts clerics and warriors among his number as well. They make excellent watchmen, guards and diplomats, because Eironeous also teaches that there's a time and place for hostilities, and it comes after negotiations and mercy. He is a pretty honorable guy.

He is definitely not a manlier Heironeous with the H shaved off.

Why: Because I felt the setting needed a paladin god, and a certain other deity worked after I tweaked him a little. It has worked out fairly well, especially now that less of my current players insist that paladins were designed to be played by tools and "proper" paladins should be mentally retarded religious zealots and unplayable.

Iroth, God of Retribution

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

Symbol: Two gloves, one iron and one velvet, clutching a mace

Domains: Destruction, Law, Protection, Strength

Favoured Weapon: Mace

Iroth is complicated, but if you have a trouble worshipping a dude with two heads maybe you should look elsewhere.

On a related note, Iroth has two aspects. Both exact revenge and just punishment on those who transgress the law, and favour good over evil because the latter is more likely to do so; the trick is that one head tends to focus on rigidly following existing laws (both local law and Irothian law) and one tends to get angry a lot and take the law into his own hands. The important thing is that there's law somewhere in there, even if you're hitting people about the head with it.

Naturally, some clerics find it difficult to deal with this conflict of interest, but most agree that there's a time and place for both – specifically, the kinder law-abiding approach for lawful communities and the great big angry vigilante approach for lawless areas and, just sometimes, when nobody's looking.

Individual followers tend to focus on only one aspect. Normally the kinder Lawful Good version is the popular one, though the Lawful Neutral beast beneath is never far away. Clerics wear sweet robes (white on one side and red on the other) and flat caps.

Also, Iroth is normally depicted as being about six inches tall. Nobody is sure why.

Why: I think I came up with this little dude ages ago in high school when all my ideas were shit. I guess I thought it was funny. Actually, I still kind of like the little guy.

Paiia, the Sun Goddess

Alignment: Neutral Good

Symbol: She is a sun god, you will never guess

Domains: Good, Healing, Sun, probably some others

Favoured Weapon: Mace

Paiia is... okay, let me break this down for you really quick for once.

Paiia is basically Pelor, only a hot lady with four arms.

Why: Basically, I wanted to use Pelor as a sort of "standard" popular deity that everyone liked, but I didn't want to actually use the core gods, so I made a few changes. I might have stolen part of the name and arm thing from some three-eyed weirdo from Deities & Demigods, though I didn't use that part. I'm actually thinking of fleshing her out more, and I might in a later post.

While I'm here, whose fucking idea was it to make the Healing domain? It's nice and all, especially for fluff, but it's kind of useless considering every cleric worth his salt can cast Cures spontaneously anyway. Makes me sad. Oh well.

St. Vanis, ~~Who Is Kind Of A Dick~~ God of Valor

Alignment: Lawful Good

Symbol: Two swords crossing a shield

Domains: Good, Law, War, Protection, Nobility

Favoured Weapon: Mace (my, crushing skulls is popular, isn't it)

St. Vanis, supposedly a knight of Eironeous in ancient times sponsored by the big guy himself, is a god of wisdom and protection and general niceness. His followers do things in the name of other things, like truth and honor and justice.

Unfortunately a lot of his church is based on tradition, and so a lot of the clergy are set in their ways. A lot of them dislike new things, like that new-fangled music and children (especially ones on lawns). Some of the really old-fashioned also have a rather dated view of women as fragile things in need of protection.

On a related note, lately the church has gained a reputation for being out-of-touch and kind of a bunch of dicks. Certain high-ups in the church heirarchy proposing that various goddesses are really just demigods and suchlike doesn't help.

Most people are waiting for the old guard to shut up and die already so the new people with modern mindsets can come in and stop the church losing all the girls to Eironeous and ruining their sweet parties.

Of course, in a lot of places St. Vanis is respected and less radically conservative, but that isn't interesting now is it?

Why: Saw St. Cuthbert, decided to make a version that is a little more, er, "seperate" to the other paladin-ish deities by being kind of a dick. Not his fault though! He is still pretty cool. Also, yes, it was funny.

Valen, Goddess of Love

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Symbol: A red rose

Domains: Charm, Good, Luck, Protection

Favoured Weapon: ~~Don't say mace, don't say ma~~Dagger

Valen is a goddess of love and beauty and creativity and things. I'm going to be honest here: Valen comes up a lot, but I never wrote down a lot of the specifics.

Also I have not been able to take her as seriously after one or two games featured the NPC Polyquet, a ghaele follower of Valen who spoke like a valley girl and said words like "Tubular!" and "Mondo!".

Why: Needed more deities that weren't lawful good.

Actually, looking back, it seems like the pantheons of my setting are quite overlooked. I haven't even written down much of the "core" human pantheon and I am missing evil gods because I tend to just make them demon lords instead. Oops.

A few players have been telling me I should look at Pathfinder and steal some things from there. Also, by players I mean player, and by player I mean Pathfinder fanboy. (I kid! ;)) I might poke around later for some deity ideas from other settings I like, anyway.

I might look into my own settings, even. I had a steampunk setting I ran a couple of games in, with deities that worked out pretty well - humans had a smaller, more fleshed-out pantheon based on the idea that all their gods had two aspects that were unrelated or didn't go together well, like "magic and physical strength" or "invention and entropy" or "the deep ocean and imperialism" or "racial discrimination and being handsome". Could steal a couple of them, if it's possible to steal from yourself.

Tell you what... I remember writing a bunch of terrible ideas for deities years ago in high school. Let me dig up my notes and sift through the chainmail bikinis and badly-drawn tits to see if I can find any gems.

Or, you know, something to laugh at.

For now, expect an update soon now that I no longer have to worry about pictures as often and I'm not rushing to try and post one before August finishes.

Worldbuilding: Aldanath

2010-06-28T22:22:00.008+10:00

See this map?

This is a terrible map.

I drew this map of Aldanath in 2008 or so, and as I am ashamed of most things I wrote less than a year ago, this one annoys me. Look at it! That shit is way too square and those mountains make no sense. Plus it is clearly a terrible Photoshop job.

Aldanath is the setting of a game I am running right now, a "sequel" to an old campaign which started with my very first game. You can bet we're redrawing this business.

Here's a new, 2010 sketch. I kept the locations (except for Silmet, which I moved northward after vaguely recalling it used to be up there anyway) but gave everything a shape I felt was more realistic, and added some features:

That looks a bit better. We're not drawing masterpieces here, after all, just making a simple map. Now to give it some colour and pretty it up a bit:

I moved Kurazokl a little and shifted Paiia's Gate (twice, in fact, it was first moved to that second big bend in the river), then added the town of Hootclaw after a player made a joke while I was deciding what to do with Silmet.

And frankly I'm not sure that scale works. But whatever, let's describe this shit.

Aldanath
NG Monarchy

Aldanath is one of the oldest human countries and one of the few remaining human monarchies. It is predominantly human, but it has a decent population of other races - mostly gnomes and dwarves, though most of the other races (even drow) get representation.

Aldanath's main claim to fame is inventing the calendar system known as King's Reckoning, a popular method of tracking years for most humans. 0 KR is said to be the beginning of modern Aldanath, when the Placentus line of kings died out, but this is only partly true.

Aldanath was founded around -1000KR, and over the following centuries, royal families and rulers made a habit of altering official records and history to "improve" their own standing and "place in history", usually alongside resetting the calendar to make 0 KR the start of their rule. This, naturally, makes much of Aldaanian history a complete mess. (The Royal History Society's museum in Aldanath City still displays the very desk Calvin McLomb, the society's first Chief Wizard, made no less than seventy-five noticeable dents in, alongside the remains of the original chair he threw out of his third-story window.)

This practice ended with King Harolyne Placentus, who reset the calendar so 0 KR marked the start of his rule around 23 KR (23 KR after he reset it, that is, not the 23 KR that was there before). Placentus was assassinated in 24 KR (probably for unrelated reasons) and left no heir. The next King was Arthur Biraltaria, who banned the practice. The calendar hasn't changed since.

In the "present", it is around 950KR. Aldanath's recent history has been dominated by two wars with the lich Dominique (who is a man) in 935 and 945 KR. (The last one was covered in my first campaign.) Dominique has since been killed for good and the kingdom left to rebuild.

(Incidentally, Dominique was actually a split personality of the previous king, Richard the Kitten, created after a magical accident which left the King humorously crazy. Dominique was evicted from the King's body by the other personalities for being a jerk, at which point he possessed some corpse and tried to take the kingdom for himself. It is a long and silly story. Richard the Kitten abdicated fairly quickly on the advice of his family and the current ruler is his son, King Paul Biriani, who is extremely sane.)

Aldanath probably has a population of just under a million. Its main exports are weapons, armour, industry, ore, religion and people who really hate undead, and the main threats PCs face are undead, goblins, drow and demonic cults. Explored locations include:

Aldanath City: The capital of the kingdom. Population ~55,000. Site of the palace and the headquarters of many of the kingdom's guilds and churches. Relatively unaffected by the war, though the final stages where the lich advanced on the city in his floating mountain fortress armed with a giant magical laser did rattle them a bit. A lot of people in outlying villages and towns fled here, and the capital is suffering problems with poverty, crowding and crime.

Death Valley: This charmingly-named region in northwest Aldanath, enclosed by mountains, is full of "monstrous" humanoids. You can't throw a brick without hitting an orc or a goblin or something. Dominique's base was here, and the area is still considered highly dangerous. The area is still in turmoil after the events of the last war, if you care about orc/goblin/kobold politics.

Fortress of Light: The "mage capital" of the kingdom. Population ~30,000. The Fortress is the headquarters of the kingdom's mage guild, the Order of Light. It also sits by the pass to Death Valley, which is why the lich's goblin armies lay siege to the city before adventurers crippled its leadership. He probably should have picked a race more competent than freaking goblins.

Ironport: The main port of trade between Brellan and Aldanath, named for the walls of iron once erected around it courtesy of the Order of Light. Population ~20,000, after a population explosion caused by an influx of war refugees from the surrounding areas. The area beyond the walls is now a chaotic, crime-ridden sprawl of homes and slums which most of the kingdom's wanted criminals are probably hiding in by now.

Odessa: The largest town in the northwest region. Population 1,100. Got steamrolled by undead in a "side-campaign", though that campaign's PCs managed to hide most of the town underground and it is doing pretty okay.

Paiia's Gate A trade town and gateway to the east. Population 9,700. Paiia's Gate is named after the popular sun goddess and a pretty religious town. Many of its residents identify as citizens of other countries.

Silmet: A peaceful village near a lot of farmland, once the site of a dwarven mine. Its main exports so far have been NPCs.

Tanburgh: The "military capital" of the kingdom. Population ~25,000. Most of Aldanath's army (well, the high command) are here, roughly equidistant from every point the military considers important. Its inability to stop the undead/goblin/whatever armies rampaging through most of the north-west of the kingdom annoyed a lot of people, though. Former headquarters of the church of Iroth.

Foreshadow: New headquarters of the church of Iroth, goddess of knowledge. Foreshadow appeared in my latest campaign as a town ruined by the undead armies which the Irothians found and took over during their search for lost lore and magical secrets which could help the kingdom. To nobody's surprise, Foreshadow turned out to be built above some ancient ruins where the Irothians learned pact magic and began to train the modern age's first binders. (Well, the specifics were a surprise, but...)

Kurazokl: A large town of several thousand elves who live in a section of forest granted to them by Aldanath. They identify themselves as citizens of Czeras, despite moving far away from that forest kingdom for religious reasons. They tend to keep to themselves, but they have started to settle in other regions of Aldanath and influence its culture. Some sages speculate that they should be reclassified as "green elves". Other sages tell them to not be silly.

Mawb Duhr: A trade city of roughly 15,000 dwarves and outpost of the (or a?) dwarven kingdom, though its citizens have strong ties to Aldanath and sometimes identify as "Aldaanian dwarves". They lent a lot of support to the war effort, probably because they were threatened as well. Also known for its "Red Mesa" military research facility.

Eilistraee: An uncreatively-named town founded by the drow Zaraeviira da'Orzza, who escaped from the drow realms (currently in a state of heavy decline after too much time spent backstabbing each other) years ago and worked her way up to "rich new noble" status in the surface world. She is currently pursuing her dream of having a place in Aldanath "good" and refugee drow can call home by rebuilding the abandoned town of Hommet; the population is hilariously small, but growing. (My current PCs have land and a headquarters there after befriending Zarae and helping her via quests.)

Hootclaw: This village (town?) is named after the owlbear found in the region. Not much yet is known about this probably awesome town.

Leet Town: Leet Town is a port/fishing town, and it (and the adjacent Gumdrop Forest) were the setting of the first ever D&D game I ran started. I refuse to change the name ever.

So Yeah...

That's basically Aldanath as it stands.

I haven't named all the forests, rivers and lakes, because I am unsure what would be good names for them. I also haven't decided what lies on those new islands yet - new adventure hubs, perhaps? More towns? I know the west island probably has a lot of tunnels to Subterra (the Underdark), based on a few things that have come up in games, and there's a volcano around the south islands. (There used to be a particular city down there but it was a shamefully stupid idea and I have since removed it forever.)

Just in case, I will leave them open for now. I have a few ideas I could use in my current game.

Next time, I dunno, maybe a different country. Or deities!

Worldbuilding: Geogra-FFFFFFFFFF

2010-06-28T20:50:00.012+10:00

Ugh, map time.

Maps are an important part of any setting to me. If things don't appear to make geographic or even meteorological sense, it can really get on my nerves. If you want, of course, you could just have every single area in your setting safely divided from each other via convenient and suspiciously box-like mountain ranges and cry "magic!", but that is a stupid way for dumb babies.

And it affects so much. Your location can affect everything - climate, exports, imports, trade, traffic, the kind of hats you get to wear, and most importantly, what kind of adventures you can have.

It's a little overwhelming to me, sometimes. I am never quite sure my extensive knowledge of geography and weather (obtained via Wikipedia, mostly) is good enough, and scale is always a problem for me. How big should this kingdom be in miles, and what sort of population would I be looking at? What the hell is a mile anyway? Damn Americans. What's a mile in English, huh?

But hey, I have a shiny degree and, more importantly, a stuffed bear named Professor Bearington to show that I at least have a modicum of intelligence, so let's go for it.

First Sketch: The Basics

The above "map" is an extremely rough sketch I did of my setting as it stands - it mostly concerns itself with regions that have actually been explored in games, and the rest are blank. To summarise:

The north-western continent is Lerioth, where most humans come from. The lower third or so is wedged between a mountain range and the coast, and this area is the cradle of human civilisation so far.

From left to right on Lerioth you have Brellan (a swampy gnome land, separated from Lerioth by a narrow sea), Aldanath (fairly standard fantasy kingdom), some other stuff (has been stated at various times to include a nation of druids and a Hollywood Ancient Greek-ish land called Epinoza, but nothing concrete), Genera (a generic (GET IT?) high-magic magocracy which also happens to be a floating island), Rayaleigh (very mountainous country, never decided exactly which part of Eastern Europe it was working off), dwarf land (a dwarven kingdom of unspecified size that covers above and below ground) and Czeras (forest land of the vanilla elves).

Northern Lerioth hasn't been touched on, though after I wrote "UMM" all over it in a previous map my players all decided there was a horde of Um Barbarians sweeping across it.

To the east, linked via the Iriscian Islands (islands, pirates, blah blah) sits Nhaudan, which is a stupid name now that I have grown out of my teens and removed the apostrophe. It is a little more exotic and has jungles and elves and whatnot.

The western edge is mostly inhabited by human settlers from Lerioth while the elves get dibs on the rest. There's Cabelaba (horribly generic standard fantasy kingdom I never did much with), Paladinia (lawful good theocracy with a silly name. Paladinia is actually the capital, someone suggested naming the region Aclerica), Merchant City (trade city run by people who like money), Jhaka (a peninsula of evil wizards) and, er, "elfland".

Taishiria is the usual Oriental Adventures-esque adventure area and the other one is a mysterious land of wastelands and dangerous creatures nobody has been to yet.

Second Sketch: Where To Start Over

I have to keep reminding myself that it's okay to dramatically change stuff. I fear retconning will annoy my players. Of course, I still have the old exercise book I originally sketched Lerioth in and it was a wildly different shape that included deserts, so it's not like I haven't changed it already.

I like the rough shape of the upper two continents, but the details of them keep bugging me.

