tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53955019587817407982024-02-18T20:17:34.459-06:00The Old Dragoon's BlogThe ramblings of an unrepentant tabletop gamer dealing with life, parenthood, gaming... pretty much whatever enters his addled brain.The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.comBlogger203125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-34801375317593684972022-11-26T18:48:00.002-06:002022-11-26T18:48:25.921-06:00Where have you been, Old Dragoon?<p> Well, the health update earlier this year was only part of the story.</p><p> On 28 JUN 22 I had open-heart surgery. Turns out, I needed a 5x bypass. I'm back on my feet, but I'm still in recovery. My body is bouncing back, but I had no idea that heart surgery had a potential for cognitive impairment, emotional issues, and traumatic stress. That part caught me by surprise, and I'm still trying to recover/adapt to my "new normal" in a mental sense.</p><p> I've never been as regular at blogging as I'd like - but I've basically been granted a "second chance" since without the heart surgery, I was a goner. The phrase "walking time bomb" was used by my cardiologist. Talk about words that make your blood run cold.</p><p> My first published RPG is coming out in 2023, the manuscript has been submitted, edited, resubmitted, and is now in the hands of the layout and art folks. I am a partner in a new game publisher, Retro Arcana Games, and we will be launching a web site and podcast in December of 2022. I will be writing content for the Retro Arcana site, and dual-posting it here. With any luck, there will be some more content here for folks to read. I want to make the most of the bonus time I've been granted.</p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14494416126200573667noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-10027525165769444962022-04-22T21:16:00.002-05:002022-04-22T21:16:20.463-05:00Health Update - Holy Crap.<p> Well, yesterday was 4/20, and the only thing 420 about me was my blood sugar. OK, it wasn't 420, but it was between 200 and 280. I've never been good at blogging regularly, as the spotty nature of this blog will show, but this year I've had issues with focus, and extreme fatigue, and now I know why.</p><p> When I was diagnosed diabetic, my doctor basically said "Well, you're diabetic. Avoid carbs." That was it. No diabetes education, no instructions on how to take my glucose, no instructions TO take my glucose. Nothing. So I did what I was told, watched my carbs, took my Metformin, and took my Ozympic. Eventually, we got my A1c down from the initial 13 (!!!) to 7.2, almost where we wanted it. But by this point I was really frustrated. For my A1c to be 13, I would have had to have been diabetic for a while. I had mentioned things to my doc that in hindsight, now that I know my condition, should have been big red flags. My office mate and co-author Bobby even called it because of all the tea and water I drank while we were in office. So, I changed doctors, and got a CGM (constant glucose monitor) and learned about my condition.</p><p> The CGM was wildly inaccurate for me. But we got my A1c down to 5.5 and later 6.5, and it seemed my diabetes was well-controlled. Due to my frustration with my inaccurate CGM, I did something stupid and stopped taking my glucose. I figured with my A1c between 5.5 and 6.5, I was in the zone. Well, I didn't account for the effect of getting off my weekly Ozympic shot. Then I got so involved with taking care of all those things in life we take care of, I missed a 3-month checkup. I started to feel really tired, all the time. I lost my ability to focus, I could barely complete my work, barely work on my game design, barely get all those parent and adult things done that were necessary to keep the household running. It got so bad I couldn't make it through a day without taking a nap, or at the very least nodding off here at my desk.</p><p> My A1c had jumped back to the double-digits. It's no wonder I had no focus, no energy. So my new doc, wonderful as she is, prescribed me a new CGM, one that we have verified against finger sticks and put me back on Ozympic. I got a CT scan to make sure my high triglycerides and blood sugar haven't messed with my heart. I'm back on a strict diet, not that I was eating tons of carbs before, and drinking water and decaf tea. The thing that has been frustrating, is that my first time around I wasn't taking my glucose, so I had no idea it would take weeks to get my blood sugar back under control. I kinda thought a couple of days of water and salads and my glucose would be back in the pocket. Naïve, I know, but... </p><p> Anyway, that's where I've been. But I'm really missing being involved in games and gaming. I'm going see if I can't crank out an article or two to get back into the groove.</p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-87303585260980128612022-02-02T21:20:00.003-06:002022-02-02T21:20:49.102-06:00My D&D - Classy<p> So, here is the part that gets ridiculous. Classes. There are so many neat classes beyond the classic seven in BX, and they come from many different sources. OSE Advanced adds the AD&D classes, like Paladin, Ranger, etc. Rules Cyclopedia lets me add the missing Monk with the Mystic class. The Class Compendium by Barrel Rider Games has some classes well worth looking into - like the Commander, the Undead Slayer, and the Metaphysician. But how many is too many?</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Baseline</h2><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Cleric</li><li>Fighter</li><li>Magic-User</li><li>Thief</li><li>Dwarf</li><li>Elf</li><li>Halfling</li></ul><div>So, we start with the classic seven from B/X. I love race as class, but I also love race-class combinations. So what's a DM to do? Use both. OSE Advanced suggests allowing both side-by-side if you can't decide. So, one player can be the archetypical Elf, splitting arcane magic and fighting, or be an Elven Fighter, or Elven Magic-User, having the benefits of the full class and Elf race, but not the dual classes or the crippling XP requirements. So, with that in mind, we'll look at the OSE Advanced class listing and add it to the list.</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Acrobat</li><li>Assassin</li><li>Barbarian</li><li>Bard</li><li><strike>Drow</strike> (but possibly Shadow Elf?)</li><li>Druid</li><li><strike>Duergar</strike></li><li>Gnome</li><li>Half-Elf</li><li>Half-Orc</li><li>Illusionist</li><li>Knight</li><li>Magic-User</li><li>Paladin</li><li>Ranger</li><li><strike>Svirfleblin</strike></li></ul><div>OK, so, maybe I won't import ALL of them. The "dark" versions of various races aren't something I'm interested in having as a PC in my Mystara games. Shadow Elves are an interesting conundrum. They aren't coded "evil" as much as "different." They are the lost clans, not necessarily Anti-Elves, though they do have some very different experiences and are connected to some things that would be spoilers to include here, in case my future players are reading. So, no Drow, but maybe Shadow Elf PCs, once they have been introduced.</div></div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">From The Rules Cyclopedia</h2><div>OSE Advanced already handles the "prestige classes" of D&D, as far as the Druid, Paladin, and arguably Knight. So all that remains to take from the RC is the Mystic, to fill the gap left by the omission of the Monk from OSE. The Mystic will have to be adjusted so that the class ends at 14th Level to match the rest of the human classes, as it goes to 16 in RC.</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">From the Gazetteers</h2><div>There is some cool stuff in the GAZ series, and since my D&D is rooted in Mystara, I want to accommodate some of the flavor classes. </div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Dervish - A desert Cleric of Ylaruam. Appears in GAZ2.</li><li>Wizard stuff from Glantri, in GAZ3? Maybe?</li><li>Elven Wizard from Alfheim froM GAZ5. Is this already covered by Class/Race split? We'll have to look.</li><li>Dwarf-Cleric from GAZ6. Same as above, might be covered by Race/Class, as I recall the Dwarf Cleric has some restrictions. Of course, given the Cleric bonuses/penalties from Wrath of the Immortals, it might get even more muddy.</li><li>Master from GAZ8. Kind of a Halfling prestige class. Will it still work with the removal of the whole concept of "Reach Level X in Class Y, change to Class Z?"</li><li>Merchant Prince from GAZ 9. I love the idea of a Class that isn't for killing monsters and taking treasure.</li><li>Monster classes from GAZ10, plus the Wokan and Shaman classes. Again, we'll have to figure out how to merge all the stuff into one clean D&D Voltron, or just accept lots of exception-based rules. </li><li>Merchant from GAZ11. Compare to GAZ 9, see how they look side-by side.</li><li>Shadow Elf and Shadow Elf Shaman from GAZ13- but only if the campaign "goes there."</li><li>Shamani from GAZ 14. I like the idea of the Atruaghin Clans, but it's not the strongest of the series, and I'd want to make clear that, like all the pseudo-European pastiches, the Clans are not meant to represent historical First Nations cultures, just inspired by them.</li><li>Rake and Forester from Dawn of the Emperors. Rake being a non-Theify Rogue, and the Forester being a human trained by Elves, so has the Fighter/Magic-User thing going on. But- is this just a Ranger? Is it a dual class? Do I even want to allow dual classes or split classes? OSE Advanced optionally allows them. Will that be too much crunch?</li></ul><h2 style="text-align: left;">From the Class Compendium</h2></div><div> OK, so we already have a metric shitload of classes- and only one of them is not already a part of Mystara, the Mystic, but then again, thanks to <i>Voyage of the Princess Ark</i> maybe it is Mystara canon. Class Compendium is written for use with <i>Labyrinth Lord</i> as well, so the classes do go above the 14 level cap in some cases. So there will be some tinkering and conversion involved. Also- some of the classes I'm just not feeling, either because I don't really like the concepts, or I don't like the concepts in my version of Mystara. In the Class Compendium, James M. Spahn provides some really cool stuff. And not just classes, equipment, spells, a take on weapon mastery, and a take on firearms. But what we're looking at here is classes. Spahn organizes his classes by themes, and I'll look at each and note if I think it will work in my Mystara game.</div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;"> Arcane Allies</h3><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Alienist. This is an arcane class that goes slowly insane as it grows in knowledge and power. Very appropriate to some settings, but not, I think, for Mystara. At least, not the way in which I would run it. So, interesting, but no.</li><li>Familiar. HELL YES. This is a fun idea, the ability for a player to be the familiar for another player's spellcaster. Caps at 8th Level like a Halfling, but has some neat ideas, and would be a fun roleplay opportunity.</li><li>Thopian Gnome. Nah. Again, I kinda dislike the "dark" versions of PC races, I'm just not feeling it.</li><li>Wild Wizard. Maybe. I kinda like the idea of undisciplined magic, and there's plenty of room for it. Say, a barely trained magically active individual from somewhere like Thyatis where arcane magic is de-emphasized, or maybe some crazy new style of magic being invented by a Glantrian researcher.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Doughty Dwarves</h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Raging Slayer. Maybe- is this different enough from just doing a Dwarf Barbarian? There's some cool specific abilities here.</li><li>Rune-Smith. Definitely. In Mystara, Dwarves are unable to use arcane magic as a form of protection granted them by the Immortal Kagyar. But they do smith magic weapons and the like. This class allows a PC to do such things. There are rules in Dwarves of Rockhome, so I have to read both and compare them.</li><li>Warchanter. Maybe- is this different enough from a Dwarf Bard? Again, some good Dwarf flavor here.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Enchanting Elves</h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Dark Elf. Negative, for reasons already stated.</li><li>Greensinger. Maybe. See Warchanter, above. This is an Elf Bard. More reading necessary.</li><li>Half-Elf. Negative, already handled by OSE Advanced.</li><li>Sylvan Elf. Maybe. And Elf that uses Druid spells and has a couple of different abilities. This might be a really cool way to show Clan differences. Need to look at Alfheim and Karameikos and see if this fits.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Heroic Halflings</h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Burglar. Again, possibly redundant by Halfling Thief, but will read it over further.</li><li>Feast Master. THIS is a damn cool idea. A Halfling that can impart bonuses to their allies by cooking and brewing. Very flavorful. Pun intended.</li><li>Huckster. An interesting idea, sort of Professor Harold Hill crossed with a Ferengi and given Halfling form. A fast-talking charismatic merchant style Halfling. I think I like this one. Strong maybe.</li><li>Lucky Fool. Maybe. Just what it sounds like- a character that is more lucky than skilled. Could be fun. Maybe.</li><li>Tavern Singer. Halfling Bard? I do like the drinking-related abilities.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Holy Rollers</h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Angel. Great class, doesn't fit the setting.</li><li>Friar. Could be a great class to represent the non-fighting Clerical orders.</li><li>Inquisitor. I can see this sort of character belonging to some of the Immortal's faiths.</li><li>Undead Slayer. Yes. Hell yes. Why? Because my Mystara is the origin of Barovia, it was somewhere in the mountains of northwestern Karameikos. Also- I love Castlevania.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">In Shining Armor</h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Commander. Absolutely. I loved the Warlord in 4e, and the 5e Fighters with Mastery Dice, whether through subclass or Feat. This kind of warrior needs to exist the way my Mystara runs.</li><li>Dragon Slayer. Strong maybe. If I've got an Undead Slayer, maybe I should have a Dragon Slayer.</li><li>Knight. Already handled in OSE Advanced.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Martial Masters</h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Barbarian. Already handled in OSE Advanced.</li><li>Berserker. Already covered in some other classes.</li><li>Gladiator. Maybe. Need to look at Thyatis and Dawn of the Emperors.</li><li>Samurai. Soft Maybe? I love me some Samurai, but I need to re-read the <i>Princess Ark</i> stuff that includes the Japanese-inspired culture. I seem to recall it was Rakastas.</li><li>Sword Master. This would be awesome for Darokin and a couple other places. I like the idea of a finesse-based Fighter. The Mastery Points are a cool idea. What do we say to the God of Death?</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Monstrous Marauders</h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Dragon. Probably not. Just not sure it fits. Maybe if a specific storyline is being used?</li><li>Goblin. Covered in Orcs of Thar.</li><li>Half-Ogre. Mmmm... more or less covered in Orcs of Thar.</li><li>Half-Orc. Already covered by OSE Advanced.</li><li>Treant. Kinda like Dragon, for me. I'll allow it, but only if the story calls for it.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Second Star to the Right</h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The Fairy and Lost Boy are there to emulate the Peter Pan stories. Not really in keeping with Mystara.</li><li>The Pirate is a possibility, I'll need to take another look at the seagoing Gazetteers to see if this is covered better by, say, Ierendi or Minrothad.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Traveling Trouble Makers</h3></div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Acrobat. Covered by OSE Advanced.</li><li>Explorer. Sure. I like the concept behind this one.</li><li>Fortune Teller. Maybe? I don't want to step in the current row over Vistani, but if I am linking the Traldar people to the ancient Vistani/Barovians, this might work.</li><li>Wanderer. This could be an interesting class. Maybe.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Unhallowed Heroes</h3><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Cultist. No, not in this setting. They exist, but not as PCs.</li><li>Damphir. Maybe. If I'm doing a Ravenloft tie-in, or a story about the Vampire of Korizegy Keep, I might allow this one.</li><li>Death Knight. See Cultist. They exist, but not as PCs.</li><li>Eidolon. Again, they exist, but not as PCs.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Urban Adventurers</h3></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Bandit. This might be an interesting class, especially in places like Darokin, where the roads are fat with trade. Maybe.</li><li>Bard. Covered by OSE Advanced.</li><li>Bounty Hunter. Hmmm. I like the abilities the author has given this class. Strong maybe.</li><li>Watchman. Possibilities here, especially with the Rumor Mill ability.</li></ul><h3 style="text-align: left;">Virtuous Victorians</h3><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Automation. Probably not- unless I decide to allow it in adventures involving Blackmoor or cultures touched by it. Or the Gnomes- but I really never use the Gnomes much. I find quite a bit of their stuff sort of silly.</li><li>Investigator. Could exist in highly urbanized areas. I can see this class being very useful for <i>The Veiled Society</i>.</li><li>Metaphysician. This is the Van Helsing class. I love it, and I'll include it in any Ravenloft-heavy Mystaran campaigns.</li><li>Shootist. This is the one Victorian class I can't see reskinning. I'm not sure I want to do anything with firearms in my Mystara.</li></ul><div><br /></div></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Final Thoughts</h2><div>That's a LOT more classes than I'd initially wanted. Even editing out the doubles, the classes that don't fit, and the ones that I just don't care for personally, that's still a ton of classes. Maybe I'll just go back to OSE Advanced only. Or OSE Advanced and the GAZ series. Or just OSE and the GAZ series. But I do like so many of the Advanced and Class Compendium classes, and I can see them as fun options for PCs that offer some interesting opportunities for the DM. I'll cogitate, re-read some material, and start cribbing out the versions of the classes that aren't already in OSE or OSE Advanced that I want to use.</div></div>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-90474289682046634502022-02-01T11:02:00.001-06:002022-02-01T11:02:19.953-06:00My D&D - The Medium's Staff<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg4W3-EpghA8rWiur0JWjWV5Ega9sIxeWZB5l9blOs1VD5HWpPfKOHi9aOP2BCU0UDhPHONGoGmpv9NEzPkuT1C3IIrjVAAjGjq25zMwAsin7mFXAy2lfHaBBRzwxM-OIDu_2ahMy07F_it-LOtiXn8DZ1erEBZfll8a8ErXjL2tC0MOv_9RdoKAklR1w=s808" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="808" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg4W3-EpghA8rWiur0JWjWV5Ega9sIxeWZB5l9blOs1VD5HWpPfKOHi9aOP2BCU0UDhPHONGoGmpv9NEzPkuT1C3IIrjVAAjGjq25zMwAsin7mFXAy2lfHaBBRzwxM-OIDu_2ahMy07F_it-LOtiXn8DZ1erEBZfll8a8ErXjL2tC0MOv_9RdoKAklR1w=s320" width="253" /></a></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Medium's Staff</h2><div><i>An Attempt To Help Out The Poor 1st Level Magic-User</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Here's an idea I've been playing with that I may or may not actually use. I want to write it down to see if anyone else thinks it's kind of cool.</div><div><br /></div><div>The idea behind The Medium's Staff is that it improves the utility of the low-level Magic-User, but does not provide such utility as to change game balance past the low levels.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, the Medium's Staff is a magic item often crafted by an apprentice and their mentor as the apprentice nears the end of their long training period. It is a sign of the esteem of their mentor to be coached through and assisted with the enchantment of one of these staves, and it is intended to see the apprentice through the early years of adventuring on their own. Any Magic-User who apprenticed in a civilized land like Karameikos, or especially Glantri, has a good chance of having one of these upon reaching 1st Level.</div><div><br /></div><div>The staff is permanently enchanted, and will radiate magic to a <i>Detect Magic</i> spell, but in order to have an actual effect the Magic-User must empower the staff daily by expending their highest-level spell slot available. Doing so empowers the staff to use the following powers:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The staff becomes a weapon in which the Magic-User is considered to be proficient, doing 1d4+INT Bonus damage, but striking as a silver, not magic, weapon with no To-Hit bonus.</li><li>The staff can cast a number of 1st Level spells per day equal to the Magic-User's INT bonus.</li><li>The staff can be "programmed" with a number of 1st Level spells equal to the Magic-User's INT bonus that may be cast as long as the staff or Magic-User has any spell slots remaining for the day. These spells may be ones the Magic-User knows, or ones programmed into the staff by their mentor.</li></ul><div>So, obviously the staff isn't very useful to Magic-Users of average Intelligence. But for those with an INT of 16 or higher, it's a great trade- sacrifice the single spell slot of a starting Magic-User for 2 or 3 spells cast through the staff. But upon reaching 3rd Level, the Magic-User would have to sacrifice their 2nd Level slot for 1st Level spells. Upon reaching 5th Level, they must sacrifice a 3rd Level slot, and so forth. Thus, the staff is GREAT at low levels, but less and less effective at higher levels.</div><div><br /></div><div>This might be exactly what a starting Magic-User needs to get through those first couple of levels.</div></div><p></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-20645687603600498422022-02-01T10:22:00.002-06:002022-02-01T10:22:24.917-06:00My D&D - A Game Design Thought Experiment<p> Jeez. Over half a year since my last post. Thanks, pandemic depression. I was bad before the plague, but not this bad. But hey, I'm here, I'm writing, so here we go.