How is mountainous Rayaleigh just kind of sitting there on the coast with some plains and forests on either side?

If the city-state of Jai-Kaldor is a trade city, shouldn't it have easy access to trade from Nhaudan as well?

Is there just one dwarven kingdom? How far does it go? What else is there in the mountains?

Why are there no deserts for easily-accessible desert adventures?

If southern Lerioth is a temperate climate, how far north can you get before it starts to get cold?

Can the Iriscian Islands really be a tropical island chain that far north, come to think of it? Wouldn't it have to be south of Lerioth?

Can Nhaudan's jungle environments exist "level" with Lerioth's temperate forests?

If Merchant City is just a city, Paladina and Jhaka's borders would be touching at most points. Given their outlooks, are they at war?

Why did I draw the continents as random blobs which have a vague relation to their actual shapes at best?

BECAUSE I'M LAZY, THAT'S WHY.

One problem that leaps out at me is that of environments - I'm not exactly certain what environments can exist where, and how I need to move things around to compensate.

My main problem, though, is just campaign prospects.

"Explored" Lerioth is mostly samey temperate environments. You have to go a damn long way to see a jungle, and there are no deserts to explore either. Also, there's not much "sideways" movement; mountain ranges mean that in both upper continents you are more or less moving along a "chain" of countries sitting there in a line, which strikes me as a little silly.

Well, it's time to move things around. I went ahead and scribbled on the sketch, marking places I can remove entirely with no consequence in red, things I can change drastically but would rather keep in yellow, and just left the ones I feel are fine as they are.

Aldanath has been used a lot - it was the setting of my first ever D&D game, in fact - so it stays. Jai-Kaldor is also fine, once I find somewhere to place it, and Jhaka, Merchant City and the Iriscian Islands are all fine as they are... well, now that I write this, maybe the Islands will get changed a lot, but screw re-opening that image.

Shifting Things Around

I will probably have to come back to this once I do more research to decide whether the environments I've described work in their locations, but for now...

First, Taishiria can go away. I'll move it elsewhere; Pathfinder apparently has it on the other side of the world, accessible via the north pole or something, but I mightn't move it that far. For now, though, I want to move the other continent down there - the mysterious one. That puts more terrain - mostly deserts - for me to play with near the major locations to start a campaign. I feel like the whole "mysterious continent of desert and jungles" thing has been done a million times before with people copying Africa, but I'll burn that bridge later.

Lerioth and Nhaudan can be moved closer together; the Iriscian Islands aren't that big. That makes the space between them more of a sea than an ocean. Apart from that, there's nothing I need to do right now.

Saving Things For Later

You might have noticed that large chunks of the map are blank. That is totally okay. It gives me a lot of room in case I have some ideas that don't fit into current locations, and this isn't a published setting anyway. (Not that it matters too much.)

Speaking of, I've heard that some settings took years to work into shape, anyway. I have no reason to pull a giant setting with as many detailed locations as established settings out of my ass just yet, and anyway most of those just get a page or two in some setting book and are then ignored in favour of writing adventures in the setting's handful of set-piece locations.

What I should be doing right now is focusing on the areas I've already come up with (and the areas I've decided I want to flesh out now, to a lesser extent), and adding more details. I want to get the most out of every space I've already filled, after all, and it might help me decide what to fill in the blank spots.

Zooming In

With that in mind, the prime campaign grounds are the south/east coasts of Lerioth and the western half of Nhaudan, and beyond those I should be fleshing out the dwarf and elf lands. If I sketch a slightly more accurate map of that region I get:

All right.

Rayaleigh makes more sense if I shift it upward into the mountain range, so it's getting shunted up in there. (It was never super important, anyway.) That leaves more room on Lerioth's south coast, and I think I should move Jai-Kaldor eastward so it has an easy route to Czeras and the shipping lines to Nhaudan. J-K actually has a satellite city, the town of Dragonport downriver which acts as a trade hub (and which I stole from DMG2, at least in name), so I can move Dragonport closer to the Islands and make it that connection J-K needs.

As for the rest, if I leave it as-is, that makes the map:

Rough locations for everything are circled in red. I noted that I've made room on the eastern tip, though frankly I'm not sure if that's not just more Czeras and I forgot to circle it. Hell, I could probably delete it.

I am getting a sneaking suspicion that it's going to become more inaccurate as time goes on, though. Those circles seem quite big, and I feel I can fit quite a lot of things between, say, Cabelaba and Paladinia or Paladinia and Jhaka. Maybe even whole countries. Also, Aldanath is definitely not that big compared to the rest of the continent. Besides, I might shift the Islands now, and that would change things a lot.

So, the space given to each particular country is shrinking, and I'm planning to add more detail to each of them too. Is it me, or is the outcome of this post that I gave myself more work?

Well, shit.

Oh, well. For now, I will detail the lands which my PCs are adventuring in right now, or have extensively travelled in the past, and then move on to the Deities and Demigods of this setting. The rest I'll fill in as time goes on, which by the looks of things might be months from now. Or more.

Next post will be on Aldanath. I am writing it as soon as I post this, in fact. Two posts in one day? Holy moly!

Worldbuilding: Races, Part 2

2010-06-14T00:10:00.013+10:00

Sweet Turbo Christ it's cold down here right now. Damn you Northern Hemispherers and your mid-year summers.

I am back, anyway. One of these days I'll make a few posts in the space of a week and you guys will be like "woah! How did he do that?".

So anyway, races.

Standard Races?

We covered this last time. I said that I was going to use a few of the "standard" races and make them The Same But Different (TM) for now, and throw in some homebrew stuff. There's nothing wrong with familiarity, after all.

Subraces

Uuuuuuugh.

I mentioned briefly like two years ago that I really don't like subraces. So let me get this straight: humans are "renowned for their diversity and ambition", which means they get to swank around with their bonus feats and tool-making skills and survive anywhere, but when elves or dwarves or orcs or whatever give it a try they split off into a new taxonomic subdivision? What the hell? The only scientific explanation I can think of is that Lamarck was right, and that is causing Charles Darwin to spin in his grave and emit mutating radiation.

I don't hate subraces, it's just... why do we need so many? In a lot of cases the original race would do just fine in whereever they are without physically mutating. I guess they would after a long time, but still.

On a similar note, though, I should start introducing ethnicities. I've seen a few settings do this - keep the races simple but describe the different physical characteristics and cultures they develop in certain regions, usually by nation. For some reason it's mostly humans I see doing this.

Also, I could use some black people in my setting. JUST SAYING.

Homebrew

I kind of mentioned this last time, but I am not averse to just making up a bunch of stuff and throwing it in there when I feel like it, or even on request. If someone really likes, say, warforged, then what the hell, right? As long as it's not something messed up, like triple-breasted hermaphrodite elephant-men or kender or something.

With that in mind, I think I will leave the roster of races open to a little tinkering later. I don't even have a whole setting mapped out, so there's no reason not to include STAR GOBLINS or something if I feel like it.

Now...

I went and dug through the "old" notes for my setting which, admittedly, is easy because most of them are in my head. Actually it's just a list of what I remember settling on over the years, and a lot of it (thanks to my penchant for retconning) is at best a year old. Whatever, let's do this.

Human

Ah, humans. Always ambitious and flexible and blah de blah. This was always a little hard for me to jive with, though I can see it.

They are pretty much as they are in most other settings. I tend to give them a bit of a focus on religion - humans tend to be more influenced by their gods, and sustain larger pantheons compared to other races. They also have more clerics and paladins. That's fine with me, though I am thinking of de-emphasising that slightly, or at least playing it up a little in the other races so they don't all look like terrible atheists or something.

Dwarf

Two things that can fuck right off:

Mining

Alcohol

Well, okay, they are kind of still there. So far the dwarves (for reasons which change every time I mention this because the reasons I come up with are universally forgettable) tend to see the world in terms of a "harmony of opposites": fire water, air and earth, light and dark, etc. all balancing each other out to create a nice neutral place for people to live in.

This has been a little awkward for me to explain, though, since a lot of people assume that means the dwarves are all True Neutral, completely obsessed with that philosophy and have to go kick a puppy to "balance it out" every time they fight evil. This isn't the case for the same reason that being French doesn't make you prance around in a weird beret and eat baguettes while watching extremely weird high-class pornography.

They do tend to do things like try and see both sides of an argument, though. They also make lairs deep underground and high up on the slopes of mountains because they enjoy the asymmetry, though. Having a philosophical outlook based on duality and opposing extremes doesn't mean you have to tend toward the middle ground.

Other than that... dwarves are honest, hard-working, direct, fond of the outdoors (indoors counts if it's natural) and the art of creation, and a deep love of brewing and drink which many outsiders might mistake for rampant alcoholism, possibly because that is mostly true and who doesn't like bearded men getting hammered? It is a silly thing to niggle over. As long as they drop those goddamn accents I am fine with it.

Speaking of, since most of the dwarves I see are bearded dwarven men and I don't feel like doing the "derp women have beards" thing, so far I have written them as having a low number of females compared to males for whatever reason, and so dwarf women are allowed multiple husbands. Also, they are more inclined towards the arcane arts (so favoured class: wizard for the ladies) and style their hair like crazy since they do not have beards. I am not sure if putting a bunch of unusually influential wizard-hairdressers in there makes dwarves more interesting or if it seems that way, but I am fine with it for now.

Elf

While I am confident enough in my sexuality to use the hippy tree-hugging version of elves (I really should make a new post and explain my thoughts on this more clearly, but I may just have a penchant for hating anything I wrote more than a year ago and I think I covered the salient points anyway), I tweaked them a little until I liked them.

Most of the change was relocating elves, really. I dropped them on a different continent to the east, in the middle of a jungle, and also there were dinosaurs because I like dinosaurs. That naturally made them a little tougher.

Their past is a little all over the place, because I never got around to solidifying the different things I've said into a cohesive whole that actually makes sense. So far they have been stated to be immortal or at least live an extremely long time (but tend to get bored and either go exploring/planeswalking and never come back or undergo an elaborate, magical suicide ritual after thousands of years), to have had at least one advanced civilisation in the past (which was either decimated when the elves took a side in a war between dragons and archomentals or relied on being very high-magic and fell apart when the moon decided to cast Antimagic Cone at everyone, depending on what game you heard it in - maybe two civilisations?), and to have started aping human culture a little after being impressed by how well their allies are doing, though so far that has only seemed to happen in large elf cities in contact with humans or near human lands. Elf otaku?

I should probably bash those together and work out something that makes good sense. My main issue is that I am not exactly sure how to keep their history sensible while explaining why they are currently roughly equal with humans technologically. I don't want to do the whole "dying race whose time has passed" bit, though.

Oh, and just because some players wanted to play the usual elf, I picked up some elves again and dropped them back near human lands, in a relatively tranquil forest called Linde'taure (which is a stupid name I came up in my teens and intend to replace with something that doesn't have a turtlefucking apostrophe in it), where some elves split off to make their own country and do more "standard" elfy stuff. Also they live in giant mushrooms. They don't get to be their own subrace, though.

Gnome

You will never guess which way I went with this one.

So, gnomes like creativity. They don't care where it's directed. Studying arcana or divine magic is cool. Natural philosophy is also great, so there's your tinker gnomes if you want them. Art and music are also great, though, so you see a lot of bards.

The more noticeable things are the seemingly crazy ones, though, like the few floating cities they have hovering in their homeland. To be fair, their homeland is a swamp and smells like one.

There are a couple of bad things about the gnomes, though: One, they are secretive and see no reason not to be, especially about dangerous knowledge (if it's dangerous, hide it. If it's safe, use it!). Most of them just see things like a free press reckless and silly, but some take it further and actively hoard knowledge and inventions for themselves, and the primary gnome nation of Brellan tends to send out spies more often than necessary, worried what others - even their allies - are keeping from them. Two, the more intellectual (especially older) gnomes tend to go a little funny in the head sometimes, which is where most of their "wacky tinkers" come from. They are usually treated with pity. Sometimes they turn into mad scientists. Sucks to be them.

Oh yeah, and a game I ran once may or may not have implied that gnomes were actually refugees from another world in the same solar system, where they had an advanced civilisation before magically nuking most of it during a war and either retreating to Otherworld via portals or to other systems via spelljammers. If that is true, though, the gnomes aren't aware of their own past and their historians have failed to uncover the truth from the murky swamps of their homeland.

Also, by implied I mean the PCs found a portal back there, and it was filled with grues and beholders.

Halfling

I have barely used halflings, actually. I'm just not a fan. Why do I need a second (or third, if you count the dwarves) race of midgets? I have no idea what to do with them and have left them out almost entirely, though I have been considering just making them gnome gypsies or something.

Ruvoka

These are the first major homebrew race I threw in... Kind of. They are humanoids from the elemental planes, and have had wings. Kind of like elemental fey; their first name was actually the Faeri before I decided to stop using a shitty placeholder name and stole one from Planescape instead. Their history is tied to the archomentals in this setting and they haven't had much of a presence yet, possibly because their homelands are extraplanar.

They suit me find as background characters, though.

Other

I am running out of things to say about them all, so I'm just going through them all quickly as they come to me.

Drow still live in Subterra (the Underdark, more or less) and stay pretty faithful to usual depictions, though after reading a Forgotten Realms book which suggested that the favourite hobby of most drow is backstabbing other drow, I put their civilisation in decline due to all the backstabbing going on. Some drow in outlying communities have either turned to demonic patrons other than Lolth or turned away from the path of evil - mostly PCs, though there's a small subsection of surface drow in one of the human kingdoms and another group resides in a chaotic good mountain city called Drizzimatizz which is guarded by dual-wielding rangers.

Naga are an evil humanoid race here, which a few elements nicked from Warcraft (3, not World of, thank you very much). Watery, snake tails, may have been spawned by a marilith lord from some elves, generally hate people. Oh, and they can produce...

Sthein, which I stole from the Green Ronin book Bastards & Bloodlines. Basically, they are elf/naga crossbreeds which look like elves with snake tails and probably have a lot more daddy issues than half-orcs.

Half-elves are just kind of there I guess. Do these need much changing?

Goblins have shown up, as a bunch of green-skinned flat-headed little bastards who usually worship demons and serve as cannon fodder. They could use some expanding.

Orcs tend to run a little closer to the, er, "Blizzard" version described here, but apart from a pretty strong showing in one part of my setting which is mostly tropical islands and pirates they tend to serve as cannon fodder like the goblins. Could use some tweaking, but I'd like to do something that hasn't been done before. Or at least, not done in the exact same way.

Half-orcs might change a little depending on how the orcs are portrayed, though I never quite imagined them as being integral to a setting. Can probably leave as-is.

Kobolds are even more over the place than goblins, but they also have a powerful nation of their own. And by that I mean one particular magocracy in the setting lets the kobolds claim a small part of their territory as their own in exchange for cheap labor. Also, by nation, I mean town.

Gnolls are basically Yeenoghu-worshipping tribal cannon fodder for the lands closer to elf territory, though they have also been seen far away from it serving as backup cannon fodder for orcs, goblins and kobolds for some reason. Demon worship is starting to become a pattern for these Generically Evil Humanoids, but

There might be more, but frankly it's not coming to me right now. I am going to leave the "lesser", or at least less important, races for now so I can work them as needed later.

Next up I am not sure what to do. I was thinking of diving into pantheons, but I could also work out some geography stuff and insert nations and ethnicities. The latter seems more complicated, so why don't I skim the basics like a lazy asshole and post about that next?

See you soon, I hope!

Worldbuilding: Races, Part 1

2010-05-31T21:47:00.008+10:00

New "art", you say?

Oh my.

Think of it as "making up" for the last month. You think you're clear, and then suddenly you need a new monitor and a new desk and you're graduating last Friday and you're getting a new high score in Nanaca Crash and I got a degree, by the way, but who reads this blog to hear about my life? I am actually slightly late but since that is because I was wrangling with the scanner I think I'll slip this in at the "end of the month".

I wasn't sure how to talk about races. My thoughts on them are kind of complicated. Eventually I decided to just dump my thoughts in one post and the actual races of this setting on the other once I make a few tweaks.

Okay, so.

I was introduced to D&D slowly. Originally I drifted onto the internet in my youth to find Nintendo 64 cheat codes, which led to posting on a Rareware forum, which... et cetera, et cetera. It's a complicated dance through forums and IRC servers and video games which nobody really cares about, and I will try to stick to the relevant parts.

At some point I made some friends who were into roleplaying, or at least a few friends who were into roleplaying and a few others who played along, and I joined in. Just freeform stuff, at this point, and I was terrible at making characters.

Most of the people involved were terrible, but I am pretty sure most of what I did was really, really terrible, so let's call it even.

I experimented with GMing a little, if you could call it that - I convinced the others to let me take the reins for a bit and ran some things in settings connected or related to the "setting" we normally ran with. I just wanted to try new things and experiment with new stuff, and wasn't in it for the long haul; I was still unsure whether I even wanted to GM in the first place. Only later would I discover D&D and ~~my grim destiny~~ the joys of DMing.

I used some of the characters I made in a webcomic during a period where I played around with webcomics and sprite comics (part of the winding path of personal growth I took through the internet involved the Bob and George community), a period which was terminated when I realised there are unnecessary thousands of the bloody things on the internet and most of them are either generic, terrible or both.

Eventually I got better, was introduced to D&D by some other friends, and almost immediately dived into DMing, which I was also terrible at. It took me a while to get the hang of it, partly because nobody I was playing with was any good at D&D.

I ran some games, and each game I ran was less terrible than the last until I reached a point where I could confidently say I am not a terrible GM. That's where the story ends, pretty much.

So, what does this mean?

Well, I love creativity. I like trying new things. I like variety. And settings are like webcomics - there are three million of the bloody things and they are almost all as interchangeable as the contents of a bucket of beige thumb tacks.

If you want to stand out from the crowd and make a game everyone will remember, a good way to do it is to make an engaging setting (if you're not using one already), and mixing up the race choices a bit is a good way to do it. Besides, it's fun.

On the other hand...

Well, what's the point? All the archetypes are there already, I want to make a setting I can throw anything from WotC's books into if I want, and there's such a thing as too much change. It's certainly not required to make an engaging setting and who the hell is going to remember your technicolour rainbow of humanoids with funny names spelled with punctuation in the middle?

Nobody, that's who.

The struggle between wanting to stay a little generic and wanting to experiment and try new things was easily solved, actually. Here is what I did:

I decided to use some of the standard races, tweak and change them a bit to make them a little different (this has Been Done (tm), but it's easier for players to remember) and added some homebrew races of my own.

Speaking of homebrew, I've been asked about adding races from other books or other people's homebrew ideas often. After some thought, I've decided it's okay IF:

The concept isn't retarded (e.g. "shota orcs", "an anthropomorphic version of that new mount in WoW that costs RL money", etc)
It's not a kender
The concept isn't broken
It's not a kender
It doesn't use rules I explicitly don't in the setting (e.g. incarnum)
The race isn't terribly written (mary sues, way too many details about what can be found in their trousers, etc.)
It can fit in the setting without large changes to the canon

The last is important, since the others come up very rarely. If I can insert a race without changing much - Warforged are particularly easy - it's in. Even races from other settings, with enough tweaking. I start to draw the line if the player wants his new elf subrace to have its own nation and customs, usually, but it depends on how much I like the idea.

I'm running even later so I'm going to come back ASAP with Otherworld's races, so far. Until then, please, drop a comment by with your thoughts on races and any races, "official" or homebrew, you particularly like.

Especially if they're not kender.

Worldbuilding: Classes

2010-04-30T20:10:00.000+10:00

That's right. Two days, two posts. I went there.

Here is a guy telling his trained pigeon to stop slacking off and get to work.

As far as classes go, I already know I don't want major changes. First, if this is to be a setting where I can throw in stuff from any book I feel like, I probably shouldn't screw with the base classes. Second, I am definitely not qualified to tinker with the game balance, even if this is 3.5 D&D where some classes get save-or-die spells while others get bonus feats. Third, I'm lazy.

That leaves us with "flavor" changes, which I much prefer anyway. I will probably come back and add more later, but whatever, that's fine. I actually find that most of the mechanical flavours of the setting get sorted out later, anyway. We're just setting a baseline.

So, in alphabetical order because why not:

Barbarian

Most of the campaigns I run in this setting tend to be more... political, I suppose. They do not necessarily hinge on roleplaying, but generally the adventuring the PCs do is either in or on the fringes of a large civilisation where, I would assume, you see less barbarians. Still, I won't stop anyone from playing them, and I can't see why they wouldn't be around.

Maybe I should make room for barbarians, somewhere. It would be a nice change of pace from the rest of the setting. Also, back when I drew a crappy map of one continent of the setting I left a big blank area and wrote "UM" in it because I had nothing, so my PCs decided for me that this was the domain of the Um barbarian horde. I kind of like the Unearthed Arcana totem barbarians and this could be a good place to use them. I'll make a note of it.

Also, when I think of barbarians I always think of Diablo II, and I always had a soft spot for my barbarian with his leaping attacks and giant axe, even if I mostly played with friends who hoovered up all the gems and armor while I died to protect them.

Oh, and: No more frenzied berserkers.

Bard

Bards are awesome.

That doens't help, though. Thinking about it, the bards in my games tend to be less "wandering performers" and more like adventurers and diplomats (because everybody loves diplomancers). I know Eberron handles them like that, at least partly, and puts a bit more focus on their magical power being connected to music; that's a good idea, but I should probably do something more related to the diplomacy thing.

I know bards get Knowledge, so spinning an idea from the top of my head: Bardic traditions (in this setting) started out in whatever they call "the past" as a religious and philosophical movement in magical circles which revolved around music, musica universalis, whatever. Nowadays the philosophy behind it isn't as important, it's just another kind of magic, but there are still Bardic Schools, institutions that focus on cerebral pursuits like recording history, acting as diplomats to bring peace to the world, studying the arcane and rocking out. I could probably make up some feats for them or something.

Believing in some kind of divine music could make for interesting religious bards. Some of the races in this setting tend to be very religious, so it might be worth looking into. Maybe I could let them have a domain or something.

There are Unearthed Arcana class variants that I could look into as well. They'd definitely fit for some of the bardic schools, at least.

Cleric

Eat a butt, cleric. You're good enough already!

I'm going to put a minor smackdown on what you can and can't worship as a cleric, though. No wishy-washy "I worship an abstract concept or something dumb, like a tree, and pretty much act like a wizard with divine spells!" rubbish. To quote Isaac Asimov, aw hell naw. If your cleric worships the abstract concept of goodness or, all right, a tree, you better believe in it really hard. Strive to be the epitome of treeness like no man has ever strived before.

Also, clerics seem like they would be very interested in religion and whatnot, so why do they only get 2 skill points a level? Maybe it's just me, but I feel that most clerics would at least have a smattering of religious knowledge, but that doesn't leave many points for other things. Maybe I could add a class ability that grants extra skill points specifically for Knowledge skills.

Other than that, they're fine as they are. Most of the cleric tweaking I'll be doing is expanding the deities they can take later, and I encourage PCs to come up with minor gods if they wish - I always liked the idea of pantheons picking up a string of forgotten demigods and extremely minor deities through the ages, like barnacles on a whale's arse, so you can have people worshipping the god of Ornate Doors or something.

There was one thing I am considering - a while ago I made up a domain for a trickster god who encouraged his followers to infiltrate other churches and mess about, and I'm not sure how well it works any more. Here it is in its entirety, if anyone has suggestions:

TRICKSTER'S DOMAIN
Granted Power: Every morning, while preparing his spells, a cleric with this domain chooses another deity and a domain to prepare spells from. (He could, for example, choose Pelor and prepare spells from Pelor's Sun domain.) The cleric still cannot cast spells of an alignment opposed to his own.

A cleric with this domain also cannot use the highest-level domain slot he has access to. (If he had up to 3rd-level spells, for example, he can only prepare domain spells up to 2nd level.) A cleric who only has access to the 1st domain slot can use, it though.

Druid

You also don't get any more free stuff, druid. Screw you.

There's a druid country in the setting, though the lack of a name for it that I remember for more than a week will tell you everything you need to know about what I had planned for it. For all I know it could be a theocracy that worships the nature deity Codzilla, radioactive fish from the sea.

Still, I always acted like most druids - at least, human ones - tended to be part of a "circle", a sort of loose collection of druids that either watched over a specific territory or followed a specific philosophy of what I assume is called druidism. I don't think they'd have a specific unified purpose, except maybe in druid land.

Maybe I should come back to this later when I have more fluff set in stone.

Fighter

Bahahahahahahahahahaha.

Monk

I haven't seen many monks, though unlike the fighter it is probably for fluff reasons. Anyway, I don't think these guys need changing. Like the bards, I should probably focus on developing the monasteries they probably dwell in.

A lot of monks in this setting will be dwarves. I'll explain why in a post about races. I'm not sure if that's important, though. I do get the feeling I could do more for monks, but like I said, nobody's really used them and I'm not sure of their exact place yet - though I might give them Knowledge (history). This setting is starting to get a bit of a "lore and knowledge are awesome" focus.

Paladin

I saw a variant paladin I really liked on the Wizards boards, once. I saved it. No, I'm not uploading it. I might trade it for the "standard" paladin, though.

Anyway, they seem fine. I am once again considering a class ability to get some skill points for Knowledge, though. Maybe I just don't like having low skill points.

There's the code, of course, but that should be fine because I am running this setting and I'm not a complete dongrobot. See, I see the Code and I actually take note of the part that says a paladin has to "grossly violate" it to lose his powers. To me that says the paladin is only human and accepts that sometimes he might have no other choice, and his deity is willing to look the other way for a minute if it's only a minor infraction. But that's just my interpretation.

Maybe different Codes for different orders would be a good idea too, but that's also something for later.

Variant paladins also have my interest, but I don't want someone just being a paladin of freedom so they can do what they like. I'll have to think about it.

Ranger

Apparently the ranger is for people who want to be fighters but not Fighters. I tend to (sometimes unfairly, I'll admit) see things like CharOp and making "character builds" instead of characters a symptom of autism, but even I can see that the fighter is the lamesauce in the condiment tray of 3.5.

Urban rangers will probably find more of a use here, so if I prepare a setting booklet for my players at any point I should probably mention that. Or make the nature ranger a variant of the standard urban Ranger. Gasp!

Anyway, the ranger's role is actually pretty clear, even if it seems to be "a much better variant fighter for people who want to be a Tolkien character". Doesn't need much changing, but I should consider which regions, races and groups would have lots of rangers in them sometime.

Rogue

Rogues don't need much tweaking, really. The class covers so many different kinds of characters that there's no point, anyway. I like leaving it broad.

Sorcerer

I dropped the spellcasting requirement of Craft (alchemy) a long time ago, by the way. I heard it's a common house rule, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, sorcerers. Did you know that they're supposed to be feared, lonely people in D&D? Would you know that from looking at any PC sorcerer? In my experience, anyway, they tend to be charismatic wizards that don't need books.

So what the hell. Let's say sorcerers aren't feared and scorned, but rather viewed as a less "learned" mage. There's still some prejudice there, but it's manageable.

As far as the source goes... well, this setting has had Eberron's approach to magic so far. Lots of low-level magic, not much high-level. In that kind of environment, a sorcerer's powers could conceivably be traced back to a mere mortal spellcaster in their background, or something. Maybe powerful casters produce sorcerer babies more often, or something.

Not that dragon heritage isn't a nice idea too, if it fits the character. I may as well make it multiple-choice since I think most people do anyway. Since this setting is probably demon-heavy, that could be another source! I could allow Spellcraft checks or research to determine the "origin" of a sorcerer's magic, but I'd have to think about that.

Wizard

Again, the wizard doesn't need much tweaking. Like the monk and the bard and so on, most of my "tweaking" will just be working out different organisations wizards could be a part of, and most of those will probably be represented by PrCs (though, as autistic people tell me, only ones with full spellcasting progression are worth it).

Well...

Okay. Wizards are learned sages and one of the few classes to be able to take all Knowledge skills, but they get hardly any points to spend on them? What the hell, let's give them more skill points for Knowledge as a class ability.

Psionics

I have used psions before - well, mostly allowed players to take psionic classes. I've rarely regretted it - the worst psionic character I ever saw was actually a druid that picked "Elan" as a race as part of an elaborate excuse to be able to wild shape into anything. Anyway, most of them picked soulknives.

I'm not sure what to do here, though. Psionics, with its (quasi-)scientific names for everything and its common use in soft sci-fi (like that sequel to Warhammer, Starcraft) always seemed a bit out-of-place in a fantasy setting. It's similar to magic, even related, but no amount of "spell resistance works against psionics for balance reasons!" will shake that feeling for me.

On the other hand, my setting has aliens, ~~spacesh~~spelljammers and a higher level of tech than your standard medieval fantasy, so I suppose we could make some allowances. I'll have to think hard about it, though.

Tome of ~~Battle~~ ~~Weeaboo Fitan Magic~~ Battle

I have no problem with it. I hear mixed things (from "it makes fighters competitive!" to "it makes fighters wizards who get all their spells back every five minutes!"), but I have used it and it was pretty alright. I haven't used it enough to know maneuvers or anything from memory, but oh well, whatever.

Fighter-type classes are always easy to introduce. They're just dudes who hit other dudes with swords or, with the right feats, a third dude.

Weeaboo Classes

Samurai, ninja etc. can stay in the obligatory generic mix-and-match Asian person land with few exceptions.

Other Classes

Most base classes will be allowed. Which would be more common, though?

Like I said, the setting has a fair bit of low-level magic and "magitech" compared to other settings. Since Eberron was a setting designed for that sort of thing, I think it would be appropriate to allow Artificers.

I like archivists. I hear they are also OP or broken or something, but they're a spellcaster class in 3.5 so that is probably a given. They can be like paladins, except instead of being a physically stronger cleric they can be a nerdier one.

Binders I am already using, sort of. I think I mentioned this last post. Ancient magical traditions, coming back in one particular kingdom, blah blah.

I can do something with warlocks. They can get their powers from demons and whatnot. If I want to crib from 4th Edition I can also have them get their powers from fairies and Cthulhu and they can be in a glorified pen-and-paper MMO. Oh snap! Seriously though, that sounds fun. I don't think they'd be common, though.

Apart from that, nothing else needs its own fluff. I think. Some of them (I'm looking at you, Tome of Magic) are pretty... unique, but not common enough in the setting to need much detail. Not right now, at least.

I should start getting into the meat of the fluff now.

Worldbuilding: Game Design Loops and Mechanics

2010-04-28T21:16:00.001+10:00

Here is a picture of a man preparing to hit his hand with a spiky hammer.

Anyway.

I was going to write about mechanics and class, but we'll get to that in a bit. First I wanted to mention that I had another thought about how to plan this setting's theme since I wrote about it last post.
It's not too surprising. I always thought designing settings and adventures worked in loops: You plan some things out, then you build on that and move on to other things, and in the process you get ideas that improve and refine whatever it is you thought you were already done with. At least I'm getting this one early.

Earlier, I got hold of a copy of The Neverhood, an extremely awesome point-and-click adventure game from 1996. It has been one of my favourite games for a while, despite being unable to beat it when I last had it because I was using XP and it refused to run the bloody thing without crashing a short way in, but whatever.

While beating a fourteen-year-old game it occured to me that one of the reasons I liked the game was the strange, alien setting. Then it occured to me to look at some of my other favourite games, and in no particular order:

The Neverhood - A game made entirely in claymation about a clay man called Klayman in a pretty clay world. The setting has a backstory about demigod-like creator beings and the worlds they create out of clay, which is 25,000 words long and written on an extremely long clay wall (which the game makes you cross twice, just to be a jerk).
Oddworld - A series with anti-corporate overtones set on a strange alien world, populated by strange humanoid aliens. The artwork is amazing, from the vast dirty factory environments to the mystical jungle temples. At least, it was in the first two games. Never got around to playing the Xbox ones.
Creatures - First game I ever owned, actually. An artificial life series where the player raises and cares for the Norns, creatures inhabiting the edge of a disc-shaped planet left behind by an alien race which managed to map out their own genome and fix all their genetic errors before inventing the wheel.
Team Fortress 2 - Pretty much an excuse for teams of people to shoot each other, but TF2's backstory is being slowly fleshed out. It is also completely, pants-on-head ridiculous. In an awesome way.
World of Goo - Help sentient blobs of goo form structures to lead other blobs of goo to pipes so a faceless corporation can suck them up, and then you get trapped in the Internet or something. Apparently a metaphor for working at EA or something. (EA had me as "suck" and lost me at "up".)
The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom - A newer game I picked up recently and really liked. A gentleman thief in a Victorian-themed city goes on time-travelling adventures and causes time paradoxes while chasing a magical flying talking pie. Or something.