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">My D&D</h2><div> So, I've been playing for 36 years this year. I've played every published edition of D&D, plus more retroclones than I can shake a stick at. So many talented folks are publishing their favorite versions of D&D, or not-D&D clones that reflect their own loves and preferences. Jeff Talanian and <i>Hyperborea</i> pop to mind, along with all the great stuff from Bloat Games, all the wicked <i>Swords & Wizardry</i> stuff, and a universe of other stuff. I am fond of my good friend James Spahn's work, and there's so much coming out that's based on the old school D&D engine but covering other genres- like the Night Owl Workshop games, Mark Hunt's BX stuff including <i>Gangbusters BX</i>, there's too much to mention one game at a time.</div><div><br /></div><div> At one point in my life, I'd have immediately said the 1983 BECMI game was my go-to D&D. Hand me a Rules Cyclopedia and I'm good to go. But over the years I've realized I don't want or need 36 levels. It's just excessive. I know it was a directive from on high that Frank Mentzer had to deal with, but I feel that the assumed 14th Level cap of B/X is just about perfect given that the Demihuman level limits are 8, 10, and 12. What's my current ideal D&D then? Let's talk about it.</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Standards and Assumptions</h2><div> My D&D would have the solid base of Necrotic Gnome's <i><a href="https://necroticgnome.com/products/old-school-essentials-advanced-fantasy-players-tome">Old School Essentials Advanced Edition</a>.</i> OSE is an incredibly well-done restatement of the 1981 Moldvay-Cook-Marsh edition of D&D, often known as BX, for Basic and Expert. This version of D&D is almost identical to the BECMI edition that followed it with a few minor differences, the most notable of which is an expansion from 14th Level to 36th Level, and the addition of Immortal rules. OSE Advanced Edition leaves the core rules more or less at the BX level, but adds the option of race/class split, and additional classes like Ranger, Paladin, etc.</div><div><br /></div><div> OK, so we're starting with OSE Advanced. What do I want to tinker with?</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Adapt the rules and table from The Black Hack to avoid instant death at zero HP. </i>Yes, in the Old Days, we ran through characters like my son runs through sports drinks. It was a major accomplishment to live to see levels above 1. 3d6 straight down, baby. But- it's 2022, and we've learned that story and character means a lot to the modern player. Even a player like myself, who cut their teeth on the Old Ways of Our People. I don't want characters to be as hard to kill as 5e, but harder to kill than BX would be advantageous.</li><li><i>Add Equipment from BECMI.</i> Add scale mail, banded mail, bastard swords, etc.</li><li><i>Take a hard look at the Magic-User.</i> I like Cantrips in 5e, but so many things that were 1st Level Spells became Cantrips to port them over whole cloth would require a lot of rewrites. Rather, I want to see about giving Magic-Users some class abilities to mimic things like the Prestidigitation or Thaumaturgy Cantrips, or maybe a small damage roll-to-hit at-will magic attack.</li><li><i>Take a look at the Fighter.</i> I'm interested in giving the bog standard Fighter some flavor abilities. Several old school rules sets from TSR and clones give Fighters additional attacks versus 1HD creatures. <i>Carrion Crawler</i> issue 1 has a list of possible Fighter abilities. I think I'll do something similar, if not identical.</li><li><i>Use the Mystara Setting.</i> This includes the Immortals, and the bonuses to Cleric abilities listed in <i>Wrath of the Immortals</i>. Use some cool stuff from the GAZ series. This includes the skills/proficiencies/etc. that are available to add some depth to the PCs. Also, the rolls for social level and background, if applicable.</li><li><i>Adapt Immortal Rules- </i>Adapt the paths to Immortality to the 14-level paradigm.</li></ul>What else will I do? Not sure. But here's where I'm going to start. Let's see where it goes.</div>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-78791715075103823652021-06-09T21:48:00.000-05:002021-06-09T21:48:54.799-05:00Chainmail: My First Engagement<p> Last week I attended North Texas RPG Con, and it was a much-needed breath of freedom and return to gaming in person. NT is a big family, and we all revel in the love of old-school games. This year I got to play three games for the first time that I had never before tried: Champions 4th Edition, Gamma World 1st Edition, and Chainmail. I thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of these games, but I felt like I needed to write my feelings on Chainmail as it is a foundational piece of the original 1974 D&D rules.</p><p> Thanks to the debacle that was RPG Labs and the ill-fated video series I was involved with, I have played 1974 D&D using the Chainmail combat tables. It was extremely illuminating to my understanding of where many of our terms and mechanics come from. But I'd yet to actually throw down some miniatures and play out a battle using Chainmail. Our referee was Paul Stormberg, who deftly explained the basics and gave us the choice of three armies - Europeans, Mongols, and... I can't remember because they didn't get chosen. My was teamed with James and his daughter Neve, who we quickly named our General. We grabbed the Mongol army. Our opponents, the Europeans, were Robin, David, and Scott.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLBPw_ylYWt4QmHvS2h3Hx6Vd_-73qja8_k33PE2leLOyp8159VSM_aCHfTGCQZKzd2YPKc3LABY_RNxqMIxhDxLrDdH7fg3F6M3IPvMEDiaAwU134_VKlnn9mNTB2XSIPqJ0PNI8UyHb/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1220" data-original-width="2578" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLBPw_ylYWt4QmHvS2h3Hx6Vd_-73qja8_k33PE2leLOyp8159VSM_aCHfTGCQZKzd2YPKc3LABY_RNxqMIxhDxLrDdH7fg3F6M3IPvMEDiaAwU134_VKlnn9mNTB2XSIPqJ0PNI8UyHb/" width="320" /></a></div> Each team had 100 points with which to build our forces. We chose two units of five archer figurines, a unit of five horse archers (an option not available to our European enemies), a unit of five medium cavalry, and a unit of heavy infantry.<p></p><p>Our opponents had two units not available to us: a pair of knights, much higher quality fighters than our infantry, and a 10-figure unit of crossbowmen. These gave us beaucoup trouble, as you'll see here in a moment. After unit selection came terrain. Paul had us draw four random terrain features from a deck for each side of the map, and drew the indicated features onto the battlemat with a wet-erase. We ended up with a battlefield that had two hills facing one another on the eastern end, relatively flat terrain through the middle, and a hill opposing a marsh on the western end. Center-right on our side was a ditch Paul ruled we could use to conceal troops- but they could only exit into the center of the map, northward.</p><p>General Neve listened to her advisors, and decided to conceal our horse archers in the arroyo, our medium horse behind the hill, and our archers just beneath the summit so they could deploy to the northern face of the hill and take advantage of the range bonus they would get from elevation. Once we deployed (or didn't, as none of our troops were visible) the European team deployed. The odd thing is, we were able to deploy hidden units, yet we were somehow the attacker... Anyway...</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1AFuMNHkcXBS86Tw5oCCoHspyvU0NeOKUHlJDGisO8hChKjtUawKxuzTqSYTQUAPgPQwtis7NqXmq5jbU-uDHbfd7CErv3N-BWVHo6W8pcchEZ-rVm-HkfrBNosz-ePLCTzeyTZKNLSZm/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1220" data-original-width="2578" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1AFuMNHkcXBS86Tw5oCCoHspyvU0NeOKUHlJDGisO8hChKjtUawKxuzTqSYTQUAPgPQwtis7NqXmq5jbU-uDHbfd7CErv3N-BWVHo6W8pcchEZ-rVm-HkfrBNosz-ePLCTzeyTZKNLSZm/w400-h189/20210603_205817.jpg" width="400" /></a>The Europeans send their medium horse off to their right flank, but brought the bulk of their force face-to-face with our army holding the hill. Their infantry charged, and we cut them to pieces with concentrated arrow fire. That was the best result we got for the entire engagement, for it was at this juncture our opponents realized their crossbowmen outranged our archers by several inches. They moved up and starting showering us with arrows.</p><p>At this point, we revealed our horse units, and charged with our infantry. The idea was that the crossbowmen would have to split fire or choose one or the other threat to deal with. They countercharged with their heavy horse, and our medium horse met them after some archery shenanigans. Our infantry was reduced to two figures, who then refused to fail a morale check and fought to the death. Our horse archers did respectable damage with their bows, but got in too close and were engaged in melee by the European medium horse. The force mismatch in both cavalry battles meant our cav didn't last too long. Victory: Europeans. But General Neve's forces did quite a bit of damage before accepting defeat.</p><p>So, now that I've played Chainmail, how do I feel about it?</p><p>This game is definitely an artifact of it's time. There are many charts and tables, and different mechanics for different troop types and engagements. This makes it difficult to get a hang of the game for a first-timer. I imagine if I played it more often, I'd get the hang of it. Sometimes the results were static, and sometimes random. That was interesting, and made me want to look closer at the troop versus troop tables to see if there were combinations that offered a guaranteed disadvantage. Medium Horse versus Heavy was brutal, as was Light Horse versus Medium. Archery was suitably brutal, and the crossbows trading the ability to fire twice in a turn (once as a reaction and once on their fire phase) for range was certainly a compelling choice.</p><p>I found the amount of movement cavalry had to sacrifice to change direction extremely restrictive. 1/4 move for up to 45 degrees, 1/2 move for 46 to 90, and all movement for 180 degrees. This seemed overly restrictive given the ranges of our cavalry on both sides, and had a major effect on the employment of the cavalry by the combatants.</p><p>So... would I play it again? Sure. Especially if I was playing with others who are exploring it for the historical context. If I am going to play a miniatures game for its own sake, this would probably not be my first choice of rules set. But it was enjoyable, and informed my feel for what people were playing as our hobby dawned.</p><p><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><br /><p></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-58920145856703237832021-04-13T12:33:00.000-05:002021-04-13T12:33:29.503-05:00Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes...<p> Nothing remains quite the same.</p><p> As I write this entry, I'm sitting in my game room. Or, what was once my game room. Over the last year this space has transformed into a home office, schoolhouse, and dumping ground for everything else in the house on its way to or from storage, or Home Depot or Ikea. The Pandemic has done a number on this room, and I feel like my soul resembles this room quite a bit. In the same way that Strahd von Zarovich <b>is<i> </i>the land<i>, </i></b>I feel the state of the One-Eyed Ogre, as we call the game room, mirrors my mental and spiritual health.</p><p> I, too, am cluttered. I, too, and pulled in so many directions. I'm serving as an educational paraprofessional to both kids- one of which is ADHD, the other in the throes of puberty and pre-teen angst, and both dyslexic. I'm trying to keep my actual job duties rolling, which requires doing my work on evenings and weekends most weeks since my days are filled with keeping the kids awake (Zane) and on task (both, but especially Kaylee.) We're doing some necessary remodeling after our 40-year-old guest shower tub cracked right through the bottom, and that project has experienced some mission creep. We're just fortunate we have a friend who is a Master Plumber and he knew a great tile person. On top of that, we're trying to refi the house to take advantage of the ridiculously low interest rates, and pull out some equity to refit the rest of the house, since moving in the Austin housing market is priced for people who make a lot more money than I do, or people willing to live a lot farther out than I am. Add to that the insane amount of social and political turmoil that has wormed its way into the tabletop community just as it has every other facet of American life... </p><p>So what does this have to do with gaming? Quite a bit, on a personal level. I find that I lack the capacity for the way I gamed before all of this set in. And by all of it, I don't just mean the pandemic, I mean all the politics, all the associated stresses, me sitting here instead of my office on campus, all of it.</p><p>Before all of this, I'd run any game for any group. As a founding member of the Royal Dragoon Guards, way back when we were the Caladan Highland Dragoons, I have run big games for big groups for 25 years now. As the main GM all that time, it has been my duty to entertain the masses, and for the most part I loved it. I still look back at those unwieldy games where we had 15, 20 players or more in massive <i>MechWarrior</i> RPG campaigns that had <i>Battletech</i> battles that took up an entire activity center floor at our apartment complex. Our campaigns felt like the early novels, and we were like the Kell Hounds or the Gray Death Legion. It was glorious. Many Arby's 5-for-5s and Taco Bell 59/79/99 menu items died to bring us those days.</p><p>As we got older, our games got less ambitious, with the first RDG campaign under that name having <i>only</i> 17 players. Then we broke into smaller groups, and branched out into games aside from <i>MechWarrior</i>. This drew in more players, and somewhere along the line I ended up being the backstop GM. Other GMs had a solid stable of players for their games, and I ran the games for whoever was left. Which was more often than non a revolving door of casual players, who may or may not consistently attend. This also meant it was very difficult to do things that weren't one-shots or at most West Marches-style games. It started to erode my morale a bit, but I have always been a "The Show Must Go On" kind of GM, so we kept it going.</p><p>Everything shutting down had some unexpected effects. With our technology, we should have been able to just transition to Zoom or Discord and keep rolling, and we tried that. But the lack of in-person contact made meetings feel off somehow. Individual groups kept gaming, but as a whole our group fractured a bit. Pandemic fatigue set in, and it was hard to get enthusiasm for anything. We offered several online options, and very few of them were put to use with any enthusiasm. When we got to election time in January, the group decided to call 2020 a do-over and just let the 2020-2021 staff roll into 2021-22.</p><p>I tried running a 5e campaign. It died. I tried running a couple of other games, they never took off. I got a <i>Star Trek Adventures</i> game going recently, and that's showing some promise as the pandemic thaws. But for months, I was without a regular game, and in some cases even one-shots or anything, and I started to think about my role as the Game Master by default over the last 25 years.</p><p>I realized I'm tired. I'm frustrated. And the kind of gaming I was doing right before the pandemic happened wasn't really satisfying me then. What I need is to get back to what drew me into gaming in the first place. I need to get back to playing for the love of the game, with good friends, and an ongoing story. Crafting a tale together that we will recount over drinks for years to come.</p><p>And it doesn't have to be anything fancy. A scrappy group of mercenary MechWarriors, a bog-standard BX <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> campaign. Maybe a <i>Traveller</i> game with elements of <i>Firefly</i> and <i>Cowboy Bebop</i>.</p><p>Or maybe fancy would be cool. Run <i>Dragonlance</i>, the original campaign. Or <i>Beyond The Mountains of Madness</i> for <i>Call of Cthulhu</i>. </p><p>Dig up old favorites, like <i>Marvel Superheroes, Gangbusters, Star Frontiers</i>.</p><p>New hotness like <i>Against the Darkmaster</i>, <i>Dune</i>, or <i>Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea.</i></p><p>There's always <i>Dungeon Crawl Classics</i> and <i>Mutant Crawl Classics.</i></p><p>But the bottom line is, no matter what I run, or play, I want to make sure of a few things. The players have to be onboard with the genre and tone of the campaign. I am so sick of dealing with players that create characters completely unsuitable for the game being pitched. If a game isn't your cup of tea, play in or run a different game. If the GM and five out of six players want to do <i>The Hunt for Red October</i>, don't do <i>Down Persicope.</i> Run your own <i>Down Periscope</i> game, and make it the funniest, most irreverent game ever.</p><p>Gaming is a group activity, and it's time I ran games I want to run again, rather than selecting my game and players based on entertaining the maximum number of people with the lowest common denominator game. That's part of the job as president of a big gaming club. I know that, and I've done it for many years. But for me, myself, I've got to get back to what I love about games and gaming. I've got to pitch games I want to run, and run them for the players who are interested in that game, genre, and tone. And if one or two individuals aren't interested, that's fine. There will be other games, other GMs, and other players. I have been of the mindset that I need to cater to the masses in the name of keeping the club as entertained as possible. And I think that is still a worthy goal- but it should be a goal that is shared with other Game Masters and not on the shoulders of any one person.<br /><br />And at this point, coming out the far side of a year-plus without sitting at a table and rolling dice? It almost feels like rebuilding from scratch anyway. So, maybe the silver lining of this dark cloud is that we rethink the way we do our games as an organization, and do them more like regular campaigns.<i> </i> <br /></p><p><br /></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-8316921174019061812021-03-01T22:11:00.001-06:002021-06-01T02:17:30.730-05:00Back to Basics - Old School Essentials<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW-pv8mFdEC488QJjG4cPeyNJaci1QKuvJPSW3dorTF86bi-q3qhuOnGBwKrotUn1vNzcdI41jifH20VylCDKZSQhvX5CWYpXy6NTqmQzoIW5KpLnMR8Yiito7RaSjk2Q4SaawIgEe749i/s1023/OSE+Cover.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="744" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW-pv8mFdEC488QJjG4cPeyNJaci1QKuvJPSW3dorTF86bi-q3qhuOnGBwKrotUn1vNzcdI41jifH20VylCDKZSQhvX5CWYpXy6NTqmQzoIW5KpLnMR8Yiito7RaSjk2Q4SaawIgEe749i/w291-h400/OSE+Cover.jpeg" width="291" /></a></div>As my chronicle of experience with roleplaying records, I began gaming with the 1983 D&D Basic and Expert sets in 1986. It was only later I got a copy of the 1981 versions of those sets, and for, oh, decades, when I played "Basic" D&D I was playing a version of BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals) D&D. The original boxed sets, the Rules Cyclopedia, or the Black Boxed Set from 1991. It wasn't until I started to really look into the history of the game for its own sake that I began to look closely at the 1981 Tom Moldvay Basic and the 1977 Holmes Basic books as more than curiosities, as they'd predated my involvement with the hobby.<p></p><p>As a younger gamer, I enjoyed ever more complicated games. Basic D&D took me to Advanced D&D, Palladium Fantasy, Rolemaster, and GURPS. Palladium had a different fighting style for each fighting class (this was before the RIFTS-ification of their 2nd edition), Rolemaster had those amazing critical tables, and GURPS combat rounds were second by second, with an allegedly "realistic" approach. I ate it up. Loved every minute of it. On the not-fantasy side, I loved crunch in other games. I built many ships for Star Trek and Traveller, designed BattleMechs and Car Wars cars, and even tinkered together my own set of rules for the old Wheeled Warriors toys to give stats to all the interchangeable gear included with the toys.</p><p>At the pinnacle of this love of crunch in my rules, I had a spreadsheet for tracking maintenance hours for a BattleMech company, down to assigning individual techs to individual 'Mechs and prioritizing certain repairs. I had a set of parts compatibility rules for BattleMech parts - need a knee for your Wasp? Well, that Stinger knee is nearly identical, but the Locust knee will need a lot of modification. I had a spreadsheet to calculate the prices of parts and ammo depending on location within the Inner Sphere - it took the table from MW 1e and expanded the variables to include Traveller-type planet classifications. I even used The Robotech Reference Guide to engineer GURPS stats for Robotech weapons by mathing out explosive yield to mega-joules of energy and cross referencing that with GURPS existing stats for sci-fi weapons, and their rules for damage based on TNT.</p><p>I look back now, and I'm proud of about half of it, and horrified that I wasted time on the other half. This brings me to where I am now in my head.</p><p>There is still a big part of me that wants to know if the players are carrying enough rations, water, arrows, etc. for their journey. I played enough Oregon Trail as a kid and did enough backpacking in Scouts to feel like being prepared is an integral part of any adventure. I like the need to plan an expedition, to give the situation some thought. At the same time, though, my gaming time is extremely limited in comparison to my younger years. Gotta get the bang for the buck, time-to-fun-ratio wise.</p><p>Enter my growing love affair with BX and derivatives thereof. The Basic/Expert rules set is cleaner (arguably) than Holmes, is the bones upon which the BECMI edition was based, but only goes to Level 14 for humans, rather than the 36 of BECMI. This has many effects, not the least of which is a less punishing (but still frustrating) Thief skill progression, less disparity between the Demihuman class level limits vs. humans, and less of a massive gulf between starting characters and max-levels. Remember, Level 3 is more or less a fully trained professional if you take the level titles into account, like Priest, and level 4 is Hero according to the Fighter progression.