I could list more, but the emerging pattern is obvious - all of these games were clearly written by awesome people who should probably not be allowed to take certain kinds of drugs.

Anyway, it's pretty obvious that I like weird, offbeat settings that don't necessarily make sense if you think about them too much. I should probably take note of that when working on this one.

Anyway, mechanics.

A while ago I tried making a "collaborative setting" after getting the idea from a copy of Dragon - basically a bunch of people getting together to craft a setting. It didn't go very well, usually because people were more interested in making sure a handful of things they liked made it in than designing the rest. In fact I tried it twice with similar results each time (a feeling that smacking myself with a spiky hammer would have been more fun, mostly).

Mechanical issues were rarely touched on except by about one person per group. One was focused on statting up a suspiciously powerful PC race, which wasn't much of a problem, and the other one would mostly talk about how we should consider what system to use and whether we should come up with an entirely new one first until people got annoyed,

The whole thing taught me several lessons. One, I ahould probably do most of the design myself if I want to be completely happy with it. Two, demons will appear in everything I ever make unless I avoid them on purpose. And three, give some serious consideration to the mechanics you're going to use in the early planning stages.

I already use 3.5 Edition Dungeons & Dragons when running this setting, so that is what I will use (unless I decide to switch to 4E sometime). Bam. Done. In hindsight that was a lot of words for such a fast conclusion.

Anyway, now that I've done that, I should probably decide what races, classes, books, etc. to allow in the setting.

First, I should note that since this setting started as a generic thing that anything could go into, there probably won't be many restrictions on race, class, etc. In the past I've allowed a lot of things provided I can find a way to work it into the setting myself, with much success (except for the guy who made up a nation for his elf subrace and then two neighbouring nations after I told him not to, and the one who rewrote my setting's history to accomodate their homebrew race. I promise to tell that story sometime). So for now, let's put races aside and come back to it after I've settled on class mechanics and such.

Are there any classes I want to ban or alter? I won't consider prestige classes, because that makes the list of things I need to consider way too damn long. Sticking only with 3.5 base classes, then, we narrow it down to:

Archivist, Ardent, Artificer, Barbarian, Bard, Beguiler, Binder, Cleric, Crusader, Divine Mind, Dragon Shaman, Dragonfire Adept, Dread Necromancer, Druid, Duskblade, Erudite, Factotum, Favored Soul, Fighter, Healer, Hexblade, Knight, Lurk, Incarnate, Marshal, Monk, Mystic, Ninja, Noble, Paladin, Psion, Psychic Warrior, Ranger, Rogue, Samurai, Scout, Shadowcaster, Shaman, Sha' ir, Shugenja, Sohei, Soulborn, Soulknife, Sorcerer, Spellthief, Spirit Shaman, Swashbuckler, Swordsage, Totemist, Truenamer, Warblade, Warlock, Warmage, Wilder, Wizard and Wu Jen.

Son of a bitch.

First, let's say no to incarnum. I have never seen anyone use Magic of Incarnum except for one guy, and he only wanted a couple of feats for powergaming reasons. I'm sure it's alright, I just can't be bothered. Second, all oriental-themed classes can go back to the obligatory Far East mishmash country I will almost definitely have lying around somewhere. Third, let's just forget about all the optional base classes from splat books for now and allow them as needed.

Except binders, anyway. I am currently running a campaign which introduces binders to the setting as reviving the magical practices of a dead civilisation, so I know how they work already.

Do I want to alter the base classes at all to flavour the setting a bit?

It's a good idea, though I'm not sure where to start. Now that I've written this far I feel this probably deserves its own post, maybe two. I'll get around to it later, then, but first I'll mention a few ideas in my head:

Clerics. I'd like to be a bit more specific in what they can and can't do. Allowing them to be devoted to ideals and concepts is all well and good, but once you've seen someone make a cleric that doesn't worship anything in particular and somehow place it in the upper ranks of a church in its backstory it starts to get silly.
Rangers. What the hell are they for anyway?
Wizards. For a bunch of smart guys they sure don't get many skill points, but I tend to portray wizards as sages and scholars. Maybe I should let them take more Knowledge skills, I don't know.
Magic. It's used a lot in this setting and if there's anywhere I could mix things up a bit, it's in the magical realm. That just gives me more work to do, but whatever.
Paladins. I don't know, I really like them. Is there a way to improve them? They seem all right to me, but then I don't try to make paladins trip for shits and giggles.
Seriously, what the hell are rangers for?

I'll try and get back in a few days with more stuff about classes. Hopefully I can move on to races as well.

Worldbuilding: The Magical Adventure Continues

2010-04-14T19:16:00.009+10:00

In keeping with the "theme" of this series, here is a picture of a man trying to restore power to his groin. It's a long story.

Anyway, let's start jiggering with this setting. Or something.

Before I do anything else this time, I should establish what I want the core concepts of the setting to be. Tone, mostly. That's easy - looking back on previous games and checking with my players tells me that I prefer light-hearted games, or at least it would if I bothered. I didn't, because I already knew that.

What else? "Softer" games are fine, but there needs to be more than that. If you look at other settings, most of them have something - at the risk of sounding massively pretentious here, I will use the technical term here and call it a thingy - which defines the setting and sets it apart from the rest. Planescape has conflicts of philosophy and belief, Dark Sun has "everyone is thirsty and psionic", Eberron has low-level magitek and politics, Forgotten Realms has Elminster (I kid, I kid)...

I also know that there have been so many settings, "official" and homebrew, that whatever I do is not going to be super original. So I shouldn't worry about that, though I'd prefer not to just rip from someone else. Doesn't mean I can't use them as a jumping point, though!

Out of the ones I just presented, I really like Planescape and Eberron, though I am terrible at politics sometimes. What else? If I examine what I have put in my games before, a short list of common factors pops up:

Demons

Aaand list over.

I'm not sure why but I really like demons. I've started to branch out to other outsiders lately, but almost every single game I have ever run in this setting has eventually had everything blamed on demons. Wizard tries to explode the world? Demons. Giant monsters plague kingdom? Demons. Out of toilet paper? Demons.

So I guess outsiders should play a part, though not outsiders in general and probably not that often; my "steampunk" setting already has them showing up all over the place.

I could make "religion" a focus, though I always worry about offending someone if I go that route (but hey, it's a roleplaying game, screw those guys!).

I may as well go the simple route and push a bunch of these together: Let Otherworld have low-level magitek and make the core concept/thingy of the setting be that the forces of Good (mostly religious orders) are fighting against the world's corruption by demons.

I don't want it to be grim and dark, though, and I think it would make this setting a little different if the forces of Good were more obviously winning than, say, Warhammer or its space-themed sister game, Starcraft. They'd still have a long way to go, though.

I'm not done yet, but at least I've identified a place to start. I can probably start on the actual races and such now.

Worldbuilding and Whatnot

2010-04-09T14:26:00.008+10:00

Okay, so as I wrote this obligatory "yes that was an April 1 post" paragraph, I noticed the last entry also had one paragraph which had been poorly-written and made no sense. That has been fixed now. D&D blogs are serious business.

Alright.

I am going to try posting more often, but I found I couldn't bring myself to make an image-less post, so here is a man trying to power up his meat cigar. I'll try and work it into the post later.

So recently two of my games hit the one-year mark: The future-Earth-psychic-students-on-the-moon-with-mecha game I mentioned in this post, and Planescape Magical Girls, which I can't be bothered to find in my previous posts.

I'm not sure which surprises me more, actually having more than one game which lasted more than a year and successfully wrapped up a campaign arc (which both of those have) or the fact that a game about magical girls in Planescape which I started as a joke last April Fool's has lasted a year and is considered to be a genuinely good game by the players, or at least so they tell me. (Actually, one of them mostly tells me how much he sucks, since the others had a few critiques of his playstyle and that's easier than doing anything about it, but still!)

One thing that struck me a little later was that both of those were done in BESM in their own settings. I haven't actually played much of my "standard" Dungeons & Dragons setting lately.

I had one game in D&D recently, but it was set in a different steampunk setting I wanted to try out (and that also lasted a year and completed a campaign arc, but it's now postponed until I can sort out a better time.) There was also my 4th Edition game, but that doesn't count - it was to introduce some friends of mine who asked to D&D and to try out 4th Edition for myself, and it wasn't in my standard setting anyway.

In fact, it seems like I've been deliberately avoiding using that setting for a while. Why, though? I'm not quite sure, but I think I suspect - I feel my setting isn't compelling enough. When I'm picking a setting, I want something cool and interesting, and Otherworld does not seem to be either.

That's my fault, though - see, Otherworld started off as a homebrew setting for its own sake. When I first began DMing I felt a little awkward about using Forgotten Realms or something else - existing settings with a wealth of material on them I didn't know - because I feared I'd accidentally "ruin" them. So, I just created Otherworld and dumped everything I liked from other settings into there, fleshing out only what I had to in order to run my game.

Later, I decided to make it a "proper" setting - which, I felt, required having detail on a larger scale. I added quite a lot of things, removed other things, and added "placeholder" ideas until finally it was a working setting. Unfortunately, since I hadn't started with a clear idea of what I wanted to do, it was just a big mash of ideas, some of which made as much sense as an electric meat cigar. (Ha!)

I'd more-or-less fleshed out Otherworld according to the steps I've previously suggested are how most D&D settings are made:

Start with an idea which was probably shit anyway
"Borrow" or "pay homage to" things from other settings you like (read: steal blatantly)
Toss a few more ideas you had on the way in there
Do #2 again
Complain liberally about the things about other settings you don't like, contemplate how these things could be better, put them in
Have an original idea
Make up something you can actually use as the plot of a campaign
Watch your players ignore most of it
Retcon things like there's no tomorrow
Repeat steps 2, 4 and honestly pretty much every step including this one.

Do I just keep doing that? I don't know. Otherworld's problems seem tied into the setting itself - it lacks a clear theme, a purpose other than "generic fantasy setting", and if I want to make it compelling enough to want to run more games in it it needs those things. To get those things, though, I pretty much have to revamp everything.

Retconning the hell out of it didn't work before, though, so I should build from the ground up - identify what I want out of the setting, and then mold what I already have to suit that. Like adapting settings to fit new editions of D&D without the massive flame wars.

I think I'll take a shot at that this month. We can do it together!

It will be like a magical adventure.

The Cactus Is Kind Of A Jerk

2010-04-01T23:59:00.001+11:00

Recently I was stopped in the street by a fan who couldn't wait until I made my appearance at Gen Con™ Australia to ask me when I would discuss official settings, a topic I haven't returned to since a previous highly illuminating post about Planescape, which ranked up there as one of the biggest English dungmuffins of 2nd Edition until the kind-hearted souls at Wizards of the Coast took it behind the shed and mercifully blew its brains out all over the fucking wall.

Well, here it is.

Dark Sun was a campaign setting devised for 1st Edition and eventually carried over until 2nd Edition, where it continued happily until it suddenly fell over and died in 1994 for reasons nobody can quite discern. Here is a standard Dark Sun adventure:

You are in a desert. It is kinda thirsty and you have been drinking your camel's pee in desperation for about a week.

You are sent on a quest to go check out some ruins by some guy nobody cares about.

A psychic bear tries to eat your face.

Someone name-drops some god-moding NPC who gets all the sweet things you don't.

You eat your camel.

You find the ruins. They have a dungeon.

Everybody dies.

As it happens, I’ve never played Dark Sun in my thirty years of tabletop gaming, so don't take everything I say to be fact. I don't really want to make any comment on the quality of Dark Sun right now.

On the other hand, that might be because everyone knows Dark Sun is a steaming pile of 2nd-edition Gygaxian bullshit which imposed ridiculously arbitrary restrictions on spellcasters simply to make the player's life harder.

So when I found out that it was getting an update in 4th Edition - an actual update, not the Pathfinder conversion it got in Dragon #319 - I was a little surprised.

However, D&D is a collaborative game, and if a useless asshole like Rich Burlew can get a gig at TSR maybe I can lend a hand too.

So, my ideas for 4th Edition Dark Sun:

Don't half-ass the water thing. Dark Sun takes pains to stress that Athas has no large bodies of water, but rather seas of silt, and then basically goes and says "Oh, well there are oceans, but we're hiding them behind these giant mountains populated by Mary Sue halflings." What the hell, Wizards. What the hell.

Magic. So you can't be a wizard, but you can use psionics, which (in a sort of open secret) is almost completely indistinguishable from magic? It is basically magic's annoying little cousin, the one that nobody likes except a doting grandmother who has been kicked out of three schools for openly masturbating. Why can't you just allow wizards and be done with it?

Make dwarves more unique than "THEY ARE CLEAN-SHAVEN, LOL!".

Use the vastly superior Eberron halflings. In fact, using the Houses and some other things from Eberron wouldn't be a bad idea, it'd make Dark Sun unique and interesting.

Use a race more interesting than the Thri-Kreen while you're at it.

More adventures that aren't just trekking across Interchangeable Inhospitable Fuckfaceland #169 and eating your camel before trying to attempt some bullshit dungeon that reads like Gary Gygax snorting lines of cocaine from a camel's breasts. Take some hints from Valley of Dust and Fire and make something people can actually enjoy.

Fix priests. Okay, so they can't worship deities, but they can worship elementals. Oops, I just summoned a Rain Elemental and a horde of Water Elementals to give everyone a nice hydrating handjob. What now, DM?

For the love of Thor, use the vastly superior backstory for Athas provided in Dark Sun Revised Edition. At least it makes sense.

Let people take the Dragon class as a starting class. It might spice things up a bit.

Of course, I don't claim that these ideas will solve every problem with Dark Sun, and they've probably been thought of already. Just my two cents.

Incidentally, I'm going to try something this coming month. I'm going to start posting entries without comics, maybe see if I can make more constructive posts like this one with less work.

Wish me luck!

All The Numbers Are Awful

2010-03-02T21:36:00.005+11:00

Oh, I hate February.

Any other month, this post would have been made in the month after my last post. But no, now I have to have some kind of missing-month BS. I've never missed a month before.

Bah!

Anyway.

You may not (read: don't) know this, but I have been working on a novel. I haven't mentioned it because I am of the extremely hypocritical and probably racist opinion that DMs who want to be authors just want their players to enjoy Happy Railroad Adventures Starring My DMPC - or rather, I worry that I'll turn into that guy.

I do my best to avoid it, though I will admit that at one stage I actively changed where a campaign would be set to keep it away from the main setting of said book, just in case. Since said book was set in the only real metropolis in the setting and I eventually just used different settings the PCs haven't been there yet. Heh.

That was, oh, years ago. Then I got caught up in education and, like a fool, World of Warcraft. Years onward I decided another reason the story which I had started in high school wasn't actually finished yet was because I had only half-realised that I no longer enjoyed it (a Lord of the Rings parody always seems like a better idea in high school), and promptly shelved it in favour of a completely different story, a Lovecraftian comedy. I'm sure that's going to go well.

Even in settings I tailored specifically to play games in, though, I find that I still feel like I'm holding back all the time.

Take the setting my players termed "BESMecha", a kind of silly game using the BESM system where the players are high-school students with psychic mutant powers in a military school on the Moon where they get to pilot mecha. The solar system is divided into three factions: APTO (Atlantic-Pacific Treaty Organization), NERU (New European-Russian Union) and SEAA (South-East Asian Alliance). Relations between them are civil at best and APTO and NERU in particular seem to be drifting into a Cold War. The situation could explode any minute.

Come on. Psychic mecha pilot kids. Metaphorical excrement is going to be detonated and it will be awesome.

Instead, "Season 1" (okay, okay, the first campaign) focused on a terrorist group called ATLAS (long version unknown) which started as an anti-newtype group, later turned out to be a newtype-staffed group and finally (in the last session) turned out to be a group made entirely of newtypes led by a psychic space octopus.

Cool though it was, I realised that I was backing away from a storyline potentially more epic in scope: A war between APTO and NERU.

Why? I don't know, exactly, but I think I feel that there's a certain limit, which (until someone tells me someone else wrote about this already) I will call the Vecna vector, where the potential impact of a campaign on its setting is enough to drastically change it and thus every campaign that comes after it.