</p><p>The more I read the editions before mine, the more I grew to respect their place in the D&D lineage, and understand more about the hobby as it was, and as it is now. Now that I've played the original 1974 rules with Chainmail, and Holmes, and Moldvay, I find that there are things I enjoy quite a bit about all of them, but especially Moldvay's BX. This has been cloned quite a bit - Labyrinth Lord, B/X RPG, and more. But the version that has stolen my heart is Old School Essentials.</p><p>Now, I won't turn my nose up at the D&D Rules Cyclopedia as my "Desert Island" all-in-one-volume book. But I find that I rarely use levels above 9 or 10, if that high, and that while I love The War Machine rules for mass battles, I don't use the weapons expertise rules as written in BECMI as they are sometimes quite overpowering to the campaign, especially at high levels. This is where the current single-volume version of Old School Essentials comes in. OSE takes the form of a smaller-than-standard book, A5 or Digest size, clocking in at 296 pages. It's got some color plates, and sewn-in cloth bookmarks. Swanky.</p><p>Why choose OSE over other implementations of BX, or BX itself? Well, it's a one-volume hardcover that takes those rules and restates them with 100% fidelity where possible, and when there were contradictions between the Basic and Expert rulebooks, or between two entries in the same rulebook, a decision or correction was made. The end result is an eminently easier volume in which to find things, with a full index and straightforward organization. There is also a player's version of the rules, with the DM-specific information excluded.</p><p>This book gives me a solid foundation for a simple D&D game that lacks the arcane complexity other versions of D&D, even other vintage versions, include. AD&D is something I also love, and OSE scratches that itch as well with their Advanced Fantasy books. These take the BX core and add concepts from AD&D to it. So, this isn't OSRIC, it's not a rules-faithful AD&D clone, it's a rules-faithful BX clone with AD&D concepts. And that's... pretty cool, actually. Like, if you want full-on AD&D, you can go with AD&D or OSRIC. But if you want something where you can remember all the Ability Score modifiers in your head, go OSE with the Advanced Fantasy books.</p><p>There is a big part of me that wants to go back to the simplicity of a straightforward fantasy campaign like the ones we played in the 80s. Like the pure joy we see in the Stranger Things crew or Michael's friends in E.T. gathered around a table and rolling dice. I am those kids - I remember many carefree evenings and afternoons with close friends, tossing dice and slaying foul creatures. Before I had to worry about bills, or pandemics, or diabetes. Hell, all we worried about back then was nuclear annihilation. No big.</p><p>I'd love to sit down with a band of chosen family, roll up characters, and save the world Old School. I think the BX iteration of D&D strikes a pretty clean balance between enough rules to do stuff, and not so many rules as to get in the way. I still love my BECMI, but 36 levels is just excessive in practice. I say that, and still want to run a game where the players ascend to immortality. Maybe I can make that happen at BX levels... Hmmm...<br /><br />Anyway, Old School Essentials hits a sweet spot with me. A nice, well-organized hardcover that can supplement my Lulu one-volume prints of Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert. Thumbs up from me.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-86990941223754555112021-02-10T10:57:00.002-06:002021-02-10T10:57:46.731-06:00D&D And Me Volume 4: The 2nd Edition Stretch<p> 2nd Edition was around from 1989-2000, when 3.0 dropped. An eleven year stretch, currently second only to 1e, 1977-89. As I mentioned before, 2e was my jam in High School, seeing as it came out the year I started my Freshman year. Fittingly, for my personality, I was the final class to be able to say they started High School in the 80s. This was a very formative time for me as a gamer and as a person, my high school and first round of college years. I got married during 2e's tenure, so one could say I literally grew up with 2nd Edition, and all these years later I still love it. I have grown to appreciate other versions of D&D on their own merits, of course, but 2e is tied with Basic (BX or BECMI) as my favorite D&D.</p><p> Now, 2nd Edition had a lot going for it. Personally, I loved the original presentation of the Monstrous Compendium, in a big three-ringed binder full of monsters each of which had a full-page or more entry. In practice, one needed a lot of those little hole reinforcement stickers to keep pages from coming out, but in theory one could add pages to their binder, like the Forgotten Realms and Kara-Tur packs I purchased. Along with 2e came the brown leatherette splatbooks. The Complete Fighter's Handbook, The Complete Wizard's Handbook, etc. Books for Demi-Humans, books for setting-specific classes like Ninja and Shi'ar, books from the green historical line, like Rome, and Charlemagne's Paladins.</p><p> THIS was 2e. It went everywhere and did everything. The Realms, Dragonlance, Al-Qadim, Maztica, Spelljammer, Planescape, even my favorite setting of all time, Mystara, got some 2e support. And yeah, Ravenloft. My other favorite setting. It's no wonder we had such a blast with 2e, as there was so much of everything to inspire and inform our games. Too much, from TSR's financial standpoint. But that's not really what I wanted to talk about.</p><p> To me, 2e was everything I had wanted in a Dungeons & Dragons game at the time. The rules we often see as clunky in hindsight were fine for those of us who grew up with 1e and Basic. In fact, they were a genuine improvement in many cases. All the support materials were just icing on the cake- and a crap ton of icing it was. But then something happened that really upset me, and to this day I'm only partially sure why. 2e got a facelift, and I hated it.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7QiA0E6i4g2dfGF1TzxPIwc_oh80aJRnJyueo9ujuzkXHiRaRhNopAiY_ihdzbZiUkYNPLy1aKEpyYDa44Y4ZDB_sk_HlHvpNm_puVqIJu3NWuyBHHJNWGW02KuZWil_yLD5HiVSsCYLA/s1652/Player%2527s_Handbook_%25282nd_edition%2529.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1652" data-original-width="1243" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7QiA0E6i4g2dfGF1TzxPIwc_oh80aJRnJyueo9ujuzkXHiRaRhNopAiY_ihdzbZiUkYNPLy1aKEpyYDa44Y4ZDB_sk_HlHvpNm_puVqIJu3NWuyBHHJNWGW02KuZWil_yLD5HiVSsCYLA/s320/Player%2527s_Handbook_%25282nd_edition%2529.webp" /></a></div><p> The core books were reformatted and given a new trade dress in 1995. Gone was the natural progression of cover design from the 1e redux to 2e, these new "black border" covers just felt... off. And the interiors? Ugh. Gone was the iconic artwork of the original run of 2nd Edition, and the new layout went from the friendly blue and black to a more aggressive red and black. The font styles changed to a less readable style, and on the whole made the entire corebook line look closer to what the later Ravenloft-themed stuff looked like. It just felt... wrong. Now, the art isn't bad, at all. Both covers were done by the legendary Jeff Easley. But the tone of the art was... different.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw3-3tZZGF9TEB726qlDGJIi_A2CIfxaKhqP_yv89I4in_6M-6T0Ub_ZWNNDhgbYUCdhIgfJvuJ3wZwr2BhoBi8QpDOaMh9QvVKHCulQTwMl1wBageaTa_CKXEjF7_hPEMeJc0C6073VE5/s867/PHB2eRev.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="867" data-original-width="630" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw3-3tZZGF9TEB726qlDGJIi_A2CIfxaKhqP_yv89I4in_6M-6T0Ub_ZWNNDhgbYUCdhIgfJvuJ3wZwr2BhoBi8QpDOaMh9QvVKHCulQTwMl1wBageaTa_CKXEjF7_hPEMeJc0C6073VE5/w234-h320/PHB2eRev.JPG" width="234" /></a></div>Now, I'll admit if someone jumped into AD&D at this point, they wouldn't have been so used to the previous presentation. So this just might be my age and my prior D&D experiences predisposing me to dislike, nay, loathe the black-border redux. But this wasn't all- the reprints of the splatbooks changed to a cheaper cover, no longer the faux leather of the original issues, the reprints felt less awesome and in hindsight, maybe a harbinger of TSR's financial woes. To this day the only reason I own any of the black-border "2.5" books is because they have been given to me. I have never bought one of my own accord, and at the time of this writing I feel I never will.<p></p><p>Why do these updates offend my sensibilities so? You got me. I mean, I have something I like in each and every edition of D&D. Of this one I can say, well, it's 2e, and it includes any errata that had been compiled at that point. But above and beyond that, I just really feel repelled by this incarnation of the game, and was doubly sad when the commemorative hardcovers were released using these versions of the book interiors. Second Edition is blue and black, dammit, and if there's not the Elmore painting of the proud dragonslayers just inside the PHB, it's wrong. Now that I'm looking at the covers and the interiors side-by-side for this article, I do see something I can put my finger on. The first version looks bright, optimisitc, action-oriented. The second looks dark, desperate, and gritty. To be fair, Dungeons & Dragons can be both, sometimes in the same campaign, or the same adventure. But flip to the interiors, and that theme persists. The art and interior design of 2.5 is more subdued, and made harsher by the red chapter and section titles and borders.</p><p>So, even as 2nd Edition waned, and Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR, and I finished my AA and ended up unable to pursue my Army career due to Obstructive Sleep Apnea, I still clung to my high school version of AD&D 2e in what might have been my first expression of unreasonably hostile grognard-ism. I can say that at age 45 I realize I am being unreasonably judgey about what is essentially a cleanup and re-release of one of my favorite versions of D&D. There's nothing rules-wise wrong with it. But the look? The feel? All kinds of wrong. At least to me.</p><p>2nd Edition's tenure brought me so many things I love about D&D, though. I read the 2e splatbooks for fun, they had so many great ideas that were executed with more or less effectiveness. The Priest book even had some kits that were explicitly less powerful than the average Cleric, which I found neat. I mean, not everyone is a hammer-wielding, heal-casting badass. Kits allowed some great fluff and options to keep the base classes from feeling samey. And the settings - holy crap the settings. SO MANY SETTINGS. My favorites to read were Ravenloft, Maztica, and Al-Qadim. Sad thing is, I've only ever met one other hardcore Al-Qadim fan, and none who liked Maztica. So Ravenloft is all I've ever gotten to really run.</p><p>Here's a problem with my burning out on 2e due to my prejudice against the 2.5-themed products. I missed out on some truly cool stuff. Decades later, in 2019, I discovered Jakandor. This mini-setting flew under my radar as I was abstaining from buying stuff with that 2.5 look. It was an attempt to turn some AD&D tropes on their head, and it succeeded. I devoured it as part of a web project I was involved in (that crashed and burned) and discovered that I had really missed out on a cool bit of D&D history. I've looked back to see if I missed anything else cool. <br /></p><p>When I met my wife in 1997, we weren't playing AD&D, we introduced her to tabletop roleplaying with West End's Star Wars. She wouldn't make a D&D character until 3.0 was a brand new thing in 2000. So that sort of sums up the end of my 2nd Edition Stretch. It was, and remains, a favorite of mine, though I am struggling with my blind spot for its closing years.<br /></p><p></p><br /><br /><p><br /></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-529147896998734352021-01-31T00:30:00.004-06:002021-01-31T03:09:04.327-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 31: Gangbusters B/X<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiksc50eKQaNrmED4SwXZctilIfARJgIxgK_x1773nUHzBfYadeocmiArJYA17jq2m5Zf1T0fjA-TjSKXiBp6S9YPbvY7PdPv4j6NkAd1VmL7B7p1y9MvCeq6a89ARSSnKN_gbQplNgQ14e/s1400/Gangbusters+BX+Logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1400" data-original-width="1400" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiksc50eKQaNrmED4SwXZctilIfARJgIxgK_x1773nUHzBfYadeocmiArJYA17jq2m5Zf1T0fjA-TjSKXiBp6S9YPbvY7PdPv4j6NkAd1VmL7B7p1y9MvCeq6a89ARSSnKN_gbQplNgQ14e/w640-h640/Gangbusters+BX+Logo.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Prohibition. It's one of my favorite periods of American history to study. When we lost our collective minds and instituted a massive attempt to legislate morality and created of our law-abiding citizens a nation of scofflaws. Flappers, G-men, bootleggers, bathtub gin and speakeasies. Chicago typewriters, hits, smuggler's row, "I would advise yas ta keep dialin', Oxmyx."<p></p><p>I first played TSR's <i>Gangbusters</i> in High School. I loved so much about the game. First of all, it allowed players to be on the other side of the law. Sure, you could play cops and G-Men, both of which were a lot of fun. And you could play private dicks and reporters, both also with tons of potential for adventure. But holy crap you could play the <i>gangsters</i>. You could manufacture, transport, and sell illegal hooch. Run a speakeasy. Set up a numbers game. Build a criminal empire. And I loved every minute of it.</p><p>Recently, my friend Glen "Ol' Man Grognard" Hallstrom told me there was an OSR version of <i>Gangbusters</i> in the works. I love games built on the OSR engine, so I was intrigued. This led me to Mark Hunt's <i>Gangbusters B/X.<b> </b></i>This is a rework of the original <i>Gangbusters</i> RPG based around the 1981 Moldvay version of the D&D engine. You know, the one we all played back in The Day.</p><p>So, let's throw on a fedora and grab a tommy gun, and make a character for this new old game.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Like many games based on the Old School Renaissance, we start by rolling 3d6 in order for Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Strength: 11</li><li>Intelligence: 9</li><li>Wisdom: 11</li><li>Dexterity: 11</li><li>Constitution: 8</li><li>Charisma: 9</li></ul><p> Pretty average. The option exists to swap two points of Strength, Wisdom, or Intelligence for 1 point elsewhere, but our stats are so low already... Let's move on.</p><p>Our class is going to be Street Smart. As a Street Smart character, this PC will have a bonus to striking from behind, and the Nimble Fingers, Move Silently, Hide, and Word on The Street skills. A d4 for Hit Dice, I roll a 1, and modify it by the -1 for low Constitution. So... 1 measly Hit Point. Now I'm thinking of a dozen <i>Basic D&D</i> characters I've played. Gotta play it smart to stay alive.</p><p>We choose an alignment, the choices are Law Abiding, Neutrality, and Dishonest. Since we're going to probably work as a gangster, we'll go with Dishonest. We roll 3d6x10 for starting money, and end up with $130. Random rolls say we speak French in addition to English, and our nickname is "Lucky."</p><p>For equipment, we'll buy some typical clothes (AC5), a hip flask, a revolver, a blackjack, and we'll keep the rest of the money ($65.50) for future uses.<br /></p></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Frank Leroux never used his given name, Francois. The Boys thought it was "too French." The day that G-man's bullet was stopped by a half inch wide strip of metal in a car door was when they forgot all about "Francois" and started calling him "Lucky."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Lucky wasn't strong, like the boss' enforcers. He wasn't as smart as the idea men and the accountants. But what he was, was Lucky. He was sneaky, he could find things out. He had informants that could get him the word on the street. And when it came to taking people out- sometimes you didn't need to be tough.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Today, Lucky spends his days at the boss' most profitable speak. He listens, he finds things out, and he helps the boss in ways the other folks can't.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi7J8xLmCaD2roCFAwyD9qAFLrX_3ruiKHrjnS1oBMyL7-MTZcei8-yaQ4weoRmCFHzxiC9MOmIY68L_BIDHxGCPyE9WseJDWjKpkIA-nQWTJD9X_xda6mxFJ-JjA0tCSTW58UbwQT2WT_/s739/31+-+Lucky+Leroux.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="739" data-original-width="532" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi7J8xLmCaD2roCFAwyD9qAFLrX_3ruiKHrjnS1oBMyL7-MTZcei8-yaQ4weoRmCFHzxiC9MOmIY68L_BIDHxGCPyE9WseJDWjKpkIA-nQWTJD9X_xda6mxFJ-JjA0tCSTW58UbwQT2WT_/s16000/31+-+Lucky+Leroux.JPG" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts</h2><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Gangbusters B/X </i>has a couple of advantages over the original. The OSR engine means the mechanics of the game are automatically intuitive to many players. It also means tons of material for other games using the engine can be borrowed and plugged straight in. Want to do supernatural roaring 20s? Borrow spells, undead, and ghosts from any number of products based on the early D&D engine. I dig that quite a bit. Want to do your own version of <i>A Piece of The Action?</i> Grab <i>Starships & Spacemen 2nd Edition</i> to roll up Koik and Spocko and <i>Gangbusters </i>for Oxmyx and Krako.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The only thing missing from <i>Gangbusters B/X</i> are the many subsystems in the original <i>Gangbusters</i> that I love so much. So I asked the author about that- and it's coming in the Expert set, due out soon. So <i>Gangbusters B/X</i> will mimic the original <i>Basic</i> and <i>Expert</i> <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> by having two rulebooks, one basic, and one with more advanced information and rules. I'm looking quite forward to the release.<br /></div></div><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-80271517481558689482021-01-30T00:30:00.004-06:002021-01-31T01:41:26.535-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 30: Behind Enemy Lines<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy8Z21-at2Xss7qMg1MspochO47nZpenZfHAEeJF7hBI3Ac9xydHYZpH7UnB10VCi3gf54zuierc42zqLgFpY2l_BbxN9xuAIPiWhuONc2eZrNYt1kIVfl0JGu17kZc01spHuMG7YC5v06/s810/BehindEnemyLinesCover.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="679" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy8Z21-at2Xss7qMg1MspochO47nZpenZfHAEeJF7hBI3Ac9xydHYZpH7UnB10VCi3gf54zuierc42zqLgFpY2l_BbxN9xuAIPiWhuONc2eZrNYt1kIVfl0JGu17kZc01spHuMG7YC5v06/w536-h640/BehindEnemyLinesCover.JPG" width="536" /></a></div>World War II. Possibly the most studied conflict in the history of mankind. I remember when The History Channel was nothing but wall-to-wall WWII documentaries. The Hitler Channel: All Hitler, All The Time. So it's only natural that there are a few roleplaying games out there that cover good old WWII. Many of them add non-historical elements, like <i>Weird War II</i> with Nazi "Wehrwolves" and <i>Gear Krieg</i> with dieselpunk mecha. But FASA's <i>Behind Enemy Lines</i> is not one of those. This game intends to be a "straight" WWII roleplaying game, by default from the point of view of an American US Army soldier.<p></p><p>The game has a sort of lifepath character generation, and with its 2D6 task resolution it's hard not to see a bit of <i>Traveller</i> influence in the game. It has some very wargame-y elements, but that's to be expected of a game where the main setting is the conflict in Europe.</p><p>I have to admit that I have rolled up characters for this game many times, but I have yet to actually run it. I've owned it for decades, but never found a group that was interested in playing WWII "straight." No supernatural elements, no mecha, no nothing. Most players I've talked to felt it was far too grim, too easy for characters to catch a stray bullet and die horribly.</p><p>I think this game is in a genre where I'd stick to playing the dice as they fall, rather than my more modern mode of saving character deaths for dramatically appropriate moments. No, in a WWII game the grim brutality my players have always feared is probably pretty appropriate.</p><p>Without further adieu, lets' see who got drafted.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;"> We begin by determining our physical characteristics. They are Strength, Endurance, Weapons Handling, Agility, and Stamina. All but Stamina are rolled on 1D6+4. Stamina is then the average of Strength and Endurance.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Strength: 10</li><li>Endurance: 10</li><li>Weapons Handling: 7</li><li>Agility: 5</li><li>Stamina: 10</li></ul><p>Well, Agility crapped out, but the two sixes right off the bad help. Rolling on the 2D6 table tells us our character's weight is 170-180 pounds.</p><p>Now we roll for background skills, but we have to figure out if our character came from the city, or the country. 4, our character is rural. So we'll roll to see if he (these characters are universally male) picked up useful skills before basic training.</p><p>We now have a level 1 Rifle skill, a level 3 Pistol skill, Drive at level 1, and a level 2 Swim skill.</p><p>Now, for basic training. Our Rifle skill comes out to 4, First Aid at the maximum of 3, level 2 Hand-to-Hand skill, and level 1 skill in Bayonet, Rifle Grenade, BAR, Bazooka, .30 machine gun, 60mm mortar, and submachine gun.</p><p>Now we determine how experienced this character is. We roll an 8 and are a Private First Class. Our character has seen action only at Normandy. He has 1 Combat Experience point, and 5 acquired skill points. We'll spend 3 on a level of Rifle, and 2 on another level of First Aid, qualifying our character to be a medic.<br /></p></div><p>Jot down gear, and this character is ready to play.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Charlie Carlisle grew up in the small town of Taylor, Texas, son of a farmer and one of six children. Charlie and each of his siblings worked hard helping keep the farm afloat, with Charlie being the only member of his family to have graduated High School, with Charlie spending late nights trying to help his younger siblings do the same, then waking at dawn to help his father with the chores. That was the way things were until Sunday, December 7th, 1941. News from outside Texas didn't travel terribly fast most days, but by Sunday night even the sleepy little farm town was abuzz with news of the Japanese attack.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Charlie had a talk with his father, a veteran of The Great War, and set off for Austin the next day, to enlist in the US Army.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Basic Training was educational, but not too tough for a boy whose body had been conditioned to hard work. Like most boys in the country, he already knew his way around firearms, and knew how to drive the family's Ford pickup. These skills came in handy, and he was made a PFC aboard the ship taking him across the Atlantic for the invasion of Europe. Then the waiting started. Training, training, training. Practice and more practice. Some units invaded Sicily, Italy. And still Charlie waited with his unit. Drills, field problems, waiting. Waiting. Then one day, the paymasters paid the men in francs.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">D-Day. Charlie had never seen so much vomit, and hours later he had never seen so much blood. The whole thing was a blur of sound and motion, blood and water, men and machines. When the whole thing was finally over, God knows how long later, and he and his company caught their breath- there were just over half of them left. Charlie's own squad had lost their squad leader and both BAR men. He wondered why he'd ever wanted to hurry up and invade. But here he was - in Europe. He joined the Corporal who now led his squad in pissing on a burned out pillbox. So much for Fortress Europa.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now begins the long road to Berlin.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuZ6mMSjMJjRj1nSjV8R4j7zLnJgQYBQ4RWIjA92RHOizGtqfojMzFVGtL4fK_KoJw6AZap_L4qoT4jBpIjcpWBTBI4k1uISnGaUwQIyPv3z2VnNz_m9-Am1qLBW7VYgVS8i3rq6pZJ0XN/s857/29+-+Pfc+Carlile.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="655" data-original-width="857" height="490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuZ6mMSjMJjRj1nSjV8R4j7zLnJgQYBQ4RWIjA92RHOizGtqfojMzFVGtL4fK_KoJw6AZap_L4qoT4jBpIjcpWBTBI4k1uISnGaUwQIyPv3z2VnNz_m9-Am1qLBW7VYgVS8i3rq6pZJ0XN/w640-h490/29+-+Pfc+Carlile.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts</h2><div style="text-align: left;">I'm currently watching <i>Band of Brothers</i> with my son. We've also watched <i>Saving Private Ryan</i> together. I wonder if I could use <i>Behind Enemy Lines</i> as a teaching tool, to pick up some WWII history by walking students through some of the scenarios soldiers lived through. I doubt I could do a better job than Spielberg or Hanks, but the idea that the students could choose their own paths and see the outcome might be worth looking into. I'm reasonably familiar with both US and German squad-level tactics and unit compositions, and could bone up on specifics without much trouble. I mean, I spent way too much on a graduate degree in military history, I might as well put some of it to use.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This could also be interesting to play D-Day in the same "character funnel" style as <i>Dungeon Crawl Classics</i>, rolling up, say, four characters per player and seeing who survives hitting the beach. Rather than an irreverent kill-fest, the point would be to show the players just how horrifying the real thing was, again, make it an educational experience. Role playing games have a potential to allow us to step into the shoes of people we are not, and in some small way place ourselves in situations we have never experienced. Perhaps this would be a worthy goal at some point.<br /></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-38875138153953660962021-01-29T23:26:00.251-06:002021-01-30T16:58:13.541-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 29: Twilight: 2000<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOt81Pu6EdQlYBVYQyHEj7dmx8RX6Ca_xFvA_gROeRVvTRbviuuHU6aOmrjpeozZbghXvI_UNMeREAQZmWZVOGaLpM2lxBXQVKuApDKzmRJ18JBdqE7ept72jCrtckjNiBvcdaz9il1sNX/s676/T2K+Logo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="676" height="568" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOt81Pu6EdQlYBVYQyHEj7dmx8RX6Ca_xFvA_gROeRVvTRbviuuHU6aOmrjpeozZbghXvI_UNMeREAQZmWZVOGaLpM2lxBXQVKuApDKzmRJ18JBdqE7ept72jCrtckjNiBvcdaz9il1sNX/w640-h568/T2K+Logo.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>Ah, <i>Twilight:2000.</i> See, kids, when I was your age, we were sure there would be another World War, and it would be with the Soviets. So sure, in fact, that when we were doing our schedules for sophomore year I decided to sign up for our pilot program by which we would take Russian via satellite. I thought it would be a useful skill in a military career.<p></p><p>I had read and owned some books for the first edition of <i>Twilight:2000, </i>but we played the 2nd Edition throughout High School. The original 2e came out in 1990, which was my sophomore year coincidentally, but the original had been around since 1984. The Steve Venters artwork for the vehicles in the first edition vehicle guides alone was worth the price of admission. I can skill see the Cadillac Gage Stingray tank with "Pink Cadillac" painted on the side. Also, the M1A3 "Giraffe" style tank, and the LAV-75 that never was.</p><p>Being in Marine Corps JROTC at the time, myself and most of my game group were keenly interested in games with military themes. <i>Robotech</i> was a favorite, <i>Battletech</i> of course, and even our <i>Star Trek</i> games had a distinctly Nicholas Meyer feel to them, more Navy than most <i>Trek</i> films or episodes. <i>Twilight: 2000 </i>was a shoe-in when the revised edition arrived at King's Hobby Shop. We were all in. At this point in time, GDW was developing their own house system, which eventually appeared in <i>Traveller: The New Era</i>, <i>Dark Conspiracy,</i> <i>Cadillacs And Dinosaurs,</i> and of course, <i>Twilight:2000</i>.</p><p>It's kinda fun that in the Version 2.2 explanation sheet, GDW refers to the revamp of their house system as the D20-system. GRIN. But this version we played quite a bit of that summer, and into the mid-90s. So this is the version for which I'll make a character.</p><p>A neat thing about T2K is it uses a very <i>Traveller</i>-esque system of lifepath in 4-year terms, and skills that are picked up along the way. Go too old, and age starts to take its toll. Unlike <i>Traveller</i>, you can't die before the game starts, but you can accrue radiation and combat experience. If you choose to create a civilian character, every tour there is a die roll to see if war breaks out, and when it does, you're drafted. This occurs so all the characters can be in Kalisz for the start of the campaign. So that's what we're going to do. I'm going to make the character I was when I joined the State Guard, an academic working in higher education and then the balloon goes up. Let's see how that works out.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">First, we choose a background and native language. American, and English. Rolling a d10 to see if I speak any other languages, I end up being fluent in only English. Now we roll for attributes. There is a point-allocation option, but you guys know the drill. If it can be random in this series, it will be. The attributes are Strength, Agility, Constitution, Intelligence, Education and Charisma- very <i>Traveller</i>-esque. Rolling is 2D6-2 for each, re-rolling any snake-eyes results.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Strength: 8<br /></li><li>Agility: 5<br /></li><li>Constitution: 1<br /></li><li>Intelligence: 10 (Wow. I rolled a 3 and a 12 back-to-back)<br /></li><li>Education: 3<br /></li><li>Charisma: 4<br /></li></ul></div><p><i> </i>Now, we select four background skills.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Spanish: 2</li><li>Computer: 2</li><li>Ground Vehicle (Wheeled): 2</li><li>Unarmed Martial Arts: 2</li></ul><p>Well. We hit my first problem. We can't go to undergrad college, because we rolled an Education of 3. So... I guess we're enlisting.</p><p>In Basic we pick up the following skills:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Armed Martial Arts: 0</li><li>Autogun: 0</li><li>Grenade Launcher: 0</li><li>Ground Vehicle: Wheeled 1 (up to 3)</li><li>Small Arms (Rifle): 2</li><li>Swimming: 1</li><li>Tac Missile: 0</li><li>Thrown Weapon: 0</li><li>Unarmed Martial Arts: 1 (up to 2)</li></ul><p>We go to Armor AIT and pick up the following skills:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Autogun: 1</li><li>Ground Vehicle (Tracked): 2</li><li>Heavy Gun: 2</li></ul><p>Promotion: Yes! With the INT bonus and 10 on the die, we move up to Specialist-4. Yeah, when this was written, it was still SP4 rather than SPC. I used to get shit when I'd write my own rank as SP4 decades after it was changed. Anyway, we get one contact, and I rolled to see if it was foreign, and it was not. For secondary activity, we take CON+1. The war does not break out this term.</p><p>Term 2: Sticking with the Army, and taking night classes. Term 2 gets 5 skills.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Heavy Gun: +1=3<br /></li><li>Autogun: +1=2<br /></li><li>Ground Vehicle (Tracked): +1=3<br /></li><li>Mechanic: 1<br /></li><li>Observation: 1<br /></li></ul><p>Promoted to Sergeant! Huzzah. That means we pick up a level of Leadership, Instruction, and Persuasion from NCO school. Another military contact. +1 EDU as Secondary Activity. War does not break out.<br /></p><p>Term 3: One more Army term and we can go to college! 4 skills for Term 3.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Autogun: +1=3<br /></li><li>Mechanic: +1=2</li><li>Observation: +1=2</li><li>Small Arms (Rifle): +1=3<br /></li></ul><div><p>Promoted to Staff Sergeant. One more military contact. +1 EDU as Secondary Activity. Our soldier is now 29 years old, and wants to get out to go back to college- but a die roll of 2 means war breaks out. So much for that.</p><p>Term 4: War breaks out. Automatic promotion to Sergeant First Class (the book calls it Platoon Sergeant, but it hasn't been called that since the 50s. Platoon sergeant is a billet now, rather than a rank and a billet.<i>) </i>3 Skills.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Observation: +1=3<br /></li><li>Navigation: 1<br /></li><li>Small Arms (Rifle): +1=4<br /></li></ul><p> Roll for promotion: nope. Contact: US military. Secondary Activity +1 CON.</p><p>Now we finish things up. 1D6 for Initiative yields a 5. 5D6 for Rads = 15. The character is now 33 years old, so must roll to avoid losing a point of Agility. Roll 1D10, if it's less than the current attribute, lose one point. 5 rolled, 5 Agility, it stays where it is.<br /></p><p>We calculate the derived attributes, like throw range, load weight, personal weight, and how many hits we can take to the various parts of our body. We get the US Military basic load- and would have a vehicle if we were making a group of characters. But as a solo character, no vehicle for us. So I guess we are a tanker without a tank. We get $5,000 worth of scavenged equipment per term in the military, so that's $20,000 worth of stuff. It just so happens that the game values a HMMWV at $20,000 exactly, so we just stole one from somewhere. Finding fuel? That's a problem for the day after... erm... The Day After.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;"><i>TC's Log. Stardate- Today.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> This will be the final entry, since there's not a single chance we're getting the parts we need to get the turbine running again. Not that there's fuel if we did. We're taking everything we can salvage, and the engineers are going make sure the rest isn't useful to anybody. The few tanks that are running will pick our track over for spares before that. But it's a damn shame.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> I'm feeling all Charlton Heston when he saw the Statue of Liberty. We saw some of the flashes, some of the mushroom clouds, way off in the distance. Had our company been where they were supposed to be, we'd probably be glowing in the dark right now. For one glorious moment, our lack of fuel worked in our favor. The Green Weenie blew right by us this time like the Angel on Passover. But yeah, they did it. The sons of bitches pushed the button, and here we are.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> The front... is gone. The Colonel has no idea what the hell we all do now. He said he's not throwing good troops in after bad and rolling us into a radiation zone with no clear idea of the objective, now that the objective is a glassed-over crater you can use to make Hot Pockets. He's got less than half a battalion left, and of those we're mostly running on empty tanks. In empty tanks. With empty tanks. It's that kinda situation.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> They're talking about taking those of us who are suddenly dismounted and folding us into the mech infantry, we've even been handed some scrounged rifles and carbines and one guy as a Kalashnikov he picked up somewhere along the way from an Ivan who won't be needing it anymore. We've got food for about a week, two if we're careful. Water's plentiful, but we gotta make sure it doesn't make the Geiger counter go clicketty clack. We just need to-</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> OK, just finished a quick and dirty talk with Top. Our illustrious First Shirt wants me to take a Humvee and see if I can link up with 2nd Battalion, who were behind is about 20 miles last we checked. So I guess it's me, my crew, and a Humvee. Fuck it, we're totally snagging our Ma Deuce before someone else does and bolting it to this Humvee somehow. Division said we're on our own. So here we go. </i><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_GTniOzDoUrso98ETfroKvSbqq1-O__zTcWSJYgLZF1prjLIjatGld_y9O3OYw0ao9fK4bdn0E7zQ3UmcMGPCAk6_Rq-fgCSLobeoi1csk-5wfvZjLnIgcsI-4dHIidc8JmLX2p6JIHwq/s806/30+-+Anderson+Bligh.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="806" data-original-width="609" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_GTniOzDoUrso98ETfroKvSbqq1-O__zTcWSJYgLZF1prjLIjatGld_y9O3OYw0ao9fK4bdn0E7zQ3UmcMGPCAk6_Rq-fgCSLobeoi1csk-5wfvZjLnIgcsI-4dHIidc8JmLX2p6JIHwq/w484-h640/30+-+Anderson+Bligh.JPG" width="484" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> <br /></p></div>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-64275248567047920062021-01-28T00:30:00.294-06:002021-01-28T00:30:00.197-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 28: Mighty Protectors<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ctO8sK7RTh-7JtGCdY0iSu96i91M8fwQZhVq2hm5H587tCnQEVVQ7vpEdaqwk_5KZG6eAnQVB04k47Qgre_BtjoC3SRGScU-MTJesBaQ-rZkYq6wSgRfKy7JM_ZI-7nY-8XIrHTVulOu/s1034/MightProtectorsLogo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="1034" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ctO8sK7RTh-7JtGCdY0iSu96i91M8fwQZhVq2hm5H587tCnQEVVQ7vpEdaqwk_5KZG6eAnQVB04k47Qgre_BtjoC3SRGScU-MTJesBaQ-rZkYq6wSgRfKy7JM_ZI-7nY-8XIrHTVulOu/w640-h277/MightProtectorsLogo.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><i> </i><p></p><p><i>Villains and Vigilantes</i> was like <i>Champions</i> in my 80s gaming group- we'd all heard about it, but none of us had played it. Despite both being popular games beloved by the grognard community, for some strange reason neither ever caught on with any of us, so I didn't try either until I was much, much older. As of this writing, I've played one extremely shaky and uncertain game of <i>Fantasy Hero</i>, and five extremely awesome games of <i>Mighty Protectors</i> - which is the title of <i>Villains and Vigilantes</i> 3.0. What was the difference? Well, for starters, all my <i>Mighty Protectors</i> games have been run by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, the original creators. That attempt at <i>Hero</i> was me not knowing any of the rules.</p><p><i>Mighty Protectors</i> has a very interesting history getting to market. To sum things up, authors Dee and Herman had to fight for the rights to their own game, which were being squatted by the former publisher. A long legal battle ensued, with our intrepid writers at long last emerging victorious. I missed out on the initial Kickstarter, but jumped in as a late backer. After all, this was RPG history, a classic game coming back from its original authors. But I needed to get some experience with the game, and how better to do that than with those same authors? So, at North Texas RPG Con, I jumped into games run by each of the two, and had a great time.</p><p><i>Mighty Protectors</i> has some really interesting mechanics, if I had to pick one to call out as the most awesome, it's the ability to use Power to reduce injury. This just seems so appropriate to a comic book game. So, Power represents the juice many heroes use to power their abilities, but it also represents a pool of resilience and will even for those heroes without Power-consuming abilities. That means when an attack hits, a hero can reduce that damage a certain amount determined by current Power in exchange for spending an amount of current Power. This makes heroes able to take the kind of punishment we see in comic books before they start taking severe or debilitating injuries. I really liked that this was an elective ability for all heroes, regardless of their power portfolio. It just made things feel suitably super-powered.</p><p>My very first game of MP I played Shutterbug, a young hero very much in the vein of Spider-Man. I had a blast. We were playing what I now know to be a classic adventure module for the original V&V, <i>Crisis at Crusader Citadel</i>. Come to find out, once I got the book in my hands, there's an amazing comic book reality decades in the making for <i>Mighty Protectors. </i>It has its own history and cosmology, its own aliens and races, its own pantheon of heroes and villains. And a rippin' good one. I had such a great time on this game, that I selected Shutterbug from the pregens the next time I played, too. I also had the opportunity to help shape another group's <i>Mighty Protectors </i>campaign. Jeff Dee had a situation where he needed to determine what occurred "off screen" to his group's game, so he dropped by a Royal Dragoon Guards meeting (He and Manda are part of our Home Guard) and let us play the offscreen characters. It was really bitchin' to get to play such an epic battle against a powerful monster, but even cooler to know that our exploits would have a direct effect on other characters in the campaign world.</p><p>So far, I've only played pregens, all of which are iconic characters in the <i>Mighty Protectors </i>universe. So let's dig in and make a new character.</p><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">You folks know how I have a nostalgic love of random things. Random lifepaths, random events, random ability scores. <i>Mighty Protectors</i> has a robust system for generating random characters as well as a point-buy system for building custom characters to order. My dice are itching to go, to I'm going to go completely random and see what sort of character comes out the other end. Power Level is our next choice, we'll go with Standard.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Birthplace: Local. So the character is from wherever the campaign introduces them, in this case, somewhere in the US on Earth. We'll go with Austin, TX, because... Austin.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Species: Human</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Culture: Modern</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Age: 12 (I rolled double 1s.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Gender: Man</div><div style="text-align: left;">Biological Sex: Cisgender</div><div style="text-align: left;">Attraction: Straight <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(I love that they have separated gender and biological sex, I have several players for whom this is a very affirming thing, which it is in general.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Basic Characteristics in <i>Mighty Protectors</i> are Strength (ST), Endurance (EN), Agility (AG), Intelligence (IN), and Cool (CL). Each Power Level of campaign has an array of scores set for it, and a random die roll places that array of scores. Sour 18 goes in- IN. 16 in CL, 14 in ST, 12 in AG, leaving 10 for EN.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now that these are set, the wonderful Excel character sheet (available <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/222459/Mighty-Protectors-Excel-Record-Sheet-Pack">HERE</a>) does the work of calculating the stats that are based on the Basic Characteristics. Carrying capacity, Base HTH damage, Save numbers, etc. Rolling for weight, we get 80lbs (12-year-old kid) and that yields a mass of d3.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now, we roll for Background. Roll three times, and keep two. Let's see what we get. Accounting/Finance, Commercial Art, Psychology. Hmmm. For a 12-year-old, let's say a parent was an accountant, and the character himself did fan art and sold it online and at conventions.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Now we roll for Motivation - Glory Hound. Sounds about right fort a 12-year-old. Wealth starts at d4, Luck roll at 10-, and then we roll for Origin. Mystical Training. This just got even more interesting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now we roll two Offensive Abilities, two Defensive Abilities, and two Miscellaneous Abilities. Here we go:</div><div style="text-align: left;">Natural Weaponry</div><div style="text-align: left;">Force Field</div><div style="text-align: left;">Non-Corporealness</div><div style="text-align: left;">Density Change</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mental Ability</div><div style="text-align: left;">Telepathy</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Out of this six, we pick four Core Abilities. Since we're training in the Mystic Arts, we'll take Force Field, Non-Corporealness, Mental Ability, and Telepathy. Each of these receives 20 CP. Now to roll two random Weaknesses.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Phobia, and Low Self-Control. Both sound appropriate. Let's take Low Self Control at -10, allowing us to put 10CP into Density Change.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">We're ready to rock and roll.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Jimmy Malcolm was a twelve-year-old geek for all seasons. Stunningly intelligent, and a voracious reader, he avoided the trap of focusing all his time on academic pursuits. He loved the outdoors in addition to his books, and loved to camp with his family. One weekend on a trip to the lake, he came across an old leather backpack lying near the shore in a stand of trees. Opening the pack to check for any indication of who its owner was, Jimmy found nothing but a large hardbound book that reminded him of his older brother's <i>Advanced Dungeons & Dragons</i> manuals. He kept the book, and took it home.