I'm just not comfortable with hitting that vector. I can come up with plenty of good ideas that work in the setting as it is, why change it drastically? I'm also worried about screwing it up. D&D has plenty of examples: the Spellplague, Faerûn's personal kick in the balls; Faction War, Planescape's personal extremely angry badger down the pants... okay, that's two. Let me know if you can think of more.

That's not to say my settings don't change at all. During my games I have had events drastically change entire areas (say, kingdoms) for years, just nothing on a grand scale. Most villains are from "outside", as such: demons from another plane, a group that doesn't work for one of the main "factions" of the setting, some random lich asshole, et cetera. Memorable opponents, all, but still.

I know some of my players would like it. A few of them have stated as much, though the fact that some of them just wanted to use it as a springboard for turning games into wank sessions about their favourite characters turned me off a little.

Of course, if I could fucking finish a game that would be great. I've finished a grand total of one campaign in years of gaming, thanks to schedule conflicts shutting the damn things down.

I'm working on that too, though. See, I also noticed that games tend to... drag on a bit. Not that they're individually boring - at least, if they have been my fellow gamers have failed to say anything for quite a long time now. It's just the main arc of the campaign tends not to end for the same reasons I don't massively change the setting: I feel like said campaign could use a few more adventures.

Season 1 of psychicmutantmechapilotsinspace only ended recently because I sucked it up and made it end; the PC's investigations finally led them to an abandoned research facility on the moon of Iapetus long before I had been planning to let them find it only a month earlier. Judging by their post-game analysis, though, I don't think they noticed or cared. In fact I think they rather liked it.

A good DM is always looking for ways to improve. Ending that campaign within a more reasonable time was the first step. Eventually, I hope, I'll be ready to run a campaign that changes the scope of a setting my players are familiar with and enjoy.

Eventually, I'll be able to kick that setting in the balls.

I'm Back, Baby

2010-01-31T20:38:00.006+11:00

It's still January! I'm okay! And my mojo's back!

There are oh so many reasons for this delay. Let's not get into them. It's a new year and a new start, more or less, so let's talk about that instead. And a few other things I wanted to clear up.

Still Not Awesome

Apparently since I made that post about that page on TVTropes where people post "awesome" stories about their characters that are actually really terrible, a couple of readers decided to add a message to the page calling everybody on it retarded. It lasted four days, someone removed it, it was reposted, it lasted nine hours, deleted, reposted for almost twelve hours, deleted, etc. Eventually someone came along and banned them while claiming the edits only lasted half an hour, adding " It really is a wonder he can type, with that kind of IQ."

Let it be known that this blog totally does not condone vandalising TVTropes until you get banned by someone who can't count, no matter how hilarious. If you want to help, try cleaning the page up and adding some non-terrible stories. Once I figure out how tvtropes works and make sure I won't get yelled at for it, I will totally try and prune some of the worse stories, but who knows.

Communities

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've been feeling a little disconnected from the online world. I know the Internet isn't all one big happy community, but aside from some IRC rooms I frequent I don't really have anywhere D&D-related to hang out. I have accounts on GiantITP and RPG.net but I never post. Hell, recently I was so hungry for a bit more action in my D&Ding life that I considered going to Gen Con Australia and not even the picture they have on their website of an overweight lady wearing cat ears and playing the Pokemon TCG turned me off the idea.

I'm thinking about hitting up those places I just mentioned, maybe some other forums. I haven't posted anywhere since WotC years ago (my players found a thread where I was seeking advice on what to do about their silliness and decided to post in it and bitch at me about it) and /tg/ on 4chan, which I've been visiting only sporadically for like a year (I got tired of the basement-dwellingly large number of threads about sex). I'm a little shy, honestly. Once I figure out what would be a good D&D site to visit, I'll let you know.

On that note, I've been tempted to start Twittering. It's struck me as pointless so far but maybe telling people about my bowel movements will cheer me up.

This Blog and Where to Take It

I've been insisting on attaching pictures to every post so far, but now I don't know.

Does this blog have enough content to get away with an image-less post every once in a while? Maybe I could write a few "Tips from the Amateurs" about campaign and NPC design that I've been thinking about without having to think of a comic to draw first. I don't know, though. If anyone out there actually gives a damn, let me know.

4E

My 4E game is almost over, and let me tell you:

It kind of sucks.

Not the system itself. Honestly, I don't mind it. (At least one of my players thinks it's a system for playing a videogame with "D&D" written on it, though.) The adventure module Keep on the Shadowfell, however, is absolutely fucking awful. It is average at worst and mind-bogglingly, giraffe-chewingly stupid at best. Or maybe the other way around. I'm not going to go on about it because this guy said it a lot better than I could.

Makes me worry, though. Can I still write about 3.xth Edition and BESM, a system which as far as I know nobody has supported in years, and still be ~~cool~~ relevant? Do I run the risk of becoming a grumbly old bastard, talking nostalgically about a previous edition that wasn't that great? Because when I started playing that was like 2nd Edition.

It's a lot to think about. I'll mull it over a bit and get back to you.

I've Lost My Mojo

2009-12-08T10:22:00.011+11:00

It happens every couple of years or so.

At first this delay in updates was technical: I lost possession of my copy of Photoshop, for example. Then I got caught up in RL business and my computer busted (I am posting this from my new, super-fancy one). There was a whole month in between when I could have at least made a non-animated comic, though, and the reason for that is simpler:

I burned out.

It happens. Games just started to feel more like work, and usually if a game becomes that you should stop playing it unless you're a World of Warcraft fan. I don't like just cancelling games on people, though, so I've been foolishly trying to ride it out.

I haven't been posting because I haven't felt like I have anything to write about and I refuse to make a post without a comic, but maybe we can take some time to sort out why that is.

It's probably because I've been running so many games.

At the moment I have a lot of free time and I have filled it with online D&D. I run 5 games and play in 2 - not every day of the week, obviously, most of them are in back-to-back night-time D&D blocks - and that's a lot to plan for.

Okay, I lie. Word of advice: If you ever want to learn how to come up with a good gaming session on the fly, do it five times a week.

Really though, it's still a lot. And up until recently, I've run a lot of solo games as well. These aren't much - generally dice-less stuff with a friend to flesh out background elements of my settings and campaigns. There is one guy who expects a proper campaign with dice-rolling and mapped-out dungeons and everything, but that's because he has had a shortage of games recently (he is a little pickier than most and refuses to play with most of our gaming group, meaning he rarely gets to play; I tried once, by inviting only people he approved of, but when a couple of them could no longer make it there were no replacements left.)

This isn't a HUGE problem, at least, because a) a lot of those games are grouped together so I only play like 3 days a week, really, and b) that guy is cool with not doing anything for a while because I am too busy for it.

It's still a problem, though, and one compounded by the fact that I haven't had a "week off" from gaming in a long time. After a while, it starts to wear you down, I guess. I'd like a weekend where I don't actually do anything, and...

Oh, wait.

So I wrote this over the last week or so, and now that the "Thanksgiving, My Birthday (was on the 27th, by the way!), Christmas" period has hit, I've had more time off recently. I'm starting to feel better, actually.

If my situation doesn't improve, there's only one sensible thing to do: stop playing. If it's getting me down, I can't run a game well, and if I can't do that then what's the point?

There's nothing I can do right now but wait a couple weeks and see how I feel. Fingers crossed.

And happy birthday to me, by the way.

Some Tips on Characters

2009-09-08T17:22:00.015+10:00

Sometimes you just have to ignore everything your character sheet says you can't do, transcend the boundaries and limitations set by statistical probability, go against the system's established design philosophy and just go ahead and fuck someone's shit right up.

Click the image for a bigger one, by the way.

Last week a friend of mine asked me if I had any tips on making NPCs. Apparently this is something I am pretty good at, but I am a little ambivalent vis-à-vis people stroking my engorged member. I quite enjoy praise and mentioning how awesome I am, but I just don't want to be a jackass about it. It's a hard line to find, so I have decided to err on the safe side lest I cross over.

Let's just go ahead and write some character tips. I'm mostly thinking of NPCs here, but it can apply to PCs too (and I've used some PC examples). This is by no means comprehensive or entirely accurate, mind.

Practice Makes Perfect

The reason why it's not comprehensive or accurate is because I can't tell you how to do it. Nobody can. They can give you pointers, but the best way to make a good character is to keep at it until it comes naturally.

This point is so obvious it can be seen from outer space, but it's a nice place to start.

This Isn't A Freaking Novel

One of my players in my steampunk game has an ex-girlfriend who is interested in joining. I have no idea why anyone, ever, would invite their ex-girlfriend to play Dungeons & Dragons with them. (She's in once we have room though.) Apparently she already has a character planned with pages of backstory.

This is my face: ·_.

Okay, for a PC, it's not too bad. For most characters, though, you don't need that much detail. Most people won't see most of it. Ever popped open an adventure module? Most of the NPCs there have a few major personality traits and relevant major events in their lives noted and bang, done. Detail is great, but try and save it for the major players.

Character Quirks Are A Great Substitute For Personality

My Planescape game has a character called Uno, an enterprising and friendly young Fated lass. She's grown a bit over her few appearances, but one of the responses I've gotten is that her habit of saying "o-kay!" and making a ring gesture with her hand is adorable.

It's a little cynical, but character quirks, habits, ways of speaking, funny accents etc. can fill in for personality traits that aren't there if they have to. That's not to say that they should replace personality, but if you're stuck for an interesting character, they can help a lot. Besides, even when you've finished a character, they can still help it stand out. Nobody just stands around flapping their jaws like wooden puppets outside of video games. Unless that's their thing.

It's Okay To Be Gimmicky

This is what one of my players says a lot to dismiss ideas he doesn't like. In this context it's a statement against things that are done for their own sake, especially things done to make a character "wacky" or follow some obtuse theme that doesn't add much to the story. Usually I don't mind, because he's generally so picky about who and what he plays with that games are generally run for him instead of just with him anyway.

However, the same guy also names most (if not all) of his character's weapons things that reflect their wielder, regardless of whether it is in-character to do so. This extends to NPCs he has made for me.

Who cares? It's a roleplaying game, not a writing competition in Serious, Texas. If you want all your characters to have an unhealthy obsession with hats or something, do it. As with everything else, take this in moderation.

Don't Rub Their Noses In It

Sometimes you have a character which is just awesome. Maybe he's a badass warrior or a spunky mage or something, and you've got all these cool witty one-liners they can say and all these cool ideas for things he can do to establish how badass or spunky or judeophobic or whatever he is and you have awesome ideas coming out of your butt. That's great, really.

However, unless you are an amazing social outcast who stays at home all day indulging in amateur gaming design and drawing comics about how World of Warcraft changed your life on DeviantArt, you are playing your roleplaying game of choice with at least one other person. They have their own characters. They are not interested in taking a back seat to the antics of yours.

Especially don't act out your badass moments when it's not appropriate. Disarming an enemy just because you can and smiling smugly is kind of cool if you can do it without looking like a jackass. Disarming the king's guard just because you can and smiling smugly gets you jailed.

One of my players used to be the poster child for this one. She was so obsessed with her characters being badass and cool and unique that when required to make a low-level ordinary person for one campaign, she couldn't even make it through creation before begging me to allow her paladin to have a bear as a special mount. Being kind-hearted and kind of dumb at the time I said yes, and sure enough that bear (just like every familiar, animal companion and interesting rock she gets) was treated like a second PC and would be brought out anywhere, including into other people's homes, just to let people know she had a bear. Before that she was so obsessed with her characters being the best at everything ever that she'd probably have a meltdown over a lich PC dying.

These days she's improved and merely cries "railroad!" when her character catches a cold, or does things like make a foreign PC and spend enough time going "look at me! I can speak a foreign language you can't!" that people start telling her to knock it off.

That's another thing - you don't need to show off all your character's skills and abilities, especially when it would slow down the game to do so. (Especially don't complain and consider removing the skill entirely when you don't get to, start holding up the game to yell and hurl insults because you don't like the tone of the reply and then demand an apology for the way you were treated.)

Flaws Are A Good Thing

One of the things I like about the BESM system is that it forces and encourages players to take flaws - not the shitty D&D "I'll take a flaw to reduce my primary stat to 16, all right bonus feat!" kind, but things like "I have an NPC nemesis who actively meddles in my affairs!" and "I am claustrophobic!" Characters whose only discernible flaws are all suspiciously related to his dump stats are not particularly interesting, and it's not going to gimp you to be afraid of spiders or something.

Provided you don't ham it up, personality flaws can make your character really interesting, and don't necessarily detract from the character as a whole. I enjoy trolling people, frequently vent and say terrible things about friends to other people to get them off my chest (as seen on this very blog!) and am a huge hypocrite about most of the advice I give but you don't see me getting hate messages.

"But It's In Character!" Is A Stupid Phrase For Dumb Babies

The second half of this article says it better than I probably could, but here's an example.

So one of the PCs in my high school mecha game is a mind-reader and illusionist. One of his personality traits is that he reads the mind of every character he meets and acts very surprised, innocent and offended when people take offense to that. He has explained to me out-of-character that for the PC, mind-touching other people to get a read on their thoughts is as natural to him as a blind person touching someone else's face.

However, nobody gives a damn, because to everyone else he's still a creepy guy who invades people's privacy. Also, he has expressed a preference for re-visiting the minds of cute girls.

Just because you're being in-character doesn't make it fine. It's good that you are, but you should be prepared to accept the consequences of your actions - and if those consequences create problems out of character, it's an even worse excuse and you're a dumb baby. Okay?

Lacking Statistical Correlation Doesn't Make It Funny

Lol, that's so random!

Did you want to punch me in the mouth just now? If so, congratulations, you can skip to the next point.

To everyone else: I have these friends. I really like them, but they actually say "Lol!" out loud and make Portal jokes and I want to break their teeth and make a necklace out of them (bushman's rules). I think if one of them said "that's so random!" I would be making balloon animals with their intestines.

"Random" characters are basically the syphilis of roleplaying games. That's right, I said it. If your character could be described as "random" on his Facebook profile then I'm going to scrunch your character sheet into a ball and force it through your eye socket.

For The Love of God, Diversify

A few of my players have this tendency to play characters very closely to themselves. I've seen various arguments for this behaviour (like highlighting singular character traits that set each character apart from the others or "I treat all my characters as shards of my own personality"), and most of them are flawed. This is usually more pronounced in stressful, life-or-death situations when the player might be more willing to break character and do what they would do to get their PCs out of it.

It can be as something simple as having a lot of characters with the same class and/or race and/or cheese preference, or as complex as having a lot of characters who happen to be intellectual casters who say "Hmmm" a lot. Just... I don't know, try making an orc who likes cheddar for once? Something different.

The more characters you make that aren't like the ones you've made before, the better you become at making characters, and the better your games are for it.

Don't Stuff Straw In Their Butts

This one's a little complicated, so here's the summary. Just because you like something or hate something doesn't mean you can't make good, interesting characters that feel a different way.

I'm going to be edgy! and use politics as an example. Say you're a young and hip left-wing student who hates elves, religion and pudding. You've just gotten behind the DMing screen. What do you do? If your answer is to make a utopia of atheist liberal dwarves who prefer custard, no. Bad hypothetical person!

Here's an interesting experiment: Make a utopia of right-wing pudding-eating elves with a monotheistic religion that adds meaning to their lives, and the dwarves a dystopia.

This is a hard concept for some people to wrap their heads around, for some reason, but you're making a world here. Not everyone in it is going to be alike (usually). People can disagree with you and still be smart, intelligent people who can get things done.

I'm running Savage Tide for some pals - okay, I'm running my own adventure and cribbing from Savage Tide a lot - and they're currently at Farshore. The current de facto leader of the place is this guy Meravanchi, who comes across (at least the way I play him) as fairly lawful and right-wing, and while he is very, very good at running a town, his foreign policy ("let's assimilate the natives and take their land") is disliked by some residents. I tried to set it up so that both him and his opponent had their own merits and drawbacks, and I feel I succeeded.

However, one of my players insists that this makes Meravanchi a "snake" and has had his character threaten to cut ties with NPCs who like his style because his player doesn't like it.

This is what I mean here. If you really want to have varied and interesting characters all over the place, they have to be different. That means not all of them can like the same things or have the same viewpoints on religion, politics, sexuality and toast.

And most importantly, you still have to sell the ones that like things you don't as people the PCs can relate to. They're not evil mentally-damaged strawmen just because you don't like the cut of their jib. They're people - intelligent, interesting, likable people - and you damn well better play them that way.