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Within days, Jimmy had taken to devouring the old book with every waking hour he could. After school he eschewed his Atari and comic books to read more of the strange contents of the volume. And as he read, he began to understand - everything. The world was surrounded by an arcane fabric that could be manipulated by those who knew how. And Jimmy knew now. He could visualize every single word of the book he had read, every book he had ever read, and his first attempts at weaving spells showed real promise. He could protect himself with a shield, he could throw bolts of force, he could walk through walls and read people's thoughts. Though this last wasn't always pleasant.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Just weeks short of his 13th Birthday, Jimmy had mastered the contents of the book. He knew he had powers now- and he'd been a fan of superheroes all his life. The time had come to <i>be</i> one. He took on the name Kid Kinetic, for his ability to wield force fields and force bolts. He applied for a superhero license, and watches the mailbox each and every day.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkpWYvNXHvX2nbus30iZxoRpFMVXhtgEGS6qZAe0d0LYb5MxMMmmSifMvPQz2cvRT3Jpgp5G38yefTIrCawedMErTxzWej8JU6HA9q-pOY46-NS-whY9CNjQ4PWoLDVl86B3AzKtMoNx67/s743/28+-+Kid+Kinetic.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="743" data-original-width="529" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkpWYvNXHvX2nbus30iZxoRpFMVXhtgEGS6qZAe0d0LYb5MxMMmmSifMvPQz2cvRT3Jpgp5G38yefTIrCawedMErTxzWej8JU6HA9q-pOY46-NS-whY9CNjQ4PWoLDVl86B3AzKtMoNx67/w456-h640/28+-+Kid+Kinetic.JPG" width="456" /></a></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts</h2><div style="text-align: left;">OK, so, I <i>loved</i> the random creation process, but it did leave out one concept in <i>Mighty Protectors</i> that is incredibly awesome. Vehicles.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Super Vehicles in <i>Mighty Protectors</i> are built on points, with an integration of modular spaces called "system spaces", each space having a function and filling a spot on a floorplan of the vehicle. The end result is each super-vehicle ends up with a deckplan of sorts, helping players imagine the layout and size of their vehicles.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">You can do pretty much anything with this system from motorcycles to jets to flying carriers. It's fun to read through the list of things possible with vehicles, and wondering why the designers of the <i>USS Enterprise</i> didn't splurge the 5 CP for "Won't Explode" on all the bridge consoles.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I will say that I found the complexity level of <i>Mighty Protectors</i> to be far less to my eye than most supers games that use a point system. I also found that combat runs more smoothly in <i>MP</i> than in a couple of other supers games I've tried. Again, I love being able to trade Power points for absorbing damage, it just seems like a neat way to wear down a hero slowly, allow them to take heroic amounts if damage if they are willing to trade away the juice with which their powers operate. Risk/Reward in a game is always fun.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is a game I'd like to explore more, and try my hand at running. It's going on my (admittedly long, thanks to the pandemic) list of games to run when I can get at a table with folks again, or at least through Zoom or Discord. This game is quite a bit of fun to read, and the universe created by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman is a pretty cool place to visit.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-89070205281570185252021-01-27T00:30:00.179-06:002021-01-27T11:47:17.560-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 27: The Lone Wolf Adventure Game<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfEMgJob9Ohv6K_dHk-FqR20JO3jjd1GFwMugg0FFRg5s1RHuer66wPSSIEf8D70KOYeJq4rYIPFZ98GgXP6zxqLCEqxGjwRW6Z8DAuUpfHZQJg9qFx3Oszg9wdGh73Qn6F-CBog4giLdd/s668/LoneWof+Logo.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="223" data-original-width="668" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfEMgJob9Ohv6K_dHk-FqR20JO3jjd1GFwMugg0FFRg5s1RHuer66wPSSIEf8D70KOYeJq4rYIPFZ98GgXP6zxqLCEqxGjwRW6Z8DAuUpfHZQJg9qFx3Oszg9wdGh73Qn6F-CBog4giLdd/s16000/LoneWof+Logo.JPG" /></a></div>Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for 1989. There I was, sitting in Algebra class at Round Rock High School. Mr. Sikes class. He was a good teacher, but a little too trusting. He'd let us grade each other's homework, and as he called role we'd call out our grades. OF COURSE we all made somewhere in the 90s, with an 88 or so in there for veracity. But then again, maybe he knew the test scores would tell. And they did.<p></p><p>Why do I bring up Algebra? Because I largely got through that class due to Joe Dever's <i>Lone Wolf</i> adventure books. Mr. Sikes was very patient, and would explain things multiple times to the folks in the class who just didn't get it. I usually had it after the second go-round, and was bored out of my mind for the rest of class. Enter <i>Lone Wolf</i>.</p><p>The <i>Lone Wolf</i> books were an analog version of a text adventure game. More than just a choose-your-own-adventure, they had a simple game system in them relying on a random number generator going 0-9 and some boolean variables. Like "Do you have the Kai discipline of Tracking? Go to 200. If not go to 195." Or "Pick a random number from the table. On 0-4 go to 200. On 5-9 go to 195." In the back of each novel there was a random number table - close your eyes and drop the eraser end of your pencil to choose. Or use a d10. Or use the RND function on your calculator. I still have both the d10 and the calculator. There was a character sheet in the back of the book for recording stats, equipment, and combats. It was just what I needed to get me through. And- when you finished a book in the series, your character got to add a new discipline for the next book.</p><p>Years later, Mongoose Publishing dropped a <i>Lone Wolf</i> RPG in two flavors, one used basically the same system the old books did. The second used the d20 system, as this was the early 2000s and the OGL/d20 phenomenon was going strong. I own both versions, but never got to play them. A decade later, I came across an absolutely gorgeous boxed set at Ettin Games in Humble, TX- <i>The Lone Wolf Adventure Game.</i> This offering from Cubicle Seven is beautiful. The art is extremely evocative of Joe Dever's Kai Lords and world of Magnamund. The contents of the box smack of quality, and the system, I was gratified to find, was nearly identical to the books and the earlier Mongoose version.</p><p>So what is a Kai Lord? It's important to know, since the boxed set assumes all your characters are going to be one. Kai Lords are... Jedi Rangers. Sort of. They are a monastic order of men and women who learn powerful disciplines that are part skill, part psionic or magical ability. Weaponskill and Tracking on the mundane side, Mind Over Matter and Mindblast on the magical side. So, warrior-monks of a sort, identifiable by their distinctive green cloaks.</p><p>So, what does it take to make a Kai Lord for <i>The Lone Wolf Adventure Game?</i> Let's find out.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Creating a Kai Lord is very straightforward, no more complex than it was in the game books, really. The first thing we do is determine Combat Skill and Endurance. The box includes a random number table you can flip a coin into, or you can just roll a d10. I'll be rolling a d10 since I'm working from the PDF at the moment.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Great. A zero. That means our Combat Skill is the bare minimum of 10. And a 2 for Endurance, giving us a total of 12. Not the beefiest Kai Lord ever.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Next, we choose our five Kai Disciplines. This character is not a fighty type, so we're going to concentrate on choices that play to our strengths. Camouflage, Sixth Sense, Animal Kinship, Mind Over Matter and Mindblast.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Starting Equipment is next - Green tunic and cloak, check. Backpack, belt, and leather pouch. Check. Rolling for Gold Crowns... zero again. 10 Gold Crowns to start with. One map of the Lastlands. Now we pick five items from the item list. Let's see... Chainmail Waistcoat, Helmet, and a Shield to help keep from getting killed, and a Dagger for utility, and a Meal to keep fed. Five items. Done.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Ooh! We get to roll randomly for a name. This is optional, but since we love random stuff in this challenge... Silent Dancer. OK, that kind of fits the skill set, and the lack of focus on combat.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And that, dear readers, is that. It's absurdly simple to create a Kai Lord for this game, which makes it a great game for a one-shot, or for new players.</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character<br /></h2></div><div style="text-align: left;">As a young child, her name had been Marren, but she entered the Kai Monastery as a refugee, orphaned after a savage attack of Mountain Giaks had killed most of the adults of her village. A small group of Kai Lords had arrived and saved those who had survived that long, leading them back to the Monastery after burying the dead. Some children went to live with relatives, but Marren had no such family. She was alone, and elected to stay with her rescuers and learn the ways of the Kai.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The training was hard, and it was obvious she had no real aptitude to become a great warrior. She could hold her own, but many of the other initiates were so much more capable with a weapon. One day during practice, a tall boy with a sure sword disarmed her and backed her into a corner. In desperation, she reflexively lashed out with her mind and knocked the boy unconscious. Her Kai Master knew immediately that she should be trained in the mental arts, and save the martial for later.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">She learned how to disappear into the forest, how to calm and communicate with the animals, and her mental acuity developed at a prodigious rate. By the time of her initiation, she was known for her prescience, her stealth, and her ability to move things and shock opponents with her mind alone. She was given the name Silent Dancer, and assigned to the patrol and protection of her old home province. She has been taught that revenge is not the Kai way, but should she see any Giaks mucking about where they do not belong...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhROmIx4meUOT5vgUXit6pgBPCri0y-oc8gv91W_7bqezb7zVLFW-VhyphenhyphenL7_3HC3VUKimoQHUyEEwE49Q99qGU_iW8sS_NO5ZmWKMml3OLG-Hkrfcu8EPKyJEyfrbnJ5vTSMLxzEDCQEm9mY/s886/27+-+Silent+Dancer.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="886" height="495" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhROmIx4meUOT5vgUXit6pgBPCri0y-oc8gv91W_7bqezb7zVLFW-VhyphenhyphenL7_3HC3VUKimoQHUyEEwE49Q99qGU_iW8sS_NO5ZmWKMml3OLG-Hkrfcu8EPKyJEyfrbnJ5vTSMLxzEDCQEm9mY/w640-h495/27+-+Silent+Dancer.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts</h2><div style="text-align: left;">It is extremely cool to rediscover this world from my youth. I had many of the <i>Lone Wolf</i> books, and even Joe Dever's first <i>Freeway Warrior</i> book, which had similar mechanics but a <i>Mad Max</i> vibe. There's a phone app with the original <i>Lone Wolf</i> books that saves your information and progress. Which is cool. I've been playing it with my daughter as part of her reading time.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, this game is awesome. It's fast, easy, and the setting is pretty neat. It also has a built-in reason for the PCs to work together- they're all, by definition, Kai Lords. Now, there is a sourcebook with lots of other options - my favorite are the Dwarven Gunners of Bor. Black Powder Dwarves are always cool. Right?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The possible issue is long legs in the campaign. Leveling up means learning new Kai Discipline, which will eventually lead to the variation and differences in PCs becoming thinner as everyone masters every discipline. Once a Kai Lord has mastered all 10 disciplines, they become a Master, and may go toward learning the MagnaKai Disciplines. But in the meantime, the characters all move slowly toward having the same talents.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As I said earlier, this is a great product for introducing roleplaying to new folks. Even kids. It's simple, only uses one kind of die (if any!) and is quite narrative. I also find the artwork extremely nice, and inspirational to the source material. <br /></div></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-54813675905082899522021-01-26T00:30:00.181-06:002021-01-26T00:30:00.124-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 26: Boot Hill<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrRfPD4TCcTgHu2eDdVhubmDdUQ02RuO3sRr0chodCP3hHqCBonyT_n0EeZUENesQjAMeMWYFG4vxhQCpoov6oUEZrN08fakNUc6VKADyPtfKi5VG-Zl50chXajjjRJ5EoI_eP1cX8wfSm/s670/BootHillLogo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="670" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrRfPD4TCcTgHu2eDdVhubmDdUQ02RuO3sRr0chodCP3hHqCBonyT_n0EeZUENesQjAMeMWYFG4vxhQCpoov6oUEZrN08fakNUc6VKADyPtfKi5VG-Zl50chXajjjRJ5EoI_eP1cX8wfSm/s16000/BootHillLogo.JPG" /></a></div><i>Boot Hill</i>, 3rd Edition. This came out when I was in High School, and while westerns weren't a genre we played at all at the time, there was a catalyst to suddenly sparking our interest in six-guns. It was a film called <i>Young Guns II.</i> We'd all seen and loved the original <i>Young Guns</i> from 1988, and the sequel hit my sophomore year, along with a new edition of what I later learned was a TSR classic. So we scored a copy of Boot Hill and did some cowboy shit. It didn't last as long as our Ranger-heavy <i>Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition</i> campaign that followed the Kevin Costner <i>Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves</i> film, but hey, it was fun.<p></p><p>The original set of <i>Boot Hill</i> rules, much like early D&D, was sort of like a wargame with the seeds of a roleplaying game hiding out in there. Almost any time you reduce a wargame unit to a single person, you invite roleplaying. Hell, I've even imagined roleplaying scenarios in my head while playing <i>Galaga</i> or <i>Choplifter!</i> at the arcade, so it's not hard to see how <i>Boot Hill</i> followed the footsteps of D&D and became an RPG by its second edition, which came in 1979. The bulk of the rules were on movement and combat. The third edition was the first time it actually called itself a roleplaying game on the cover, though people were playing it as one for years. One interesting artifact of this period is the first edition AD&D <i>Dungeon Master's Guide</i> had conversion rules for Boot Hill characters into AD&D. Anyway, Steve Winter took over with the 3rd Edition and turned it into a full RPG, and that's the edition I played.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Characters in <i>Boot Hill</i> have five attributes- Strength, Coordination, Observation, Stature, and Luck. Coordination is basically Dexterity, Observation is for alertness and perception, and Stature is sort of a fame stat. 2 is wretched and 10 is average, 20 is the highest possible.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Scores are generated by rolling 2d10 and looking up a modifier. Like <i>Gangbusters</i>, the table is weighted to avoid truly crappy results, with a natural 2 being modified up to a 7. There are three methods for generating the stats, roll in order, roll and arrange, and roll 8 keep any 5- in order. I'll go with the first method, roll in order. My rolls are: 10, 12, 3, 11, and 13. Looking up the modifiers, that comes out as follows:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Strength: 13</li><li>Coordination: 14</li><li>Observation: 8</li><li>Stature: 13</li><li>Luck: 8 (Luck is divided by two and rounded up, so 15/2=7.5, up to 8)</li></ul><p>I really don't like that Observation, but the Luck score might help make up for it?</p><p>Now, here's something interesting. Skills. The beginning number of skills a character has is based on their total attribute points. Add them all up, and reference a chart. Characters with low attributes get more skills to help balance them out, and characters with high attributes get fewer. Weapon skills are rated upward from 1, and work/craft skills are rolled in the same way as attributes. This character's total is 56, right in the middle of the chart, starting the game with 7 skills.</p><p>Our character was a telegrapher in the Union Army during the Civil War, so we're going to take Telegraph, Surveying/Mapmaking, Stealth, Orienteering, Riding, Scouting, Pistol, and Brawling. </p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Brawling: 1</li><li>Orienteering: 11</li><li>Pistol: 1 <br /></li><li>Riding: 14</li><li>Scouting: 12 <br /></li><li>Stealth: 16 <br /></li><li>Surveying/Mapmaking: 12 <br /></li><li>Telegraph: 14 <br /></li></ul><p>On a natural 20, our character is ambidextrous. 8, nope.<br /></p></div><div style="text-align: left;">Starting funds and equipment? On page 98 it says:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">For example, the Judge should provide each player with an inventory of his character's cash on hand, equipment, animals, possessions, hirelings/associates/friends/ and so on.<br /></div></blockquote><p>So... I guess it's up to the Judge, <i>Boot Hill's</i> term for Game Master. This character is complete, then.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Scar Andrews was just happy nobody was shooting at him anymore. At least, not on a daily basis. Formerly Corporal Wilbur Andrews, Military Telegraph Corps, Scar was content to head West and find himself an occupation that involved a lot less gunpowder and a lot more cash. Scar found himself following the expanding telegraph lines and getting a job with Western Union and a roaming troubleshooter.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Unfortunately, the "shoot" part was more common than Scar would like. Not as bad as the war, but having grown up back East in a city, the frontier was decidedly less civilized. A one-eyed telegraph man was the last person anyone would expect to be taking up his shooting irons in defense of a town, but that's exactly what happened. A gaggle of former Confederate soldiers descended on the town he was visiting and proceeded to take what they wanted. They took money, they took booze- when they tried to take a woman unlucky enough to catch their attention, he stepped in with his service revolver and killed two, driving the other three away as they had no idea how many "law men" they were facing. This earned Scar the thanks of the town, and the ire of the bandits when they heard they'd been chased off by a single ex-bluebelly with the element of surprise.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">The town being between Marshalls, at it were, Scar Andrews decided he couldn't stomach leaving the townsfolk to the tender mercies of the raiders should they return.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-HZhvsshhhg_5sC0OFpGpTQ0RcAeQ099eZ5eF3-PPcd6I6lW9q03lnDeMv-wgtvz0LqoE0HUBe6_BmT9OL6QGMy1io-gRSrf2pcKEKvPJR6hH5vjSj_HdiohZx5r1tRZ52K5-0YzDKDQ/s712/26+-+Scar+Andrews.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-HZhvsshhhg_5sC0OFpGpTQ0RcAeQ099eZ5eF3-PPcd6I6lW9q03lnDeMv-wgtvz0LqoE0HUBe6_BmT9OL6QGMy1io-gRSrf2pcKEKvPJR6hH5vjSj_HdiohZx5r1tRZ52K5-0YzDKDQ/s16000/26+-+Scar+Andrews.JPG" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts:</h2><div style="text-align: left;">We had a torrid love affair with <i>Boot Hill</i> 3e, and then moved on. I didn't do much Wild West gaming after that for a decade and a half. Then I discovered <i>Deadlands</i>. Played a bit of that. Like <i>Shadowrun</i> but in the Old West. Magic, steampunk-ish elements. As for pure Western action, it's just been <i>Boot Hill</i> and a little GURPS for me.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now that I've gone back and re-familiarized myself with <i>Boot Hill</i>, it makes me wanna rewatch the <i>Young Guns</i> movies and <i>Unforgiven</i> and run a Western one-shot. I have several <i>Boot Hill</i> modules. Hell, I should have run the <i>Ballots & Bullets </i>module back during election season!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Seriously, though, this isn't a genre I have played a lot of over the years, but it is one that many people enjoy, and I'd gladly play in or run <i>Boot Hill</i> if a group were interested. I have happy memories of the games of this I did play, which were vastly outnumbered by D&D, <i>MechWarrior, Shadowrun, </i>etc.<br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-91687131748353877172021-01-25T00:30:00.007-06:002021-01-25T16:36:17.794-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 25: MechWarrior<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLCD7A3BBiCBleJ4Yu4yRvzXUNOB20KzQX5bi7MnPgpy6wguJ2ui-XGinKFfpcg-3H3sZYpEPlc7pBtRotRwguyZ1nH4AYD_6unTeV_X31GrCoIY2ojuWWcDNdN7JWRO_7K4F_4JolkMqx/s648/MWLogo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="648" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLCD7A3BBiCBleJ4Yu4yRvzXUNOB20KzQX5bi7MnPgpy6wguJ2ui-XGinKFfpcg-3H3sZYpEPlc7pBtRotRwguyZ1nH4AYD_6unTeV_X31GrCoIY2ojuWWcDNdN7JWRO_7K4F_4JolkMqx/s16000/MWLogo.JPG" /></a></div>Well, here we are. <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> brought me to roleplaying as a hobby, but <i>MechWarrior</i> has had an incredible effect on me and my life. As I type this, I have been a member of The Royal Dragoon Guards since it founded in 1995 as a club dedicated to roleplaying in the <i>MechWarrior</i> universe. The RDG has branched out into all gaming since then, and has, at times, been a part of larger fandom organizations- but at its heart has always been the kind of roleplaying we did in this universe. MechWarrior. Even our Dragooniverse setting for <i>Stars Without Number</i> is heavily influenced by some of the tropes of the <i>MechWarrior/Battletech</i> universe. I was married in the uniform of our Regiment, and the best men and ushers were likewise in our custom-designed dress uniforms. I used to read Technical Readout: 3025 to my son at nap time.