Phew. That was longer than I thought it was going to be. Still, I hope it helps, even the rambling parts I'll probably need to rewrite and clarify later. Just remember the first one:

You don't make good characters by listening to people telling you how to make good characters. You listen to them and then you work on it until you, too, are able to make good characters and write silly blog posts about twenty people read giving them pointers.

This Is Why We Still Can't Have Nice Things

2009-08-13T14:55:00.010+10:00

Hello there!

I couldn't really decide, so instead, I'm going to do my best to illustrate everything I was submitted.

Yes, it is animated.

Demogorgon is awesome. Demons are awesome. Ask any of my players what comes up in every frigging game I run, and they will tell you demons. Or, if they are feeling snarky, elves or catgirls. Punch them in the face for me.

I don't know why but I really enjoy the idea of planar... stuff. Demons, devils, celestials, rilmani, it's all good. Especially demons, though. And modrons. Unfortunately I got into the tabletop scene just after Planescape was going out of style, and I never got the chance to enjoy it.

I did once get invited to a friend's game, though I was in a silly mood at character creation and rolled a rogue modron rogue who (rogue) worshipped Aoskar and was also a member of the Expansionists. His backstory was that he got mazed a long time ago (I wonder why) and now that he'd finally figured out how to escape he was extremely paranoid and tried to hide. He named himself Incognito and wore a huge fake moustache because he heard these things helped.

My eventual real character was a tiefling monk and a Sensate - only a namer, mind - who liked bar fights, and wanted to start one with every creature in the multiverse. Apparently when I asked around for advice I pissed off a lot of "purists" who forgot that not everyone in a faction is a shining example of perfect philosophy.

Then that friend of mine who was running the game scheduled it at the same time I was playing another game, and suggested that his game was better and I should cancel. I declined. As far as I know his Planescape game isn't even running any more, but I could be wrong.

And so, I still didn't get to play Planescape. It is a little late now, to be honest.

Then April 1 happened, and I made this post.

Around that time I was chatting with some friends in #suptg and discussing the possibility of starting another game. These conversations usually run the same way - things are suggested, we agree they would be cool but don't get around to doing them, I say I don't have time, etc.

But this time...

<Ettin> I could run something silly, cirno
<Ettin> not sure what
<PrivatePlatypoda> Run a steampunk game in 4e, Ettin. In the Forgotten Realms setting.
<Ettin> PP> D:::
<Emo_Duck> Dragonborn boobs. :3
<Ettin> I dunno, "silly game" would probably end up being something retarded
<Ettin> Like it's planescape and the PCs are planar detectives and their secretaries are all catgirl angels in bikinis and the BBEG is scooby doo
<PurpleXVI> I'm in.

A matter of moments later:

<Ettin> OH OH
<Ettin> PURPLE
<Ettin> EVEN BETTER
<Ettin> Run it in BESM
<Ettin> Instead of detectives, magical girls
<LatroPrime> :|
<Ettin> One for each plane
<LatroPrime> ETTIN
<Ruler> :3
<PurpleXVI> The Lady of Pain should turn out to be a little girl in a costume.
<LatroPrime> NORMALLY IT WILL TAKE A LOT TO IMPRESS ME
<Ruler> I'd play it now.
<Ettin> Actually
<LatroPrime> BUT I AM BLOWN AWAY AND I AM STUNNED.
<Ettin> Raise your hand if you would totally play Magical Girl Planescape
<Ruler> Lady of Pain finds a new source of power: Denying little girls ice cream.
<PurpleXVI> ...Ettin, it shames me, but I would give it a shot just to see how awful it would get.

And give it a shot we did.

Planescape: Magical Girls

Yes, shut up, we're doing this.

The system is BESM, because D&D is a big enough pain in the ass to run for things it's supposed to do. The setting is simple: It's Planescape, and for some reason the Lady of Pain has decided that each faction will appoint someone to be given magical girl powers and join a team of magical girls as a sort of Sigil Defense Force. Then D&D adventures happen, except instead of meeting in an inn, they meet in Fell's Ice Cream Parlour.

This is a horrible idea.

It's been all right so far. Kind of like Planescape meets Touhou. The setting lets me use all the bits of PS I like and screw with the bits I don't. And the bits I do, to be honest. Recently I decided to put a bit of modron in there and we're running the Great Modron March module, with a few adjustments.

I occasionally update /tg/ on the game's progress, and if you poke around the SupTG archives you'll find most of the threads. Reactions were interesting - naturally, some people flipped out, and I got some amusement from that in much the same way that I derive enjoyment from reading terrible webcomics. Around the time the first few threads went up someone even came into #suptg to ask why we were being such pedophiles. Good times, good times.

For the record, I specifically banned little girls for this very reason. We might get off on schadenfreude but not on that, and that little rule shut down all but the unfounded speculation (which, to be fair, is all of it).

Anyway, enough of that. Here are the characters that have appeared so far, sorted by faction (or plane)! PCs are in italics.

Athar: Athar-tan is Adie Dawkins, a half-celestial human girl with glasses and an adorable little angel-wings-and-halo set. Adie does not like to be reminded that her father is a god. He thinks it is a phase she will get over when she stops being a teenager.
Believers of the Source: Godsman-tan is Minorin Kawashiro, a pleasant and hard-working girl who likes inventing things. She fights with a backpack full of mechanical parts which she can put together into teleporters, force fields, etc.
Bleak Cabal: Bleaker-tan is Oresta Typhon, another human with an oddly upbeat and extremely naive outlook; she likes to help people, even evil people and demons.
Doomguard: Doomguard-tan is Neitz O'Misree, a heavily-armoured girl who fights with a shapeshifting weapon and is pretty laid-back most of the time. Very clumsy.
Dustmen: Dust-tan is a tengu (well, a humanoid with crow wings) girl who was designed by taking the idea of True Death as an analogue to Nirvana and stretching that as far as possible until we got a Dustman Shaolin monk. Knows kung fu or whatever.
Fraternity of Order: Guvner-tan is Sami Pythagora, a human and a huge nerd. Apparently she was still voted the cutest -tan so far, though. Best friends and occasional roommates with Bleaker-tan.
Free League: Indep-tan is Henrietta Winkler, a laid-back human who works at a maid cafe near the Great Bazaar. The Indeps aren't a real faction, so Indep-tan is pretty much anyone who qualifies and feels like it, but she's been around a while now.
Harmonium: Harmonium-tan is Aribeth de Tylmarande, an elf from Faerûn who wants to be a paladin and tries to combine the Harmonium's outlook with a Lawful Good paladin of Tyr's outlook. Once let Revolu-tan become her roommate. It's like the Odd Couple only with magical girls.
Mercykillers: Mercy-tan is actually two people, a pair of half-elf twins. Alexandra Enoreth (also known as Sons of Mercy-tan, or Son-tan) is a kind-hearted Lawful Good crusader who tries to punish people ~~in the name of the moon~~ for great justice, and her sister Cassandra is a half-barmy Lawful probably-Evil crusader who likes hurting people. Luckily the PCs have only encountered Alexandra so far - Cassandra is generally attacking people on Mechanus or something - but since the only visual difference is the hair, have they really?
Revolutionary League: Revolu-tan is Kunin Ropokin (aka Revolutionary Girl Kunin), an half-elf who is somehow in the group despite being a freaking Anarchist. Actually she is more of a Communist.
Sign of One: Signer-tan is Rene Cartesia, a tiefling from the gate-town of Hopeless who has found happiness with the power of IMAGINATION! (yes it has to be coloured every time.) She is from a long line of tieflings and has the blood of so many fiends within her she can will herself into a different form depending on what is needed or looks cool (horns, goat legs, marilith form, fire breath, etc.).
Society of Sensation: Sensate-tan is Lagina, a tiefling raised by modrons who shoots spice-flavoured laser beams and has an obsession with cakes.
Transcendent Order: Cipher-tan is Sakura, an Oriental human from Rokugan who is also a ninja and dresses like Taki and wields a katana. (I pretty much designed her to annoy someone specific!) Her family was slain by demons and she is incredibly zealous about hunting fiends.
Xaositects: Xaosi-tan is Katy, some kind of chaos planetouched. All the PCs are scared of her. Exploits so far have included being "random", shouting "DOOOOM!", exploding in a shower of penguins, pretending she is a door, insisting she is a modron and convincing real modrons of such, and convincing modrons to "do the modron!" while singing a Modron March version of Thriller.

There are other -tans based on the Planes, but most of them haven't come up and I've typed enough.

Sure, it sounds ridiculous, and it is, but it's fun. That's what matters.

My "Settings": Epilogue

2009-07-30T16:56:00.005+10:00

In more TVTropes-related news that nobody who reads this thing actually gives a crap about: It has been drawn to my attention that the entire "I Am Not Making This Up" entry has been deleted, complete with a discussion page that seems to be populated almost entirely by people who wear their pants on their head.

Naturally, in the meantime someone posted the following story to the completely unmoderated page I was making fun of last post:

Last night, (6/26-27/09) this troper dmed a 3.5 campaign set around finding and killing a great warlock bent on sapping the world of magic. On one adventure during the campaign, I had set the party off to finding and killing a large snake-like creature, so that the king of the dwarves within the city would give them passage through to the underground cave that was normally fit for royals to exit in case of immenant evacuation. Well, the party headed off to gain supplies at a store selling most everything needed for a good adventuring trip. It was over seven hundred words, good lord, I pasted this thing into Microsoft Word to do a word count and it nearly took up an entire A4 page, there is even an aside 100+ words long describing everything in terms of Super Smash Brothers, no seriously look:

...Coup de grâce on the creature, finishing it off in a super smash brother's smash attack combo like none has ever seen. To my mind it was like Having Marth on one side and Shiek on the other (the level being Final Destination) while Ike is doing Great Aether, Knuckle Joe and Smashing it, the hammer brothers are throwing hammers up at it at the same time and palkia and dialga are going back and forth slicing it, lynn strikes it and as Ike brings the creature down to the ground both Marth and Shiek release their attacks, a huge light arrow from one end and critical hit from the other, dealing so much damage and epicness that instead of the creature being shot off in some random direction while yelling "we're blasting off again!!!" *ding*, it just disappears in a puff of smoke and confetti Halo 3 style. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.

My brain is now permanently damaged.

Of course, I am told that I would have to be brain damaged to come up with some of the settings I've run, which makes this only a 6 on the 1-10 Awkward Segue Scale.

I haven't mentioned a few settings yet - most of them, because they're not fleshed out, or even not mine (e.g.: Eberron, if I ever ran it). This post is dedicated to those, to let some people know what I am doing.

And if you scroll down, I tried 4th Edition!!

Chelsea Clinton High School

A few posts ago I mentioned I'd like to do ">Something set in some kind of unusual high school, because for some reason I've been pretty interested in that." And so I did!

Actually the game is called "BESMecha" by the players, because it's in BESM and has mecha. Normally naming a game when you're a player seems to be (at least when I'm the DM) some kind of weird gateway drug to composing "soundtracks" for the game to show off your "musical talent" and trying to make everyone listen to and comment on your retitled Guilty Gear vs. SNK songs that are vaguely thematic, but at this point I have digressed so hard that I am now going to have to go through several seasons worth of dimension-hopping and poor storylines just to get back to the original point, which was describing this game.

Short version: Far future. Humanity has spread into the rest of the Solar System (a prototype faster-than-light ship went to Alpha Centauri and never came back or established contact) and divided into three economic blocks:

Atlantic-Pacific Treaty Organization, pretty much the US + Canada + the UK + Australia + Japan + New Zealand, I guess.
the New European-Russian Union, aka the rest of Europe + Russia, and
the East Asian Alliance, which is fairly obvious.

...And a few other states fending for themselves nobody cares about. The point is, for some reason a bunch of kids have started to show strange psychic powers (generally telekinesis, telepathy etc.) and the government (in this case APTO) has decided to enrol a lot of them in a military high school on the Moon where they just happen to be able to get mecha.

Yes, it is fairly loose on the science.

So far it's doing pretty well, though there have been a few problems that usually stem from BESM being an easily breakable system (advice to all readers: openly considering giving your character permanent mind-control powers and then insisting you're joking usually goes down about as well as calling someone a "borderline dog molestor" and acting surprised when they're offended). Then again, the latest edition of BESM explicitly states that the rules rely on people using some damn common sense, so what the hell.

MEarth

Another horrible name for a horrible game aw snap!

The M is for Magic! It's one of those "Modern setting only magic is real!!!1" things, which so far has been an excuse for whatever silliness I can come up with. So far the game has included

Lethacoatl, an Aztec god trapped under an ice cream store
Mad scientists who can make weather machines and spaceships that travel through dimensions but can't make money
A land of dreams guarded by a lawful/chaotic pair of gatekeepers who mostly pester each other
Kukulkan challenging the PCs to soccer
Internet wizards
Immortal pirate businessmen
Edward Lincoln riding a time-traveling wooly rhinoceros
The Yith as time-traveling energy beings devoted entirely to running temporal zoos, with preserving the space-time continuum as a secondary objective
A Roman firefighter ghost haunting a phone box
Isaac Newton founding an order of wizard-assassins
Extremely irritable Super Nintendo machines
Witches, wizards, warlocks and webcomic artists
Specifically, shapeshifting gorilla webcomic artists
Bunyips
An angel so small his occupation is sitting on shoulders and his "mighty steed" is an RC car
Fenrir is female
The Ghost of the Internet, a major villain despite the fact that he doesn't actually exist yet in-universe and little of his backstory is logically consistent
Aliens obsessed with disco

The PCs are a detective-wizard, a soccer player who gets his powers from Lethacoatl (whose remains he kept in a duffel bag), a myconid, and the first PC's NPC witch girlfriend's PC familiar.)

I love this genre, I really do.

4th Edition

Yep, I did it.

A bunch of IRL pals wanted to get into D&D, and I figured I'd break their tabletop virginity on 4th Edition. We're running Keep on the Shadowfell; right now we're in the middle of Irontooth's lair, which is a bitch of an encounter.

It's hard for me to give thoughts on 4E yet; I want to play it a little more, first. Also, this is really not the right group for qualitative playtesting. At the moment it consists of

A friend and veteran gamer playing a cleric of the Raven Queen to fill a player slot (doing a pretty good job)
An "Unaligned" human fighter who tends to assume everything works like a console RPG and is clearly into hack-and-slash with the minimum of talking
Another human, this one a rogue, who has at least played a bit of D&D before and whose only flaw is his character tends to insult people a lot and his player metagames
An openly evil tiefling warlock whose player assured me he can play evil well

So, er, yeah, going well.

The warlock has at least avoided the whole "kill! maim! burn!" chaotic-stupid way of playing Evil; most of any problems he causes stem from not thinking things through properly. Once I talked him out of "giving" a kobold minion he'd Intimidated into service to the village wizard, having it rob the wizard of his scrolls, and framing the rogue.

He's also the source of the comic; the adventure is set around the village of Winterhaven, which is having a kobold problem. The mayor is offering 100gp for the problem to be dealt with, though nobody had stated the price by the time the adventurers approached him. The book also mentions that the mayor has respect for "heroes" and not "treasure-hunters", which I took to mean he didn't like greedy people who seemed to be in it for the money.

Either way, though, it's generally a bad idea to play the "we're amazing adventurers and don't care about you enough to stay behind and stop you all dying unless you give us lots of money" extortion card against a farming village when you're level 1 and nobody has heard of you.

I'm not sure exactly what will happen when villagers start telling them how impressed they are with the PCs being modest and charitable enough to accept a lesser price, but it's going to be interesting.

That's all for this week. Next week, by popular demand: Planescape: Magical Girls!

Not Awesome

2009-05-31T12:37:00.020+10:00

Not awesome at all.

For a change, here is a comic that is not self-contained; it is from a game I am a player in, the same as the previous comic. One of the other players is some kind of Evil warlock whose apparent goal is party conflict. The events depicted are true, including the party cleric Calm Emotions-ing everyone. I was told I should totally draw this, though it is quite possibly the most underwhelming thing that has ever happened.

Speaking of - awkward segue! - you've probably seen me link TVTropes before. It's basically Wikipedia for fiction tropes, and a lot more informal - but like Wikipedia, in the shadows of the discussion pages lurk an army of hooting monkeys with the sense of humour of a Betamax tape ready to argue for countless posts about stupid details nobody actually cares about, like whether or not you are allowed to say "I".

This post is not about those people.

You see, there is a sort of point to that - a lot of the people who say "I" are just rambling on about themselves, and if there is one thing nobody gives a crumpet about it is people who write about themselves on a tropes wiki. Unless it's awesome.

For example, there's the page for Crowning Moment of Awesome. What is that, you ask? Well if you clicked the link you'd know it was "the moment when a fictional character does something for which they will be remembered forever, winning for them the eternal loyalty of fans," idiot.

There are specific entries for "Tabletop RPGs" and "D&D", which are mostly people talking about their "awesome" characters. Unfortunately, these "awesome" characters are often... well, finger-quotes exist for this kind of shit.

I'd like to stick to D&D for now, because I am lazy, but nobody has bothered to check these pages for true awesomeness, or even format them; either a bunch of D&D tales were left in the "Other/Unspecified Game" section by mistake or some people are stupid. So let's start there, shall we?

"This troper DMed a game where a character, a rogue/cleric of a chaotic good homebrew god, was fighting in a floating house one thousand and five hundred feet off the ground, against a nigh-invulnerable construct not unlike an inevitable. The cleric, seeing that this thing was powerful, jumped out of a window, summoned a celestial hippogriff, and flew to safety. Awesome."

Awesome retreat, guys!

Can you imagine doing that and trying to explain why it was great to someone else?

"Well, we were in a floating house, and there was this nigh-invulnerable construct. It was powerful!"
"So what did you do to it?"
"I ran away."
"What?"
"I cast a simple summon monster spell, summoned something that could fly, and ran away."
"...Is that it?"
"Of course!"
"..."
"Awesome."

No.

"This troper had two different CMOAs in his first and only campaign. The first occurred during an indoor map where his ranger, after a series of unsuccessful attacks, manages to land a critical on a guard with each sword!"

The hard part is trying to read through these while keeping in mind this is a list of "moment when a fictional character does something for which they will be remembered forever". That's right, this guy's most awesome thing ever was rolling two criticals! What are the odds?!

But wait, there's more!

"The second, and even more awesome, was during a section where the party was intended to wipe, but most of them were so experienced in the game that the DM had to bring out a high-level wizard to cast Fireball."

wow, what a formidable opponent

"The attack managed to knock everyone to 0 HP or lower...except me. This gave me one turn to act, and given few options, I eventually blurt out "play dead". Even though I have no ranks in anything that should give me skill in that. And I pull it off!"

I want to laugh, but the sad little exclamation mark at the end there makes me feel guilty about doing so.

Why do people confuse "awesome" with "cowardly"? If you made a last stand and took everyone down, that would have been awesome. If you made a last stand and got killed, but heroically, it could still be considered awesome. You played dead? Yeah, good idea, but I wouldn't say "awesome". I would say "nobody gives a shit".

"We had a campaign that was so amazing that EVERY character in it had at least one of these. At LEAST."

The examples listed after that are mostly pretty decent, actually, but I really can't get over the gratuitous use of capital letters ("DESTROYS the thing in ONE ROUND") like this only just happened and the writer hasn't had time to get flaccid.

Minor point, though:

"The skald, whose exploits were so legendary I couldn't possibly come up with one example. Let me put it this way: she was a gnome with levels split between bard and barbarian. She had a constitution score so high that she had over 250 hit points by level 21, even though the majority of her hit dice were d6."

Pro Tip for young writers: Show, don't tell. One example of these legendary exploits is fine. Really. Please stop masturbating.

I won't argue the bard/barb thing (one time I half-jokingly argued that a DM can stat a tarrasque with class levels if he wants with someone who insisted my group and I weren't "mature enough to play a real roleplaying game"), but if having a high Constitution score at epic levels is legendary, then I'm a plesiosaur. And since I don't see flippers...

"In one campaign I was in we were facing a Troll that was chained up. My ranger then went behind the Troll, grabbed the chain and pulled. The Troll went down and we were able to finish him off."

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

Really. Really? This is your ranger's defining moment of awesomeness? You grabbed the chain? And pulled, even? And what happened next? Did someone make a statue of your ranger? Maybe when your PC finally dies they can put it on your tombstone: "Here lies Ranger Guy. He grabbed the chain and pulled.". Because that is a crowning moment of awesome.

Oh wait, no it isn't. Go ride a wheelbarrow of dicks.

"This troper has DMed a scene that was fairly awesome. (3.5, level 1 PCs)"

"Fairly" awesome? You come onto the Crowning Moment of Awesome page to tell a "fairly" awesome story? Fuck you!

"Well, from the PCs' point of view it might have been called "humorously pathetic."

You can almost hear the DM touching himself from here.

"There were only a few players so the party at that comprised then of a human fighter and a halfling rogue."

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

"Thew [sic] were in, essentially, a hall of doors. About six doors in the rogue is tired of hunting for traps. In the next segment of passage is found a seven foot deep pool of clear water with a chest at the bottom. The human [...] dived in. He [...] stayed under long enough to tie the rope around the lock in the chest. [...] He motioned to the halfling to start pulling on the rope as he lifted the chest himself. As soon as the chest was moved the water began draining downward and acid began [...] filling the 'top' of the pool. Now out of air in his lungs the fighter swam through the acid, lugging an iron chest [...] He made it out with major burns, but with the chest. The chest contained two drowned rats and a broken wand."

I decided to cut out entire chunks of that wall of text because if I made you read the entire thing for that terrible payoff I think you would have killed me.

Honestly, is that it? They nearly killed themselves for nothing? Is this supposed to be awesome? Because instead it is kind of like the trap and treasure described: a painful, retarded waste of everybody's time.

"Feeling foolish, the pair headed for the next door. The rogue searched for traps again and found nothing with a roll of 17. Feeling secure they opened the door and were struck head on by a flash trap that blinded them both. The halfling stumbled back, 'into' the acid. Now both temporarily blind the fighter had to take the rope, throw it to the halfling and pull him out."

You can kind of tell why there were only two people playing at the time, can't you?

There's more, but it's just more of the same stupid bullshit.

Hurr hurr, guys, I totally screwed two PCs over with a stupid trap that wasted everyone's time and then totally set off another trap in their faces! Crowning moment of awesome right here!

By the way, did the halfling actually fall in or did the DM just declare he did? Either way, this story is fucking stupid.

"This troper's managed to GM one of these combined with a Crowning Moment Of Funny in the first session of his Maid: the RPG campaign."

:|.

I think it's time to go to the D&D page. It will take me a while to find some bad things in there oh wait never mind here's the second one:

"This troper once played a single-classed Fighter who had a feat that gave him a free attack whenever he was hit with a critical. A shadow dragon on it's last legs proceeded to critical the fighter to negative HP, and with my last attack, I rolled a natural 20. Not a single player would refer to me killing the dragon by any other means than hitting it in the nuts. The fighter's name? "Lord Kittensquisher", due to the DM's fondness for cat-like enemies, and unfortunate tendency to walk them into melee range. This troper took down a displacer beast Packlord with one round of hits. Ah, good times."

Source on feat, please. (Is this balanced or not? I can't tell. Honestly, since he's playing a fighter, he probably needs everything he can get.

As for the rest of it:

Actually, you know what? Screw you, Lord Kittensquisher. You're not even un-awesome enough to feature prominently in this blog post.

"This troper fondly remembers an impromptu D&D campaign he got involved with, where his first task was to take out not one but two cyclopes. He did, just barely, in no small part to flicking green sparks into their eyes to blind them."

A pattern emerges.

See, whenever I read these, a little voice in the back of my mind asks: "and then what happened?" It is waiting for the crowning moment, the definitively epic conclusion to the end of this tale. Not "I blinded them cause they had eyes

Where did these green sparks come from, anyway? Is this a spell? Was it prestidigitation, or a spell that is actually intended to blind people?

"This troper was once playing a game of D&D as my signature Half-Elf rogue/bard, Tobac, and was running away from a balor, along with my band of NPC rogues and 2 lower level PC companions. My friend, who played Davror, my high level Half-Orc half brother who had been killed, was, through months of pestering of the DM, just brought back as an even higher level angel. He was my guardian angel, and if I were to die, he would be banished from the material plane..."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

A "signature" character which the other players are lower-level "companions" of? Are you perhaps journeying through Marysutopia?

The rest of the wall of text is, well, a wall of text, but it basically runs as follows: "I was trying to survive the balor until my angel half-brother showed up! It killed most of my NPC followers. Then the other PCs who apparently enjoy this rubbish either sacrificed themselves to save me or were thrown at the balor by me. Then my high-level bodyguard showed up and killed the balor in a few rounds. Then I went to recruit some more NPCs."

What is wrong with your DM? This isn't Dungeons and Dummies. This is the roleplaying equivalent of taking a huge steaming dump in everyone's laps while they thank you for the ice-cream.

"This Troper had a half-elf ranger who, through variants and ability switching, had a base land speed of 60 ft. Combined with a Str of 18, his total Jump modifier was +40. So, because I could, my character leaped 60 ft horizontally from one tower to another. Anything less than 20 was failure. Leap of faith, indeed."

Really? And then what happened?

"D&D. Twenty-three cultists. My gnome sorcerer. One fireball. Damage roll, and...twenty-three dead cultists. How many people can say they're made their own jaw drop?"

grats on killing mooks

you are special

"Okay, I've seen a few of these. One of them was when a player was a Half-Orc Barbarian, and he was up against an army of 20 goblins, and was only about Level 1..."

I'm not targeting this one for its content so much as I am for the fact that the whole thing is a series of bullet points that fills my screen and is filled with sad little exclamation marks and liberal use of even sadder capital letters. I keep imagining someone actually trying to explain these examples to people:

"Also, don't forget that our PCs managed to succeed in breaking the will of the Big Bads of TWO Adventures."
"Really?"
"Kalarel of Keep on Shadowfell, and Palamar of Thunderspire Labyrinth. Kalarel by a CLERIC OF BAHAMUT cheating in a fight, and Palamar by 12 Success skill challenge!"
"You don't have to shout, I'm right..."
"...Involving tricking Palamar and friends to fighting amongst EACH OTHER over the possibility that the PCs had the EYE OF VECNA!"
"Oh god, my ears! My virgin ears!"

Another Pro Tip: Capitalising things to make them more dramatic does not work if you are capitalising a significant fraction of your writing output. Tone it down, please.

Unfortunately for you guys, I really can't be bothered sifting through the rest of this mix of wonder and garbage. The little thrills that may be obtained from deriding something which is bad are very nice, but like most drugs they take their toll on the body, especially if you overdose.

For now: As a sort of antidote, I want to hear your awesome stories. Anonymous posting is on and you are free to omit names, if it is required.

Tell you what - I will draw the most awesome stories posted by, oh, let's say a month from now. Don't be shy!

Stupid Evil

2009-05-22T11:09:00.003+10:00

There are some things I just want to punch in the face.

As part of my university degree I do things in a physics lab, and also in this lab is a guy with... a face. It’s not ugly, as such, it’s just he has these huge lips and a big nose and something about them makes me want to punch him. (Lately he has been growing an afro and a little moustache, which is not helping at all.) I also have an acquaintance who insists on responding to things people say with “you do realise that...” when he isn’t asking a question.

I would also enjoy hitting at least half the population of the TV Tropes forum.

The top of the list, though, is evil PCs.

I will admit I am a little biased. The first ever time I DMed a friend of mine (well, ex- now, she cut off contact with me years ago over a D&D argument of all things) decided she wanted to play a Chaotic Evil character, and since this was a first-level game she ended up nearly killing another PC so she could loot a masterwork scimitar. (On the upside, she swiftly got bored and rolled some kind of snarky halfling instead.) Since then I have not seen evil PCs played much better.

The main problem, I think, is that nearly all of them were played with the same goal in mind: create party conflict, screw over the other PCs if they can get away with it, and generally shit on the game. Contrary to what some people might think this does not amuse me.

There isn’t actually much that I mind, as far as games getting screwed up go. My players have told me they feel they aren’t on rails and can do what they like, and half of my adventures start with me sitting down and saying “Okay, what kind of adventure do you guys want to have?” and rolling from there. (Generally they take turns picking adventures related to their character’s interests.) If they happen to find something fun then sure, whatever.

What bugs me, I suppose, is when one person’s idea of fun is something that happens at the expense of others.

You probably know what I mean. The party rogue killing the party when they are low on health just before the campaign’s end is a pretty unsatisfying ending for everyone else, finding your wand of healing relocated to the party kender’s pocket when you really needed it is not enjoyable, etc. (Then again, it is probably your fault for partying with a kender.) It’s especially annoying if the person in question brags (“oh man, I screwed everyone over sooo good last week!”) or cries (“You didn’t like that? What are you, a faggot?”) as well.

Evil characters can work, I’ll grant you that, but you need to play the character well, not just for the sake of starting that kind of trouble, and be prepared to accept any consequences of your actions. And you probably need the right kind of group to work – a group which, should you try to screw them over, won’t feel like they were abused for someone else’s enjoyment.

You probably need a DM who isn’t biased, also.

My "Settings": Otherworld

2009-05-07T17:25:00.009+10:00

Extra-long(ish) update for my fans (both of you) who I am sure were waiting anxiously for one!

For the record, that was a late (unless you don't like stupid rules) and lame (unless you don't like stupid things, oh snap) April Fool's. I even like Pratchett!

At first I was going to leave it up for two weeks, because though I don't link this thing much other people do and I got to see some people go "oh my god is he serious D:<" two weeks later. Then I just couldn't think of anything to write. See, I wanted to finish with my 'main' homebrew setting, Otherworld. (In case you're wondering, it's a placeholder name which has lasted for years and become the name by virtue of my being unable to think of anything else.) Why this was hard will become apparent in a few paragraphs when I stop babbling.

It was (is) my first setting, and so I constructed it in the manner which I assume (pending the ability to assert) most other DMs did, by following these ten simple steps:

Start with an idea which was probably shit anyway
"Borrow" or "pay homage to" things from other settings you like (read: steal blatantly)
Toss a few more ideas you had on the way in there
Do #2 again
Complain liberally about the things about other settings you don't like, contemplate how these things could be better, put them in
Have an original idea
Make up something you can actually use as the plot of a campaign
Watch your players ignore most of it
Retcon things like there's no tomorrow
Repeat steps 2, 4 and honestly pretty much every step including this one.

So, I did. Step ten was particularly difficult. There were only a few short bumps in the road caused by players being a little too liberal in making up character backstories; one of my players once presented to me a new character, her homebrew race of gorgons, complete with a backstory that involved a war between the races to see who was the coolest every thousand years which her race naturally won a lot until the elves (who had apparently had a massive cultural alignment shift in my own setting when I wasn't looking) beat them up unfairly, or something, and committed genocide or whatever and now her character was the last of her kind and being hunted or something because their tears were very valuable and aaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuggggghhhhh.

What was I talking about...

Oh, yeah. So that is what I did for my setting. But, every time I look at it now - and it's still incomplete, because I've left large sections of the setting blank out of laziness or lack of ideas I feel are worthy enough - I can't help but think "man, most of these ideas are probably terrible or not original enough." Sometimes I even just loathe that humans, dwarves, elves etc. are there and not original races. But since the things I occasionally hate are a core part of the setting, and I am not Metzen, I do not feel like performing major surgery just yet.

That doesn't mean I think the setting is bad, or I am fishing for praise, though. On the whole I like it, it's just that for some reason describing my work in glowing terms feels almost as pretentious as using phrases like "dear reader".

I'll skim the basics, though. If you do not want to read all this shit, please scroll down to the red line of text marking the ending and I will talk about the strip!

Otherworld is my standard setting for 3.5 D&D, and as such contains a lot of the trappings you'd expect (i.e. ornamental coverings for a horse). I have heard it described as a "pastiche" or a "satire" by players whom I trust because they tell me how great a DM I am a lot. I won't bother covering much history, because it is mostly an excuse for swords-and-sorcery action, but here are the Cliff Notes:

In the beginning, the world was created. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Stuff happened.
The various ancient civilisations that predated everyone else popped up, and then promptly collapsed out of historical etiquette.
The major races of the world today got their act together and sorted out most of their nations.
About five thousand years ago, powerful demons decided to establish themselves as the primary antagonists of the setting (what can I say, I love demons) by appearing to major leaders and whispering in their ears, corrupting people, etc. This made a lot of people very angry, created some interesting new races and caused interesting things to happen to many of the existing ones.
Demon problem was solved via careful application of extreme violence and hostility.
Gods decide to intervene in the protection of the world, and create the Titans, four powerful elemental quasi-divine beings charged with making sure everything is hunky-dory.
The Titans get bored and decide to use their divine powers to create life. They also decide to ignore anyone who points out they're a little late.
The Titans create dragons.
The Titans decide to make this race a king, and create the very first Hydra, a being which quite resembles Tiamat.
The Hydra goes completely off the deep end with power, to the surprise of nobody.
Chromatic dragons are rallied to its cause. Metallic dragons ally with the Titans. A colour-coded dragon war begins.
Eventually the Titans destroy the Hydra (and most of a continent in the process) by combining like Voltron and then exploding, neatly avoiding "what the hell were you doing" interrogations from the gods afterwards.
The gods wisely decide to back away from the world slowly and stop mucking about.
And so on, until whatever the present time is.