<p></p><p>So, what is it about this game and universe that captivates me so? That could be a blog series all its own. <i>MechWarrior</i> is <i>Dune</i> with giant robots. Or, for the younger crowd, <i>Game of Thrones</i> with giant robots. Great Houses of a fallen Star League squabbling over the scraps of a once great empire. Civilization and technology have degraded during centuries of warfare, so that the implements of war themselves are artifacts of a bygone age. It is not uncommon to war over spare parts caches. The MechWarriors themselves are less like modern soldiers and more like medieval knights, with their towering BattleMechs stand-ins for steed and armor. Neo-feudalism is the norm, and many planets can only muster a defense of the one or two things worth a damn on the entire world.</p><p>Damn. Just thinking about the original setting, in the early years of the 31st Century, gets my imagination running like a finely tuned fusion engine. At any given time I've got half a dozen campaign ideas prepped for this game universe. Scrappy mercenaries is an old classic, the <i>MechWarrior </i>equivalent of the D&D adventuring party. Then there's the espionage campaigns, the scavenging for "LosTech" campaigns, the socio-political campaigns, and the ever popular 'Mech gladiator on Solaris VII campaigns. And more.</p><p>Like many RPGs, <i>MechWarrior</i> has had several editions. We're looking at the original edition from 1986, even though most of my play time was with <i>Mechwarrior Second Edition</i> from 1991. The Dragoons even playtested on <i>MechWarrior Third Edition (1999), </i>and we have played both the current game, <i>A Time of War</i>, and several conversions such as GURPs and <i>Savage Worlds</i>. We even made our own <i>Strands of FATE</i> conversion that was pretty good. And I've tinkered with <i>d20 Modern</i> (bad idea) and <i>Cepheus Engine</i> (great idea) conversions. Now there's a new fast-play, rule-light option, <i>MechWarrior: Destiny</i>. I own it, but we have yet to play it. Time will tell.</p><p>Back to the first edition. This game has a fair amount of <i>Traveller</i> in its bones. It uses a 2d6 resolution system, and some of the feel of the setting has an air of <i>Traveller</i> meets <i>Dune</i> with big, stompy robots thrown in. The system is a point-build affair, though there are some random elements to 'Mech assignment and starting resources. There's even a system (which we'll use) for generating the unit in which the PCs serve. To me, peak first edition <i>MechWarrior</i> makes use of both <i>The Mercenary's Handbook</i> and <i>Battletechnology Magazine.</i> There's a great article in Issue 0101 that allows further detail in character creation, and the good old Merc book has more detail in the care and feeding of a unit. But we're going to use the core book only, to rock it like we did when I first discovered the universe.</p><p>There are some interesting quirks in this game. Like Bow/Blade being one skill. If you're good with one, you're good with the other. Natural Aptitudes are random, you might blow the points on one and end up being naturally good at something your character will never do. Some skills include subskills, but they are treated differently depending on the skill. It's definitely an 80s game design. Let's dive in, and see what kind of MechWarrior we'll create.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">In MechWarrior, every character is allotted 150 Character Points (CP) to purchase all of the things involved- attributes, skills, etc. A BattleMech is assigned randomly, but CP may be used to add to that roll, or CP may be gained by subtracting from it, but be careful, it is possible to roll no 'Mech at all if that is done. Teams may also pool all their allotments of 150 CP into one big pool, and then split it up as they see fit, giving some characters more and some less. But we're creating a single MechWarrior, here, so let's check it out.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are four attributes, Body (BOD), Dexterity (DEX), Learning Ability (LRN), and Charisma (CHA). Body encompasses what D&D would call Strength and Constitution, it's a general rating of toughness and physical fitness. Dexterity is what it says on the tin, and governs most combat skills. Learning Ability is the Intelligence/Wisdom attribute, and also limits the total number of skill levels and individual skills the character can have at any one time, similar to <i>Traveller.</i> Charisma is much as it is in D&D, an amalgam of personality and appearance. Minimum score is 2, maximum is 12, average is 6. Characters begin with a 6 in each for zero CP cost. Going up costs CP, and down gains CP, but each attribute has differing costs with LRN being the most expensive to raise, and Body/Charisma the least.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Skills rolls are based on a target determined by the associated attribute, minus one for each Skill Level. So, a DEX-based skill will start at 8+ on 2d6 with a DEX of 7 per the table lookup. Level 1 in that skill would reduce the target number to 7+, Level 2 to 6+, etc. Skills are purchased separately by default. A character may have no more than four times LRN in total skill levels overall, and may have levels in no more than LRN skills. So, a character with a LRN of 6 could have levels in 6 different skills, and no more than 24 total skill levels.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Skills are normally purchased individually, but there are packages available that provide the skills at a reduced cost, however any skill granted in a package cannot be further raised by spending additional CP. Anyone can take an Academy package, but the University package represents something like the New Avalon Institute of Science and requires an 11+ roll to even enroll. It also costs 100 CP, compared to the 75 CP of the Academy package. The University package is also available only to House Steiner and House Davion- which is interesting, because a random roll later determines unit affiliation by the book (I don't know anyone who didn't have the players and GM determine this, or make the roll until something suitable came up.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are also a few Inborn Abilities that can be purchased, some are negative and grant CP, like Glass Jaw, and some positive and costing CP, like Natural Aptitude. A character can also choose their handedness, with full Ambidexterity allowing a John Woo 2-pistols fighting style.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The other factor is the 'Mech Assignment Table. A 2d6 roll on this non-linear table yields a result from 15-90. Thus, any character rolling a 15 starts with no 'Mech, unless one pulls the ultralight 'Mechs from <i>Battletechnology.</i> Also- no character can start with an <i>Atlas</i>, as 100 tons is not an option on the chart.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now, I am tempted to take the maximum -6 on the 'Mech assignment roll to get +90CP. But I won't. Because that would not yield a good example, being extreme.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, first things first, I will try to get into the University Program. That requires we determine attributes first, and for every attribute with a 9 or better, we'll get +1 on the enrollment roll. So, we'll lock in DEX and LRN at 9, costing 110 points. So now we roll 2d6 and get... 7. Even with the +2, not happening. So here we are with 40 CP to our name. We need 35 more to get the standard Academy package. So to get that, we'll take Family Feud (-15) and two negative mods on the BattleMech Assignment Table.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now armed with 85 CP, we get the Academy package for 75, and with the remaining 10, raise CHA to 7. Now we have BOD 6, DEX 9, LRN 9, CHA 7. Skills are added to the 1 free level in Piloting/'Mech and Gunnery/'Mech that MechWarrior characters receive. There are no real classes, but free skill levels come to characters designated as MechWarriors, Scouts, Aerspace Pilots, etc. Our PC has the skills from the Academy, for a total of Piloting/'Mech 3, Gunnery/'Mech 3, Technician 2, Pistol 1, Leadership 1, Survival 1.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now, roll for BattleMech. We're at -2 because we needed those 30 points. I roll 7, -2 is 5. The table gives us 35 tons. Our 3025 options are <i>Panther, Ostscout</i>, and <i>Firestarter.</i> Rolling randomly, we end up with the <i>Firestarter</i>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now, for shit and giggles, we'll roll up a unit. Rolling for unit size, we get 11 - company. A company is a unit of 12 BattleMechs. We roll to see if we have a pair of aerospace fighters to give us air cover- 5, we have an Air Lance. Do we have a DropShip? 8, yes, we have a <i>Union</i>-class DropShip. These vessels are capable of sublight travel only, do we have a JumpShip to take us from star to star? 6, yes, we have an <i>Invader</i>-class JumpShip. So far, this is awesome.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">An 8 on 2d6 means we're a House unit, in service to some government. Now we roll a d66 roll (two six-sided dice read as if they were percentage dice) and get a 34, House Steiner. Cool. The dice know I love the Lyran Commonwealth of House Steiner.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We have a Tech assigned to our 'Mech, and there's a roll to see how sharp our Tech is. Adding our Pilot and Gunner skills is 6, then we roll 2d6 and get a 5, my tech has a Level 2 skill. Our DropShip pilot has a skill of 3, our JumpShip pilot a skill of 3, and our Aerospace pilots skills of 1 and 3. Guess we have a very green wingman, there. As a Company, we roll for recon personnel. 8, we have one scout. That scout has 2 levels in Rogue, 2 levels in Diplomacy, and 3 levels in Streetwise.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now, unit assets. We have a total of (70+70+70+25+25+30+10=300) credits thanks to having three full lances of BattleMechs, and Air Lance, a DropShip, a JumpShip, and a Scout. This is modified by +10% for being a Steiner regular unit, so 330.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We immediately spend 150 of this on a package of 'Mech Repair Stores. This is a set of parts and armor for repairing 'Mechs after a battle. We'll also get a Long Tom Howitzer, a Myomer Implantation Device for the medics to use for sever muscle damage, a Skimmer, and the remaining 70 points converts to 70,000 C-Bills for a (tiny) Unit Coffers. This sounds like a chunk of change, but it won't go very far. Interestingly, this nest egg seems to be where a character's cash for starting equipment comes. I could not find a single reference to other starting cash. Odd, that.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Last but not least, we determine Personal Initiative Bonus (PIB) and Hits to Kill (HTK) by looking at the Combat chapter. PIB is +1 thanks to high DEX. HTK is 60, or ten times BOD. A chart shows us where the body has a certain number of HTK in limbs, torso, and head.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">The icy cold of Graduation Day at The Naglering was full of all the martial pageantry the Lyran Commonwealth could muster- and that was quite a bit. Speeches by portly generals longer on credit rating than combat experience, flyovers by Aerospace fighters, and a parade of BattleMechs. Finally, Kadet Hauptmann Eva Holdermann could tie on her Naglering school sash and replace her Academy shoulder boards with a Leutnant's shoulder patch. She and her family's rare and ancient FS-9M <i>Mirage</i>, a variant on the spindly <i>Firestarter</i>, were assigned to 10th Panzerkompanie, and independent command heading to the Draconis Combine border.<br /></div></div><p>Leutnant Holdermann had spent four years at The Naglering, the academy from which her father and mother had graduated, and two of her grandparents. It had been an interesting experience, with a focus she had not expected on social graces, formal dance, and oratory just as much as combat tactics and BattleMech operations. It was so odd to be up to her elbows in actuator grease in the afternoon and being in full dress for etiquette lessons just hours later. The Lyran Commonwealth prided itself on a professional officer corps, but so many of her superiors were from families of wealth and privilege, but lacking the martial traditions of her own. She had expected her classmates to all be from MechWarrior families, yet a good portion of them were the sons and daughters of megacorporations like Defiance Industries, Nashan Diversified, or Baker Pharmaceuticals. <br /></p><p>Her entire life had been leading up to this moment, from the first time her mother had put her in the <i>Mirage's</i> cockpit at age 10 to get a feel for the command couch. Here she was, a MechWarrior, carrying on the family's tradition of service. And the family would be paid a stipend for the Commonwealth's use of their 'Mech. She was serving her family as well as her nation. Soon she would meet the three enlisted MechWarriors who would make up her Lance, and the Hauptmann who would command the entire company. And then their DropShip would boost, and they'd be off to fight the Dracs. A grand adventure, her father had called it.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoYJbcw8fCzdFMvvGcPkeQxSRr6pTuYO4u1V-IhuJHmveNWjhidZ0NrsGfbkHNJ5Naik9Zu7mUmNP7dG__Og7dInG0hAhTRfQRU3LZvRnn8KiUpkL0RJz7DYUou-uqvBKzk-Z6WOtEekNX/s798/25+-+Eva+Holdermann.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="624" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoYJbcw8fCzdFMvvGcPkeQxSRr6pTuYO4u1V-IhuJHmveNWjhidZ0NrsGfbkHNJ5Naik9Zu7mUmNP7dG__Og7dInG0hAhTRfQRU3LZvRnn8KiUpkL0RJz7DYUou-uqvBKzk-Z6WOtEekNX/w500-h640/25+-+Eva+Holdermann.JPG" width="500" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts</h2><div style="text-align: left;"><i>MechWarrior</i> had some interesting ideas. Experience points were awarded for all sorts of things, skill rolls, saving throws, defeating opponents, etc. One could use those points to modify dice, or save them and convert them into Character Points to raise skills and attributes. In addition to this, at certain xp totals, your character's experience class increases from Green, to Regular, to Veteran, etc. When this happens, two skills and one attribute advance for "free." In practice, this got pretty fiddly. Like <i>Rolemaster's</i> xp system where you got xp for damage, criticals, killing monsters, <i>being</i> killed, traveling, and if it's the first time you did that thing, it's x2 and if it's become routine it's x1/2 and AAARRRGGGHH. So, like <i>Rolemaster</i>, the xp system in <i>MechWarrior</i> is awesome on paper, but a bit awkward in practice.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I <i>love</i> the way this book is written, though. Reading about the entourage of a noble household and I hit <i>planetologist.</i> Hell yes, we have planetologists. Reading about the important people in the universe from Hanse Davion to Subhash Indrahar to Pavel Ridzik and everyone in between. The sweet color plates (of which I own four originals) by Dave Deitrick, with the 'Mechs and gear by Steve Venters and Dana Knutson. The illustrations of the gear, and things that just drip setting like the blazer, and the neural whip.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This game is my jam in a way no other game, even D&D, is. Military sci-fi is my primary gaming MOS, and this game is the pinnacle of that genre for me. The MechWarrior Universe from the tabletop games, novels, and video games is "home" for me. Specifically, in the late Succession Wars era before the coming of the Clans in the late 3040s. Just rolling up Leutnant Holdermann reminded me of the glorious days we filled with this universe. Not just big robot combat, oh, no. We spent far more time outside our cockpits dealing with the beans and bullets, personal relationships, political machinations... This universe had it all for me, which is why I am so jazzed about it as a place to play now. It just hits all the right buttons. All my sweet spots. Sure, the system is a bit clunky, and each edition just changed the clunk around. For my money, the most playable version thus far has been <i>Mechwarrior, Second Edition</i> with the third edition being the most ambitious, but having problems in character generation.<br /></div><p>This game is definitely worth a look, mechanically as a product of its time, and for content as a great game world in which to play. Will I dig <i>MechWarrior: Destiny?</i> I'll certainly give it a fair try. Maybe it will be my go-to version. As readers know by now I kinda trend old-school, but who knows, this one might be a rare situation in which I enjoy a newer edition as much or more as the old one.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-11430920701531289502021-01-24T00:30:00.329-06:002021-01-24T00:30:00.138-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 24: TMNT&OS<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTkySItFOYI0N6OaoCYCkCK5aMMKkL6y3vDuiXq3CrGdvjdnCS1e70DOPgsj5GumKDks2mi6P0g-GkrTKSZtneSHY6qgBJ9P5Zx6zx2-J-wixOjkTy9U26EU9X9tJYDewQu5yiVTYDm64z/s661/TMNT+Logo.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="661" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTkySItFOYI0N6OaoCYCkCK5aMMKkL6y3vDuiXq3CrGdvjdnCS1e70DOPgsj5GumKDks2mi6P0g-GkrTKSZtneSHY6qgBJ9P5Zx6zx2-J-wixOjkTy9U26EU9X9tJYDewQu5yiVTYDm64z/s16000/TMNT+Logo.JPG" /></a></div><br />My first exposure to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was an issue of the Eastman & Laird comic that found its way into my hot little hands in 6th grade. How can an 11 year old in the 80s <i>not</i> immediately love something called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? I thought it was freaking great- and we hadn't quite gotten to critical Turtlemania yet. The cartoon had not debuted, no action figures, but there was this roleplaying game from the company that had brought me two early favorites- <i>Robotech</i> and <i>The Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying Game.</i> My original copy of Palladium's <i>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness</i> looked typewritten, which I have come to realize is a hallmark of the first edition, before it was revised. It had lots of artwork in it from the comics, and featured the Turtles on the cover in their all-red masks, as was originally intended. The panel of Donatello smashing the burglar in the mouth with a thrown bo staff set the tone of the game for me- it wasn't sanitized cartoon ninja fights, oh no.<br /><p></p><p>Once the cartoon and action figures launched when I was in 7th grade, all my gamer friends wanted to jump on the Turtle Wagon. And thus we played. The game uses the standard Palladium system, which is rumored to be Kevin Siembieda's own revamp of AD&D. Roll a d20 for combat rolls and saves, but skills are d100. There are both Hit Points and SDC (Structural Damage Capacity) but no Mega-Damage, that came out in <i>Robotech</i> and persisted to ridiculous levels in <i>RIFTS.</i> There are OCCs, or Occupational Character Classes, but these are mostly absent from TMNT&OS in favor of an implied "mutant animal" class that is the default and only option in this game. Of course, you can combine it with <i>Heroes Unlimited</i> or <i>Ninjas & Superspies </i>for some real gonzo wall-to-wall action. Which I heartily recommend.</p><p>Back in the <i>Star Frontiers</i> review, I mentioned that there are games with tiny, almost throw-away details that make my imagination run wild. In <i>Star Frontiers</i> these were the Explorer, the sword-and-shock-glove fighting style, and the class names for NPCs who specialized in various weapons, to name a few. In <i>Turtles</i>, the detail that jumped out at me as freaking great was the Ninja Emergency Kit. It cost you $120, and included a Kyoketsu-Shogi, some Shuriken and Caltrops, a towel, a pot, paper, pencil, matches, medical kit, lockpicks, clothes, and a blinding eggshell grenade with rice, tofu and tea. This was sort of a ninjitsu bug-out bag meant to be hidden in secret boltholes where the character might flee at need. And this whole concept grabbed my imagination by the shoulders and kneed it in the jimmy. Holy crap, what an idea! Maybe start the characters off with just these items, fleeting from their creators, or the miltiary, or whatever. </p><p>There was also a really neat rule for character creation- Team Characters. If you create a group of characters who are all the same type of mutant animal, who all chose their powers and mutations the same way, the characters will receive an extra level of skill (not character level) for every character past the first. A group of four, say, turtles, all with identical mutations, would start with 4th-level equivalent skills. In addition, if any one of the team rolls an exceptionally high attribute, the entire team will get a bonus to that attribute. It's a cool deal, and it encourages players to build a team like the TMNT.</p><p>Let's spill some mutagen, and see what happens.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><b>Character Creation</b></h2><p><b>Step 1: The Eight Attributes / Attribute Bonuses</b></p><p>In Palladium's house system, there are eight attributes. I.Q.- intelligence. M.E. - mental endurance. M.A. - mental affinity, like charisma. P.S. physical strength. P.P. - physical prowess, like dexterity/agility. P.E. - physical endurance. P.B.- physical beauty. and Spd. - speed.</p><p>Roll 3d6 for each, and if the roll is 16 or more, an additional 1d6 is rolled and added to the attribute.</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>I.Q. - 15<br /></li><li>M.E. - 13<br /></li><li>M.A. - 16 + 2 = 18 (Bonus: 50% Charm/Impress)<br /></li><li>P.S. - 11<br /></li><li>P.P. - 9<br /></li><li>P.E. - 10<br /></li><li>P.B. - 11<br /></li><li>Spd. - 16 + 1 = 17 (+1 to dodge)<br /></li></ul><p>Hit Points: 14 (P.E. 10+4 on 1d6)</p><p><b>Step 2: Animal Type</b></p><p>Now, we'll roll randomly to see what kind of animal our character mutated from.</p><p>50 - Rural animal.</p><p>99 - Bat.</p><p><b>Step 3: Cause of Mutation</b></p><p>05 - Random mutation.</p><p>Wild Animal Education Table<br />51 - Adopted by a mentor. We get 3 military/espionage skills, 10 secondary skills with a 5% bonus, as well as Hand-To-Hand Ninjitsu. 3 choices of ancient weapon proficiency, and 3d6x$100 in cash or equipment, which comes to $1,000.-<br /></p><p><b>Step 4: Bio-E Points, Special Abilities, Psionics, Growth Levels (Steps), Human Features</b></p><p>This is where character creation becomes point-buy. Creatures have a certain amount of Bio-Energy. This energy is used to mutate the animal into the end character. There's usually just enough Bio-E to adjust the creature to human size, and take on all the human attributes like hands, standing erect, human looks, and human voice. But at that point, you're just playing a human with an interesting background. Instead of doing this, you can spend Bio-E on animal-specific abilities, psionic powers, all sorts of stuff.</p><p>As a Bat, we get 70 Bio-E, but we're only Size Level 1, or under 1lb. The Turtles are Size Level 8ish at 4'6 and 150lbs. We get some attribute bonuses, which is nice, and can possibly fly or glide, have sonar, or teeth that are useful in combat. But each option will take precious Bio-E.</p><p>After playing with the numbers a bit, we go with the following:</p><p>10 Bio-E for full hands at the end of the wings.<br />10 Bio-E for full human speech.<br />0 Bio-E for looks, our character looks. Like. A. Bat.<br />20 Bio-E for flight.<br />5 Bio-E for sonar.<br />25 Bio-E to add 5 Size Levels, ending up SL 6.</p><p><b>Step 5: Equipment and Money</b></p><div style="text-align: left;">The title of this section doesn't cover everything here, like Alignment and Skills & Education. For alignment, we go with Unprincipled. This is a sort of neutral, but would more accurately be called Selfish, which is what Palladium Books calls it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b> </b><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b> </b>Skills, as mentioned above, are pretty sparse, since we've got no formal education.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Automatic skills are Math Basic, Read/Write English, Speak English.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We'll take Detect Ambush, Tracking and Wilderness Survival. We get HTH Ninjitsu, three ancient WPs... so, Sword, Target (for throwing weapons), and Paired. Oh, and 10 secondary skills. Those will be Computer Operation, Cook, Land Navigation, First Aid, Althetics, Prowl, Pilot Automobile, Basic Electronics, Basic Mechanic, Auto Mechanics.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What to spend our $1,000 on.<br /></div><p>2 "regular quality" Wakizashi<br />2 Ninja Emergency Kits<br />Load-bearing harness?<br />6 Shuriken<br />$100 in cash.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character<br /></h2><p>Nobody knows why Bram became the creature he is today. All I know, is that he appeared near my home, scavenging what food he could from my refuse. I watched him for day, attempting to ascertain who and what he was. When I became convinced he was no threat, I began to leave food out for him, and endeavored to gain his trust. I found him to be a curious, inquisitive, and able to take to the air at need. He was slow to trust, but I found he spoke some English, and began to teach him more. He slowly spent more and more time at my home, a small apartment over my auto shop.</p><p>Eventually, Bram "moved in" to the rafters above the garage. He watched me conduct my business, watched me fix cars, deal with customers. He began to learn more about the world- first through me, then through <i>Sesame Street</i> and <i>The Electric Company</i>. I bought him books and materials so he could have some sort of education, as I trained him to be aware of his surroundings, and avoid contact with other humans, as they might not be as accepting of his differences.</p><p>One night Bram was flying and saw a man beating another man and stealing his wallet. Foolishly, Bram dove down to help. His small size and lack of skill nearly got him killed, especially when the assailant panicked to be attacked by a "giant bat." Fortunately, it was near our home and I was able to respond, dispatching the assailant and asking the young victim to speak of this to no one. I took Bram home, and helped him heal.</p><p>Bram asked me how I had managed to deal with the man so easily, and I explained that at home I had been trained to do questionable things, and I had fled here to escape the need to do them. I was hiding from the people who had intended to use my skills for nefarious gain, putting my constructive skills to work instead of those that bring harm. Bram said he wanted to help people the way I helped him, and after some thought, I began to train him in the martial arts. But I tempered this training with a knowledge of mechanics, and electronics, so that he would know it is always better to create, to repair, than to destroy.</p><p>I hope I have done the right thing. Stories have begun to circulate despite my best efforts that our neighborhood has a mysterious protector. A dark figure in the night who brings justice to those who cannot defend themselves. It is all going to Bram's head. He believes he is meant to be a hero. Perhaps he is. But if he should be hurt, I may never forgive myself.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-dgpIEerr0xNx_V81E3joDW39faEy_XuxabIql3OaUkoYBKBv9W8NysolOSdlzVYWLNTsBfWSPpw4rtqdNqmvXiY6VAALC4d_aszgrP_Ks1D6-hB85IBy2QtTU6dyZUoJeNb8F219k3l/s850/24+-+Bram.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="850" data-original-width="671" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-dgpIEerr0xNx_V81E3joDW39faEy_XuxabIql3OaUkoYBKBv9W8NysolOSdlzVYWLNTsBfWSPpw4rtqdNqmvXiY6VAALC4d_aszgrP_Ks1D6-hB85IBy2QtTU6dyZUoJeNb8F219k3l/w506-h640/24+-+Bram.JPG" width="506" /></a></div><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts:</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Palladium's RPGs are a soft spot for me. The first game I purchased with my own money was <i>Robotech.</i> When an older friend of mine introduced me to the glorious black-covered <i>Palladium Fantasy</i> RPG with the red dragon and the Witch character class, damn I loved that game. It had so much going for it. The system that powers TMNT is actually not as terrible as many say. It could use a cleanup, but it works great for the kind of melee combat action you'd expect in a TMNT game. Strikes, parries, dodges, kicks, punches, jump kicks. Woo-hoo!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, it was fun for me to return to this system and make this character- and then I realized that this character was so easy because he was so ill-educated. Looking up the skills and their percentages, and the physical skills with all their bonuses and sub-skills, is the most time-consuming and frankly annoying part of making a Palladium character. More modern books have the percentages at least on the summary page with the skill lists, but all these old games made you look them up. It takes a while for characters with tons of skills.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Given my druthers, I would streamline the whole process. Have three starting numbers for skills, easy, moderate, and hard. All skills would improve by 5% per level. Period. Percentages over 100 would be allowed, but a 99-00 would be a failure. That would allow ratings over 98 to help compensate for penalties. The game would have an explicit baseline for all combat abilities, rather than forcing a player to glean those baselines from the text where they are often buried. There's a lot of cleanup that could be done to improve or just plain clarify the Palladium system.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So... would I run/play TMNT? Absolutely. I really love making mutant animals in this game. I enjoy the game for all the mechanical quirks- especially when you add in <i>Ninjas & Superspies</i> for more martial arts styles. It has warts, it could be better, but dammit, it's a fun game for all that.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><br /></div><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-66795227608431520722021-01-23T00:30:00.200-06:002021-01-25T18:51:34.124-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 23: Bunnies & Burrows<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX1Fau1ec7WMmOfOVY_rtjW632gPgN3pREtvoKjQVCJAkFx5T4osEqD7TBUOmxFa0JPM0PC3DW2oSfYg1TsgDBNIoIYQT4Jl0iMgzWjwknnn3-___D7Cwr39T_JD4l5gaIeu4PlQYXChO-/s677/BnBLogo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="677" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX1Fau1ec7WMmOfOVY_rtjW632gPgN3pREtvoKjQVCJAkFx5T4osEqD7TBUOmxFa0JPM0PC3DW2oSfYg1TsgDBNIoIYQT4Jl0iMgzWjwknnn3-___D7Cwr39T_JD4l5gaIeu4PlQYXChO-/s16000/BnBLogo.JPG" /></a></div><br /><i>Bunnies & Burrows.</i> A game that was always on the periphery of my awareness of the great ecosystem of RPGs. I'd heard the name around, of course, mostly in context of the GURPS setting book that released when I was in high school. Coming into the hobby as I did in 1986, I had sort of missed the original first and second editions of the game. I was aware that it was <i>Watership Down</i> the RPG in many ways, and like many children of the 80s I had been traumatized by that film growing up. It wouldn't come to the fore of my attention until I met one of the original authors, who has since become a dear friend.<p></p><p>Now, here's the rub, for me. I've played anthropomorphic animals in RPGs. I loved Palladium's <i>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness.</i> I'd played <i>Gamma World</i> characters that would certainly qualify. Caitians in <i>Star Trek.</i> Dog Boys in <i>Rifts.</i> But I'd not actually played... you know... and animal. Like, without human characteristics. The concept sort of boggled my brain. I was used to playing RPGs that focused around struggles that were at their core more rooted to our bipedal experience, I guess. Maybe it's more than that- I love <i>The Transformers</i>, and have contemplated running games involving them. But then I start thinking too hard about the psychology of living machines and why, precisely, a created species has gendered characters like Alita-1 and Arcee.</p><p>So, I'll admit going into this that I was more than a bit confused about B&B even after I met and gamed with Dennis (Dr. B. Dennis Sustare, the aforementioned member of the duo who created the game.) But Dennis also introduced me to something else - North Texas RPG Con. This convention was like Gary Con South. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting someone who had worked in the RPG industry in the 70s and 80s. It was amazing to me to be surrounded by the folks who had created my hobby. And at that convention, every year, Dennis runs B&B. And at that convention, every year, the tables are packed full of players and the alternate list is as long as your arm. So... I was obviously missing something.</p><p>During the development of <i>Bunnies & Burrows Third Edition</i>, myself and our gaming club were privileged to participate in play testing some of the material with Dennis, we even used B&B for one of our Extra Life live-streams for charity. I finally got to sit down and <i>play</i> the game. Experience the genre rather than just read about it. I have to say- it was eye-opening.</p><p>You can quite literally do only what an animal can do, physically. Carrying is usually done with your mouth. Manipulating things can only be done if it could be done with paws. Even some mental abilities are limited- like counting past low single digits. At first these limitations really seemed like they would kill the game for me. Even though I pride myself on games where I absolutely do not optimize character picks. I just couldn't wrap my head 'round the game, until I played. And then I started to understand it's a serious roleplaying challenge to step into a character that isn't just a human with pointy ears, or a tail, but something with an entirely different physical and mental existence. This was an entirely unique roleplaying experience that required a much higher degree of thought and distancing the character from myself than I'd ever done before.</p><p>So, with all that in mind, let's create a character for the first edition of <i>Bunnies & Burrows </i>that I played - the current Third Edition.</p><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2></div><p>There are eight genetic Traits for a player character in B&B. They are Strength, Speed, Intelligence, Agility, Constitution, Mysticism, Smell, and Charisma. These are determined by rolling 3d6 for each of them. So here we go:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Strength: 9</li><li>Speed: 11</li><li>Intelligence: 9</li><li>Agility: 12</li><li>Constitution: 10</li><li>Mysticism: 11</li><li>Smell: 6</li><li>Charisma: 13</li></ul><p>We can now add one point to three scores, or two points to one score. There is a profession for each Trait, and it looks like we're not going to be an Herbalist, since our associated Trait, Smell, is not great. Charisma is 13, that's associated with Storyteller. So let's go with that. We'll bump Smell, Intelligence, and Charisma. Since Charisma has a +1 modifier for being 13 or over, we speak an extra language. I'm going to take Chatter, so that our PC can speak with Squirrels.<br /></p><p>As a Storyteller, our rabbit will have some special abilities. We can Encourage, and in the future, we can Confuse and Enthrall. This is an neat mechanic of B&B, which, on its face, is sort of based on the old D&D engine. But it does something quite neat. As opposed to old school D&D where your ability score gives you a modifier, and that's that, the modifier in B&B becomes the Trait Level. And as characters advance, they can add directly to that level. For example, our PC's Charisma is 14, which gives an initial modifier of +1. Had it been an 18, the modifer would have been +3, giving us immediate access to Confuse. But as it is, we will have to play long enough to advance Charisma twice, which brings the Trait Level, the effective modifier, up to +3.</p><p>Being a Storyteller is an important role for a rabbit, without written language, knowledge, legends, and moral tales can only be related by the telling of stories, what we would call oral traditions.<br /></p><p>Here's the part where we would normally equip the character - except this is <i>Bunnies & Burrows</i>, and our PC isn't exactly going to need a pack, armor, or a 10' pole. The only extensive section on what might be considered items is the wonderful selection of herbs available to the animal denizens of the game. And there are quite a few, enough to make for very interesting applications and herb-inspired adventures. But after calculating Hit Points (8) this rabbit is ready to play, game mechanics-wise.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvJ0lNNf5VdGiCykkqRiy2hgwDoCgeNCwBYfXzneTff8RxiW0cDp701OqFG8p6wGhKxhBqXsrLGCxOsL_UPkM6xAaNRBgJH7M0SZzNR0QoUbJPrBRCvGrEEM9H7bNZhhlrx-Ab3NmVyg0L/s1225/23+-+Thornpaw.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="804" data-original-width="1225" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvJ0lNNf5VdGiCykkqRiy2hgwDoCgeNCwBYfXzneTff8RxiW0cDp701OqFG8p6wGhKxhBqXsrLGCxOsL_UPkM6xAaNRBgJH7M0SZzNR0QoUbJPrBRCvGrEEM9H7bNZhhlrx-Ab3NmVyg0L/w640-h420/23+-+Thornpaw.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Thornpaw was always frustrated by what he was not. Not fast enough to be a runner, not strong enough to be a fighter, and his nose would <i>never</i> be keen enough for the study of herbs. He was beginning to feel like he had next to nothing to offer the warren in the hard days ahead. So many rabbits hadn't survived the winter, and the hungry predators that had come with it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There was some argument over what should be done next- and No-Tail was trying in vain to remember the wise words of their old Storyteller, who had died just that week. No-Tail fumbled the details of the tale twice, completely losing the point Thornpaw knew he was trying to make. So Thornpaw hopped into the circle of squabbling rabbits and started to set the record straight.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />As Thornpaw spoke, the other rabbits gradually stopped their bickering and listened. Every word, every detail was just as the tale had been told, in fact the tone and delivery was so close to their storyteller's style and cadence more than a couple mouths hung open in surprise. When Thornpaw was finished weaving the tale, he was surprised to find all eyes were steady on him, a new respect on most faces around the circle. From that day forward Thornpaw had his place among the other rabbits - he was the new Storyteller.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2>My Thoughts</h2></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">B&B has some ideas I really like, and I find it a real challenge to contemplate scenarios or full campaigns with a brain that is usually full of military sci-fi and fantasy. I'm so used to running D&D, <i>Shadowrun</i>, <i>MechWarrior</i>... this is something totally out of my normal operating parameters, and as such, it makes me reach deep for my creativity and adaptability.<br /></div><p></p><p>This extends to GMing B&B. There's advice on how to describe things to players in a bunny-centric way. Rabbits have no frame of reference to comprehend things asw humans would. No sense of mechanical devices, or the purposes of items or tools. So this game doesn't just ask for a change of paradigm in players, it asks for the GM to filter everything that happens through that paradigm. This is more than just learning new names for these, like the dinosaurs in <i>Cadillacs and Dinosaurs</i>, this is learning how mysterious and alien things we interact with every day are to creatures who do not have our ability to comprehend the complex.</p><p>As I said, this game is way out of my wheelhouse, yet I see so many lining up to play it, and now I finally get the appeal. This is unlike any other RPG I've played. I've been a Dralasite, a Vampire, a Wookiee, an Andorian, a Dwarf... but all those characters are relatable to humans. This is the first game I've played that strays so far from that it strains my ability to get into the headspace of my character. For that alone, it is worth a read. The fact that it was written by two doctors of biological sciences and contains a vast amount of thought from an ecological point of view makes it even more interesting.</p><p>Check this out, from <a href="https://www.froggodgames.com/product/bunnies-burrows/">Frog God Game</a>s.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-59064758696274431282021-01-22T00:30:00.046-06:002021-01-22T00:30:00.212-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 22: Top Secret<p style="text-align: left;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlbwNrUGZ9DY8GeBHwTXrIVyUHyuOFGJCYT6Lsb5pLfoFKtJ5w61qk8xxhVeIEg-To3oqmJIhgqceXhyphenhyphenLfMedBMnxbqIOFtWLUfqXQXTlUbZcJhkq9ru6hy4GTBWiMxDNVyoS1X1AZuGrn/s583/Top+Secret.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="583" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlbwNrUGZ9DY8GeBHwTXrIVyUHyuOFGJCYT6Lsb5pLfoFKtJ5w61qk8xxhVeIEg-To3oqmJIhgqceXhyphenhyphenLfMedBMnxbqIOFtWLUfqXQXTlUbZcJhkq9ru6hy4GTBWiMxDNVyoS1X1AZuGrn/s16000/Top+Secret.JPG" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /><br />My first taste of Top Secret actually came from the late 80s edition of the game, Top Secret/S.I. I really had fun with that game, and used the engine to run a campaign based on the M.A.S.K. cartoon/toys from the 80s. But we’re talking about the OG Top Secret now, the boxed set released in 1980 by TSR, written by The Administrator himself, Merle Rasmussen. Top Secret was, of course, an espionage RPG. It was the Cold War, and spies were awesome subject matter- heck, there was even an official James Bond 007 RPG from Victory Games, and the film Cloak and Dagger portrayed tabletop spy RPGs on screen.<br /><br />Top Secret used d10s, usually rolled percentile, to figure things out. But it wasn’t as straightforward as, say, RuneQuest or Marvel Superheroes. No, there was a complex set of subsystems for combat that involved charts and knowing the attacker’s maneuver, and the defender’s attempt to mitigate it. In my old age, I find it endearing, but fiddly. As a kid I thought it was awesome- how realistic!<br /><br />Like many other games of the era, it used a class and level system similar to D&D, right down to titles for each level of each class. Classes, in this case, were different Sections of the Agency, like Investigation, Confiscation, and Assassination. Much like D&D, each had different experience point requirements to level up. Since I had the Companion from the same time I got the OG boxed set, we’ll use the main rulebook plus the Companion for this character. Let’s dive in and create ourselves a spy!</p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-fa1a3be0-7fff-f36e-48b2-3e69166a63f8" style="background-color: transparent; color: #434343; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Character Creation System:</span></h2><br /><br />In Top Secret, agents have six Primary Personal Traits. These are Physical Strength, Charm, Willpower, Courage, Knowledge and Coordination. We generate them by rolling d100 in order, and consulting a table. The table makes sure none of the rolls are too low, any roll from 01-25 gets a +25 bonus, from 26-50 a +15, and so forth.<br /><br />After some die rolls and chart lookups, our agent looks like this:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Physical Strength 49</li><li>Charm 51</li><li>Willpower 87</li><li>Courage 79</li><li>Knowledge 44</li><li>Coordination 48</li></ul>Once we have these, we use them to generate Secondary Personal Traits. For example, Offense is the average of Coordination and Courage. Deception is the average of Courage and Charm.<br /><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Offense 64</li><li>Deception 65</li><li>Evasion 50</li><li>Deactivation 46</li><li>Observation 66</li><li>Shock Resistance 83</li><li>Movement Value 184</li><li>Life Level 14</li></ul><br /><br /><br />Finally, the Tertiary Personal Traits<br /><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Perception 72</li><li>HTH Combat Value 99</li><li>Surprise Value 115</li></ul><p><br />Now we roll personal appearance, but height is dependent on sex, so rather than choose, I’ll roll odd=male, even= female. II roll and get even- female. Rolling for height, we get above average, add 1”. Our Agent is now 5’6. Jumping over to the Companion, we get a weight of 128lbs. And while we’re at it, we get an age of 18 (rolling VERY low), righ handed, 20/20 vision, a blood type of O+, a body type of Average, and an Alignment of Neutral Conservative Unionist (?!?!)<br /><br />Now we compare our Knowledge of 44 with a table for languages, we speak one additional at a score of 56, and roll 3d10+70 for fluency in English. 77. Another LOW roll, but it’ll work. Now it’s time to roll for Areas of Knowledge to see what the spy knows lots about. This agent knows five knowledges, due to Knowledge of 44 divided by ten and rounding up being 5.