Current races include:

Humans, who are to mundanity what the modrons are to perfect law - adaptable and relatable;

Dwarves, who follow a philosophy of the harmony of opposites which influences them to live on mountain peaks and underground, worship elementals and a small pantheon of gods, and have very few women which are allowed to take multiple husbands and tend to be wizards;

Elves, which come in two flavours with cultural differences; the "main" elves, which live in a jungle on the eastern continent and ride dinosaurs, and the "vanilla" elves who live near the humans in pretty woods (with giant mushrooms for housing, though) for people who are boring;

Gnomes, swamp-dwellers with a thirst for knowledge and a drive for creativity (in music and magitech, mostly) who also happen to think secrets exist for a reason and free press is weird. Gnomes who go around saying "I just LOVE to tinker!" and making stupid things like mechanical chickens are like their version of senile people and usually put in "special homes";

Faeri, who are actually elemental humanoids kind of like genasi that just look like fey (hence the name) spawned from the remains of the Titans, who still haven't been perfected because I need a name that's actually good and their racial stats are still a little all over the place...

There are a few minor races like naga (elves which sided with the mariliths that showed up to corrupt people in the bad old days and have more in common than Warcraft naga, cough), sthein (stolen from Bastards & Bloodlines with an only-slightly-edited backstory), drow (you can be a chaotic good rebel or a chaotic good non-rebel from the chaotic good surface city of Drizzimatizz!), orcs (read: pirates), goblins (little demon-worshipping bastards), asian people, etc.

Sadly, there are still no black people in this setting.

There's also some nations! Made with geography! Real geography!

Short version:

There are four continents known: Lerioth ('primary' one, humans and dwarves etc. mostly), Nhaudan (exotic eastern jungle land, humans and elves), Abudhamos (shattered by the Titans and a mysterious wasteland, but you can bet there are humans in it!) and Taishiria (for Oriental Adventures games).

I can't be bothered listing every nation and their nuances, and most of the map is still... unmapped (you won't believe how handy a continent-spanning mountain range is for avoiding having to flesh out chunks of your setting), but I can run through the basics again. Lerioth has (in alphabetical order):

Aldanath, fairly standard medieval fantasy kingdom which is recovering from two wars (one of them covered in that campaign I mentioned once!) with a lich and developing some pretty sweet magitech to get back on their feet;
Brellan, swampy and partially mountainous gnome homeland with the occasional gnome-built floating city (and I hope you liek oozes!);
Czeras, vanilla elf land built in the forests of Linde'taure nobody else wanted because the giant mushrooms smelled weird;
Dall, the mysterious homeland of the dwarves in that huge mountain range I mentioned;
Drizzimatizz, a hidden surface drow city dedicated to Eilistraee ecause all those chaotic good drow rebels had to go somewhere;
A land of Druids and nature which I have fleshed out so little it doesn't have a name;
Epinoza, which would be a bit like the toga version of Greece if I bothered fleshing it out more as well;
Genera, a floating island city-state of wizards in pointy hats and beards;
Glaswegia, a little-known snowy country in the mountains which is reportedly very cold;
Jai-Kaldor, the obligatory powerful city-state in the middle of things that is not Waterdeep or Ankh-Morpork in any way;
and Rayaleigh, an extremely mountainous place inhabited by peery Germans, or at least peery what-I-think-Central/Eastern-Europeans-are-like-having-done-little-to-no-research.... s.

That covers about half the map. The rest just has "STUFF" and "UM" written on it. My players suggest that these are actually plains, travelled by the dreaded Um Horde of barbarians which prevent anyone crossing the mountains from returning alive.

The Iriscian Islands, are an island chain which links Lerioth to Nhaudan, and has a lot of ruins and pirate action between Rune (a good(ish) city-state which used to be part of Kaldor before that stopped being a kingdom) and Skull City (the obligatory evil(ish) "monster city" which is where most orcs probably come from). Nhaudan itself has:

Cabelaba, the first human nation on Nhaudan which happens to be the most boring by far;
Gnoll Country, an unimaginatively-named lawless stretch of badlands which seperates the human places on the western side of the eastern continent from the elves on the eastern side;
Jhaka-Szark, neutral evil wizard peninsula which is in no way Thay;
Khanjo, jungle land of jungle elves living in cities high on mesas;
Merchant City, the port city to the west where time is money, money is everything and assassins are legal, a polite way of conducting business and a government body;
and Paladinia, a lawful good theocracy which just happens to be north of Jhaka. Actually, Paladinia is the name of the capital city, but I forgot the name I came up with for the whole thing (a sure sign that I didn't like it anyway) and I can't bring myself to use a player's suggestion of "Aclerica". Then again, I was planning to name the True Neutral outer plane Switzerland.

That is pretty much it. I'd include cosmology but this is way too long already (at least new players can read it later and get aquainted) and, as any of my players will tell you, it changes every two weeks when I get a new idea. So, that is it for now.

And now, in red text as promised for those tl;drs among us, the comic!

It was actually intended to be filler, but I couldn't think of something that applies to my setting (note to players preparing incriminating comments about things I left out: shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh). It is true, though. God, I wish it wasn't.

Sometimes my players read this thing. Most of them don't - I'm sure if most of the people involved actually read Natural 21 they would have had a conniption fit - but a lot of them (at least, those I met in /tg/-related rooms) do read those comics I post here and to that board under the This Just Happened title (the oldies would make good filler, actually...) and, sometimes, they get the wrong idea.

Specifically, that I am in the business of drawing awesome things my players did.

I have a few problems with "awesome" D&D stories, one of them being that most of the "awesome" D&D stories people tell are awesome or fake. (For more on that, see the post I promise to make in the next couple days.) The main one, though, is "terrible" D&D stories are funnier.

Admit it, hearing about someone doing cool things, while fun, is not as fun as hearing about just how bad a player is. There's a perverse pleasure in swapping tales of (and heckling) things that are bad. That's why I still have Ctrl+Alt+Del and Dominic Deegan bookmarked. Not that my players are that bad - most of them are quite lovely, and I will dedicate a post to them one day, I promise - but that don't make for good reading, and the silly things they do on occasion are more fun to vent about anyway. It's cathartic.

Sometimes they don't get the message, though. Back when this was just a few comics posted on /tg/ every once in a while, I ran a game where one player got a lucky critical hit and I decided his frenzied brokenserker removed the arm of an ultroloth bad guy. He decided this was awesome.

He demanded I draw a comic of it for months.

The answer was no. At the time I'd just drawn players doing silly things, and "my player critted and cut a yugoloth's arm off, and he begged me to draw it" seemed to break the flow.

Besides, trying to get a discount fiendish arm graft from it in Paladinia and declaring he would kill anyone, PC or NPC, who objected was a much better subject.

Well, you know what? I guess it is a little harsh. I have drawn something for a player last week - partly because it was a good opener to a post I've had in mind for a while now - so I suppose I can draw things my friends did that are awesome for them.

Just don't expect me to write this many words on how great you are.

How To Fix Planescape

2009-04-01T13:37:00.002+11:00

I have been running campaigns since 1980, and I have had my basic philosophy about being a DM since pretty much day one...though it took years to hone it to a fine edge. One of the things I learned later was that like every human being, every edition of D&D must have its own asshole. It's always something, something marring the setting and becoming the giant gaping rectal cavity of this generation's D&D lineup.

For 4th Edition, it's the pointless change and cynical pandering to MMO-addicted basement-dwellers who wouldn't know good fluff or roleplaying if it crawled out of the gravetrees of the Deepdark and bit them in the ass. For 3.5, it was CharOp, the colon of the Wizards forums, where people with self-diagnosed Asperger's gather to complain about social interaction and do math. For 3.0, it was being released early and shitty and swiftly replaced with the superior 3.5.

For 2E, it was the settings.

These things were so bad, they were the reason TSR nearly folded and had to be sold to Lorraine Williams. In a matter of years, the company put out Al-Qadim, Birthright, Council of Wyrms, Spellfire, Dark Sun, Kara-Tur, Rokugan, Planescape, Ravenloft, Athas, Mystara, Greyhawk and Spelljammer, hoping against hope that one of them would become a blockbuster. Spoilers: How many of those got a book in 3.x? Yeah, none. That's because it ended up in the hands of Wizards, who decided to cut back on the bullshit and release only a few settings.

One of them (which was palmed off to a bunch of grognards with a fansite) was Planescape, which ranks up there as one of the all-time worst settings devised. It started life as a cynical attempt to score some more money off gamers by re-releasing the same material (by taking the Great Wheel from Forgotten Realms and applying it to every setting ever) and, in an attempt to disguise it, covered it in Dr Seuss artwork and more ham-fisted philosophy bullshit than Terry Pratchett trying to write a Discworld book after about 1987.

In short: You play on the Outer Planes. There's a convenient Adventure City (TM) you're forced into, where everyone forms into guilds based on philosophical theories that would be laughed out by anyone who actually finished their philosophy degree and is kept in line by a giant floating DMPC, because they couldn't think of an original or interesting way to keep players in line outside of "an invincible lady kills you!!11". Oh yeah, and there were supposedly an infinite series of badly-designed parallel dimensions like Baator and Pandemonia which were full of interesting and playable ideas; if only it didn't have to be one or the other.

Anyway, over the years I've been thinking long and hard about this (if you know me, you know I'm a planar lorefag) and I have some suggestions for those DMs that want to make Planescape workable.

Sigil

If you don't want to just get rid of it, at least either remove the Lady of Pain, stat her up, or make it Aoskar's divine realm. Boom, done, no major changes.

Factions

Get rid of these, and set up one for every major alignment instead. Boom, done. (If you're up to it, do some goddamn research and rework the factions to base them on real schools of philosophical thought instead.)

The Planes

Elemental: Just roll all the elemental, quasi-elemental and para-elemental planes into one big elemental soup (hey, look! Something 4E got right!). Keep positive/negative if you want.
Elysium: The good planes are actually hard for me to comment on, because naturally nothing interesting or fun ever goes on there. How about this: The celestials get their own Blood War! They can fight in Elysium, which would be like Heaven only fluffy cloud cities floating over a battlefield where the happy flowers and stuff from before the Holy Wars continually regrow admist the bodies. It'd explain why the celestials don't just smash the fiends while they're busy with the Blood War, anyway.

And while we're at it... is it me or was the guy who invented "guardinals" probably in a giant orgy pile at a fur convention at the time? durrr, humans are too evil to be angelic! Let's get some anthropomorphic horses and draw erotica of them in the Book of Exalted Deeds! Seriously, just use devas instead.

The Beastlands: Honestly this plane is fine as-is, though I'd be careful since the fluff is probably a furry's wet dream these days.
Arborea: Why the fuck would you give a race its own plane? Kick out elves, make eladrin related to fey or something instead, add some rampaging feral animals or something and tada, you've got a workable adventurin' land.
Ysgard: Why not make it less happy and fluffy? It could be a plane of constant, pointless war, where dwarves and humans futilely fight the enemy until they lose all sense of identity. See, that's interesting.
Limbo: Oh look, it's the elemental planes mark 2! Shame, because the slaad were one of the few interesting planar races. How about making it truly random, where you're as likely to get a sudden mass of fire energy as you are to get an explosion of kittens, or potato boats, or penguins? Since, you know, it's the plane of RANDOM and all.
Pandemonium: This is one of those Outer Planes that seems to be a good idea for part of a plane, but not the whole thing. Eh. Add a really windy, mountainous surface layer, perhaps? Less dull tunnels, at least.
The Abyss: Leave as-is. It's excellent as it is. (So, naturally, the diaper-wearers at 4E had to fuck it up. Sigh.)
Carceri: Hey look, something that doesn't work as an entire plane. Stretching it out with infinite spheres didn't work, either. Why not make it one giant dyson sphere prison, or something? And maybe add a place where petitioners can appeal their sentence or do community service and eventually go to a better plane instead. They have to go somewhere, and it's not like petitioners mysteriously vanish into the plane eventually or something.
The Gray Waste: *gag*. Oh look, it's a boring wasteland because nothingness is scary, you guys, that's how Cthulhu worked! Actually, my main problem with this place is the yugoloths, what with their being pointless card-carrying villains that don't really do anything except go I AM eVil!!. Find me one book that actually explains how a yugoloth thinks and acts besides "I'm an evil mercenary lol" and I might change my mind, but this plane actually works well if you remove the yugoloths from it and make it what it should be: dark, desolate nothing.
Gehenna: Fire and brimstone, except no devils. Make up a race of fiends that live here or something, spice it up a bit.
Baator: It's okay, but the arch-devils need to be more non-humanoid (or at least not as samey - Dispater and Mephistopheles might as well be flat-chested twin sisters) and have some more thought put into them. Maybe some old Bibilical characters like Lucifer or Metatron could work as replacements.
Acheron: Ysgard, but EEEVIL!! Dedicating planes to specific races (this time orcs) in a setting which theoretically has infinite worlds and thus infinite race is fucking stupid. Take them out, take goblins out, take the maug from Fiendish Codex, relocate them here and make them the major race. Now it's not so bad.
Mechanus: Modrons always looked like the other outsider's retarded little cousins. Replace them with inevitables and this plane is fine.
Arcadia: I keep imagining a Wizards employee saying "Hey, a plane where nothing happens!" at their Planescape design meeting and facepalming. Make this the staging point for archons on their Holy War I thought of above, and it works.
Mount Celestia: Basing a plane off the Bible is never a good idea. Make it a more lawful (ie, even) number of layers like eight and maybe put some thought into the rulers of the archons. Have you read BoED? They're all glowy transgendered weirdoes. Bahamut is pretty good, though; maybe he can run the place.
Bytopia: If giving planes to races wasn't bad enough, you had to give it to the race of short and cute childlike tinkers with their nuclear robots and mechanical chickens. The only way to salvage this place is to kill it with fire, maybe say the eladrins wiped out the gnomes and put them in concentration camps during the Holy War.
The Outlands: Mashing random shit from all the other planes together like a patchwork and putting representative towns around the edges does not a hub world make. Replace it with a stand-alone hub world with its own unique geography, like Yggdrasil or something, and we'll talk.

There we have it, folks. Tomorrow I'll show you some more of my settings.

Super Amazing Anniversary Spectacular Go

2009-03-29T15:17:00.004+11:00

CR25 Hypermitotic Dungeon Master is now a year old.

There's not much I can say.

Actually, yes there is. Normally I try not to get a big head and act pretty reserved or make fun of myself but today, I am awesome. And so are my stick figure comics and their giant tl;dr blocks of text! All I need to do now is enter a Wizards campaign setting contest and come second place!

I can't even remember when this started, exactly - the above is the first image in that style I saved and posted, and honestly I forget when I posted it. Or if I did at all. I don't remember scanning this shit. My computer says sharkcannon.png was created on the 13th of January, 2008, but I think it is lying. (The first TJH was drawn on the 23rd of May, 2007.)

This blog has come along way, at least when compared to the original comics scratched out and posted as the This Just Happened series on /tg/. Well, not that long, but whatever.

I would like to thank the following people and go back to the game I just put on hold while I typed this:

/tg/, for inspiring me to do this thing and for any time it is not acting like /b/ with Warhammer;
LordLicorice, for making the awesome sup/tg/ and hosting the old comics (including the Fictional Boogaloo ones which never actually happened), and being a swell guy in general;
Everyone in #suptg who is also a swell guy;
Urch for being a cool player and also helping inspire Sir Brian Consumptington which I promise I will put into an actual game one of these days
All of my other players, who are nice guys, really.
Except you. Fuck you.
All the readers who have read this thing, especially the ones that comment and make me feel special.

Here's to the year ahead. Hopefully I haven't jumped the shark yet!