<br /><br />Rolling, we get the following:<br /><br /><br />Player’s Choice at 113<br /><br />Player’s Choice at 92<br /><br />Hydraulic Engineering at 125<br /><br />Medicine/Physiology at 60<br /><br />Naval Science at 89<br /></p><p><br />Now we choose a bureau. What the hell, let’s go Assassination. So our agent’s title is Punk, and she needs 500xp to level up to Thug. She begins the game with $400. Oh, thanks to the additional details from the Companion, we also know she’s Lower Upper Class.<br /></p><p><br />Oh wow. How to explain an 18-year-old Assassin with grad-level expertise in Hydraulic Engineering and Civil Engineering...</p><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-fa1a3be0-7fff-f36e-48b2-3e69166a63f8" style="background-color: transparent; color: #434343; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"></span> The Character:</h2><div style="text-align: left;">PRODIGY: De Koster, Melina A. AKA Melanie Carter<br /><br />Born: 22 April 1963 (Age 18)<br /><br />PRODIGY is something of an odd tool in the Agency’s toolbox. Born to a Belgian agricultural scientist and American naval engineer, she was raised in a series of third-world nations as her parents took part in more than a decade’s worth of charitable service. She was educated on the road by both parents, becoming proficient in her mother’s trade of medicine and agriculture, as well as becoming her father’s assistant on infrastructure projects and wargaming partner. She absorbed all these topics like a sponge.<br /><br />In 1978, both parents and all adult members of their mission in Africa were killed by what appeared to be a local warlord. The Agency had suspicions of Soviet backing, and agents investigating found PRODIGY, alone and afraid, but in possession of her father’s pistol and the resolve to defend herself. She was brought back to the US with the Agents to be placed in foster care, but began to suss out just who it was that had rescued her. Once she had pieced it together, she asked to be recruited, so that she might be able to help crack the mystery of who was behind the murder of the 26 Americans killed that day.<br /><br />In the last few years, PRODIGY has soaked up everything the Agency has thrown at her and shows remarkable courage and willpower, but an odd deficiency at times in more mundane studies. She can field strip an in-line hydraulic turbine in her sleep, but misses out on popular culture references and rituals of daily life in the US having been raised in a grab bag of underdeveloped nations. Her English is still lightly accented despite her best efforts, and while conversationally fluent she is still much more comfortable in French.<br /><br />We are still unsure what kind of wetwork asset PRODIGY will be. Every test we have thrown at her seems to indicate she will perform well, but there is still a concern that she’s an 18-year-old young woman motivated more by vengeance than any sort of national loyalty or idealism. Time will tell. </div></div><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-fa1a3be0-7fff-f36e-48b2-3e69166a63f8" style="background-color: transparent; color: #434343; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"></span> <<This is not the OG Character Sheet, it is an Excel sheet I made to help create Top Secret characters>><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbJmrgLs3s3cfx4axsniE5wocDNEL6czJ2ygyoGuUq_ixNbQaYjsDBPSzvBWgwc8awec2IBz8nbmtyvveWlgJwNc4jQNx3tp1VO9b_-6pzLy1E8717LSVqPBDpZdqDpuT_y8dJjbLJk66F/s712/22+-+Prodigy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="669" data-original-width="712" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbJmrgLs3s3cfx4axsniE5wocDNEL6czJ2ygyoGuUq_ixNbQaYjsDBPSzvBWgwc8awec2IBz8nbmtyvveWlgJwNc4jQNx3tp1VO9b_-6pzLy1E8717LSVqPBDpZdqDpuT_y8dJjbLJk66F/s16000/22+-+Prodigy.JPG" /></a></div><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts:</h2><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><br />OK, that was fun. And I used a spreadsheet I created that auto-calcs some things, to make the whole process a bit faster. It does spotlight just how strange and awkward totally random character gen can be, but in the end I think I came up with a backstory that would be fun to play.<br /><br /><br />I re-read the combat section of the rulebook and it reminded me why I tend to reach for Top Secret S.I., White Lies, or even 007 or Ninajs & Superspies. The combat system is interesting- pick an attack, enemy picks a defense, look up result. Available choices limited by training. The system strains when more than one opponent are involved. Fire combat is a bit needlessly complex. But this is normal fare for a 70s or 80s game design striving for realism.<br /><br /><br />The mission system is one of those quirky things I just love. Roll up a random mission, determine the opponents randomly, and the XP and payout are calculated using a formula. Base pay for some missions is a paltry amount like $15 or $25, that will be multiplied and manipulated into a final payment. Makes me want to run a campaign just to see if the Agency pays well enough for the agents to afford a damned apartment. Maybe in the early 80s.<br /><br /><br />I want to run this, just to experience it again. I ran it for a short while after I acquired it shortly after I became a dad in 2011. As I said, I started gaming in ‘86, and I got my start with TS:S/I and James Bond 007 where spies are concerned. And Ninjas & Superspies remains a guilty pleasure.<br /><br /><br />Thing is, the more I re-read it, the more I love some parts, but find others just too damn crunchy. Which just tells me I’m getting old, because teenage and early 20s me loved crunchy games. If I had more gaming time, it might be different. But these days I keep gravitating toward Old School Renaissance and games with simple systems, because I want to get games up and running quickly. I do love this game, and I loved playing it with the author at North Texas RPG Con, but it is definitely an artifact of its time. A good one, with lessons to teach, but perhaps a bit creaky by modern standards. </div><p><br /></p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-67639979539921595112021-01-21T00:30:00.036-06:002021-01-21T00:30:00.247-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 21: Mekton II<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2rJzY907SeE_8g_ORH8ZfikvnSYED2sqPlJumeHs6yJryDgimchPG8PBavEqueJNO7n3jnyuM5-4Z_N9BnvE2KvfLH8qVWJfpRRQXejrBb-rrTAQPh-CaPzj9m1X6DArpzOXYKfCsrBjb/s662/Mekton+Logo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="662" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2rJzY907SeE_8g_ORH8ZfikvnSYED2sqPlJumeHs6yJryDgimchPG8PBavEqueJNO7n3jnyuM5-4Z_N9BnvE2KvfLH8qVWJfpRRQXejrBb-rrTAQPh-CaPzj9m1X6DArpzOXYKfCsrBjb/s16000/Mekton+Logo.JPG" /></a></div><p><br />When I saw Mekton II on the shelf at King’s Hobby Shop I was immediately intrigued. I flipped it open, and saw “Danger! Romance! Giant Robot Combat!” You had me at hello, Mekton II. The cover art was credited to Ben Dunn and Shulaf Tam, and Ben Dunn was an artist I knew from comics, as were the Waltrip brothers who did some of the interior art. The game was designed to emulate mecha anime, and it was the late 80s, I’d watched a lot of mecha anime. Well, at least as much as the rental shelf at Hasting’s had to offer under the name “Japanimation.”<br /><br />Mekton II was so-named because it followed a Mekton boxed set that I have never owned. This book came out in 1987 and uses the same Interlock system used in the original Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk 2020 games. It’s very simple, rolls are Stat+Skill+1D10 versus a target number. This does make stats, particularly the Reflex stat, very important. This is a common complaint about the Interlock system, since Reflex governs initiative and most combat skills. Cyberpunk Red fixes this somewhat 33 years later, but I digress.<br /><br />Mekton’s game system scales from the human scale to giant robot scale by using “Hits” and “Kills.” People have Hits. Mecha have Kills. 10 Hits=1 Kill. This would later be revised into 25:1 in Mekton Zeta. Mecha behaved more or less just like humans, and took damage in the same way. This made the integration of big stompy robots a breeze.<br /><br />But it wasn’t just about giant robots. The Algol campaign world presented by Mike Pondsmith was cool -literally. An ice age was threatening to destroy human civilization. There were spinner colonies, giant sun mirrors, two warring Kingdoms with an ocean between them populated by mostly peaceful traders. Giant fauna. Terrorists bent on destroying the world-saving satellites. Ancient mystery knights with long-forgotten technology. This. Was. Cool.<br /><br />Add to that R. Talsorian’s lifepath system for character creation, and you’ve got a lot of story fodder not tied to any big media IP. If you had the Roadstriker II sourcebook, you could build all kinds of vehicle-scale mecha and do cyclones from Robotech, or Autobots and Decepticons. There were even rules for combiners. Form Voltron! Mekton Empire brought in Aliens, Psionics, and massive starships with the look of the Yamato. Also - it was a book full of NPCs, planets, and story ideas.Time to dive in, and see what kind of character we can create in Mekton II.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><br /><br />The first thing to do is determine Character Points, these will be allocated to the Stats, or basic attributes. These are Intelligence, Reflexes, Cool, Technical Ability, Luck, Attractiveness, Movement Allowance, Body Type, Education, and Money & Family. So, we roll 10d10 to determine initial Character Points. 1+6+5+2+5+3+2+8+9+2=43. Pretty below average, but we play ‘em like we roll ‘em. A chart on page 7 shows us what the various levels of the different Stats represent. I can’t even give this character average stats across the board. So let’s work with that. We’ll create this character as a crusty veteran who was injured in the Mekton Wars, resulting in a low Body, Attractiveness, Luck, and Movement Allowance.<br /><br /><ul><li>Intelligence: 5</li><li>Reflexes: 5</li><li>Cool: 10</li><li>Technical Ability: 3</li><li>Luck: 2 (Used up all his luck surviving his injuries)</li><li>Attractiveness: 3 (scarred and battered)</li><li>Movement Allowance: 3 (Has a low-end prosthetic leg that impedes movement)</li><li>Body Type: 3 (Shattered and near death from previous war wounds)</li><li>Education: 8 (Veteran)</li><li>Money & Family: 2 (Penniless)</li></ul><p>OK, those stats are pretty dire in order to get two decent things: Education, for Veteran skills, and Cool, to represent being an experienced combat veteran. But the idea we’re going with is more of a mentor or leader than an active combatant. We go on to Lifepath and see what the dice have in store for us.<br /><br /><br />LIFEPATH!<br /><br />5 - Both parents are living. Go to B.<br />2 - Apparently our hero gets along with them. Got to D.<br />10 - Family Standing is BAD. Go to E.<br />2 - Family lost all titles due to betrayal or bad management. Go to F.<br />5 - Goal is to hunt down those responsible and make them pay. Go to G.<br />2 - Hero has two siblings. One twin brother, one younger sister. They both like our hero. Go to I.<br /><br />Our hero has as many friends as COOL divided by two. So, five friends, then go to J.<br /><br /><br />Male childhood friend.<br /><br /><br />Female childhood friend.<br /><br /><br />Male who is like a kid brother/sister.<br /><br /><br />Female old family friend.<br /><br /><br />Male old family friend.<br /><br />2 - We have zero enemies, 1d10-2, and rolled a 2. Go to Romantic Life.<br /><br />4 - Currently uninvolved.<br /><br /><br />So, pause for a sec. Enemies and romantic involvements are fun, so we’ll roll a “what if” for both, but not include them in the final character writeup.<br /><br />1 Enemy - A female childhood enemy, there was a major humiliation involved, both parties hate each other, generally ignoring each other in most situations.<br /><br /><br />1 Romance- Tragic Love Affair. They committed suicide or went insane. They now hate our hero, if they’re still alive.<br /><br /><br />OK, back to the character. We’ll now roll for section T.<br /><br />4, 10, 1 - Blonde hair, short and curly. Blue eyes. Go to U.<br />7 - Stable and serious personality. Go to V.<br />9 - The thing our hero values more than anything else - having a good time. Go to W.<br />10 - Most valued possession, a letter. Go to X.<br />5 - Person most valued in the world, themselves.<br /><br /><br />Knowing all that, we pick skills now. We have 21 points to use thanks to our high Education stat. This is Mekton, so we’re creating a veteran Mekton warrior.<br /><br /><br />Mecha Piloting +3<br />Mecha Fighting +3<br />Beam Weapons +3<br />Leadership +7<br />Awareness +1<br />Streetwise +4<br /><br />His skills aren’t what they once were, but high enough to serve as an instructor or mentor. His injuries have reduced his Awareness somewhat, but he has developed a certain amount of Streetwise since his family’s downfall and being put on the “Invalid List” He has 40 crowns to spend on equipment- and purchases a ballistic cloth vest at SP 6, and a communicator. Now he’s broke. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">The Empire of Karga has never shown much sympathy for those to whom life has dealt misfortune. Captain Roglund “Dragon” Kregor is no exception. Once the son of a powerful noble family, he is now a broken shell of his former self. It is no coincidence that the mission in which Roglund was so terribly wounded occurred on the same date in which his parents were arrested for treason against the Empire and their lands seized, in the opening days of the Archipelago War. Roglund’s twin brother Harrik and sister Kerra were taken in by Lord and Lady Kellyn, old friends of the family who know the Kregor’s would never betray the Empire. Upon release from hospital, Roglund found himself homeless, with all reports indicating his family was dead. It was not until Bil Kellyn, Roglund’s childhood friend and son of the Lord and Lady, tracked him down on the streets of Korthad, that Roglund learned his siblings lived.<br /><br />From the Kellyn family Hunting Lodge, the Kregors, along with Bil and Emly Kellyn, plot their revenge on those whose machinations brought down the House of Kregor. Roglund is training his brother, sister, and the Kellyn heirs in the arts of Mekton piloting. His former trainee from his time in the Kargan Military, Subaltern Mikel Bligh, was summarily transferred out of the line forces and into supply and procurement when he spoke out against Roglund’s abandonment by the military. From this position, Bligh is planning to help Roglund steal the Mektons he needs to outfit his team.<br /><br />During training sessions, Roglund is all business, but after hours he is a different man. His near-death experience has taught him to enjoy himself during downtime, and the indifference of the Kargan military to either his medical issues or justice for his family has taught him that one cannot count on anyone but oneself and one’s family. That family is now the team he is quietly building under the noses of the Kargan nobility. A crippled son of a fallen house matters nothing to the Kargan nobles- especially since it appears some among them engineered the entire situation. That is all about to change. Roglund has in his possession a letter, delivered to the Kellyn family by a former servant, spelling out his father’s suspicions on who was plotting against them. The letter escaped the raid on the family lands by mere hours- and now provides a starting point for what the team is calling OPERATION: RESTORATION. </div><p> <<Apologies for the dodgy character sheet>><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgID3BfKy-KQ9qpn_xRWr4wfcMb97Y51JUub74eG6lap3Wo6lG4qRI5o6gpigStk9Z2SkLarAPCwVSFPVg9mjy46NUd2UGz1HbeJiMAxtiMylqlcP_i7EC6w68GGo52W2ma2ZNEEQ-0Zdvu/s799/21+-+Dragon+Kregor.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="608" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgID3BfKy-KQ9qpn_xRWr4wfcMb97Y51JUub74eG6lap3Wo6lG4qRI5o6gpigStk9Z2SkLarAPCwVSFPVg9mjy46NUd2UGz1HbeJiMAxtiMylqlcP_i7EC6w68GGo52W2ma2ZNEEQ-0Zdvu/w488-h640/21+-+Dragon+Kregor.JPG" width="488" /></a></div><br /><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts</h2><br /><br />Ummm… I think I just wrote a campaign seed.<br /><br /><br />Seriously, Mekton II, and its followup Mekton Z, are very much worth looking into. While the Kregorlater release cleans up the rules a bit, there’s something truly awesome about the Gundam-esque world of Algol, and the mecha included in The Mekton Techbook. I love how the designs flow with the timeline of the Archipelago War, and how the newer designs aren’t always better than the ones before them, due to concerns like budget and simplifying the supply chain.<br /><br /><br />This game deserves a lot more love than it gets, and I was excited to back the Kickstarter for a new Mekton, only to have it sidelined by R. Talsorian’s involvement with Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk Red. I very much hope Mike Pondsmith gets back to Mekton, and maybe it will use the revamped core Cyberpunk Red does.<br /><br /><br />I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent making mecha, powered armor suits, starships, etc. with this system. I love it. And I have such a nostalgic connection to the art, and the layout of the Mekton II-era books, which are some of the first RPG books to use desktop publishing, along with Cyberpunk. I also love the lifepath- it takes the process from Traveller and turns it from a series of die rolls that each player interprets into a set of actual events and experiences in and of themselves. It was great in Cyberpunk and it’s great here.<p> </p><p> </p>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-62237054865746464512021-01-20T00:30:00.001-06:002021-01-20T00:30:06.978-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 20: The Aliens Adventure Game<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOdGU37WAgQSaH-CUaa11mmGdnDRc1NqafcMa4tR0FENUVCVU8O-v6Vtjz3KaL488uhj1iNA84CS-X7NvGTDRnuYdH7t7VbCbbykwIaSKFXXiIktz-cKhvza-fPbPlAWf9LyRjf-TWCvdf/s652/Aliens+Logo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="652" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOdGU37WAgQSaH-CUaa11mmGdnDRc1NqafcMa4tR0FENUVCVU8O-v6Vtjz3KaL488uhj1iNA84CS-X7NvGTDRnuYdH7t7VbCbbykwIaSKFXXiIktz-cKhvza-fPbPlAWf9LyRjf-TWCvdf/s16000/Aliens+Logo.JPG" /></a></div><p></p><p>So, there I was at a UIL academic competition in 1987. After we'd completed our event, we walked over to the computer lab to play some Rogue. After a while, we wandered over to the movie room, and some crazy adult had rented the brand new VHS of <i>Aliens</i>, which of course none of us had seen in the theater. We walked in just in time for the reactor room scene, just as the living colonist wakes up and gets chestbursted. We were riveted. Holy crap this movie was intense. And so began a fandom for me, one that, let's face it, is completely centered around the first two films in the franchise and the comics and video games that subsequently involved Colonial Marines. When the Leading Edge board game and RPG arrived in 1989 and 1991, we played the living crap out of them.</p><p>Leading Edge games was known for it's <i>Living Steel</i> and <i>Phoenix Command</i> games. They were known for being very, very complex. So complex that in some cases bullet flight time was taken into account. How hard could they be? Well, the answer is rocket science. The author the core system, Barry Nakazono, now works for JPL. He is a literal rocket scientist.</p><p>Aliens is not the full-bore <i>Phoenix Command</i> experience. It's a faster-playing, streamlined version of the system. Much of the core mechanics are pretty simple and straightforward. Roll 3d6 under difficulty level, modified by how skilled the character is in the particular activity. Not too terrible. So, if I'm trying to make an Easy (13) Motion Tracker roll, and I am a Professional (4) at Motion Tracker, I need to get 17 or less on 3D6. Had I been only Certified (0), I'd need the base 13. A Novice (-4) would need a 9 or less. That's not so bad, is it? But Combat is where things got a bit complex. Some would argue overly complex.</p><p>A character might have 4 Combat Actions, but in some cases as many as 7 or 8, or even a couple more given optional rules for carrying less than your allowable combat weight. Moving a hex cost 1 action. Shooting cost 1 action, unless you're aiming. You can aim for multiple Actions, depending on the weapon. The actions of Aim yield an Accuracy, then the Accuracy takes you to a column on a table, where you roll d100 and see if you hit, then you check for location, and based on location and possibly armor check for penetration or deflection. Then you get a Potential Damage, or PD, which can range from 1 to, like, 80,000. Yes, Eighty Thousand. Which is somehow less than "Dead."<br /><br />So, yeah, there's a tiny bit of complexity in combat. But before you engage the Xenomorphs, you gotta have a Marine. So let's join the Colonial Marine Corps...</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">The first step in creating a character for the <i>Aliens Adventure Game</i> is to generate the Primary Characteristics. These are Strength, Intelligence, Will, Health, and Agility. The game gives an option for random generation, and point-buy. If you've been reading this series, you know we gotta go random when it's an option. So, we roll 3 six-sided dice twice for each Characteristic. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Strength: 17<br /></li><li>Intelligence: 11<br /></li><li>Will: 11<br /></li><li>Health: 14<br /></li><li>Agility: 11</li></ul><p>Secondary Characteristics are always rolled randomly. These are rolled once, rather than twice. These are Charisma, Leadership, Perception, and Motivation.<br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Charisma: 14<br /></li><li>Leadership: 8<br /></li><li>Perception: 13<br /></li><li>Motivation: 9</li></ul><p>From here, we roll for background. Each roll has the potential to generate Merit Points that will come into play later. Now, here's an interesting thing- the tables in the back of the book have some additional entries that aren't discussed, but it's fairly easy to suss out what they do. For instance, there are tables for being from Earth, and for being from the Colonies. But for this, we'll use what is in the chapter on creating characters.</p><p>Formal Education - 02, Poor. 0 Merit Points.</p><p>Social Background - 25, Underprivileged. 0 Merit Points.</p><p>Now, Merit Points for Characteristics, 3 points for the 17, 3 more for the 14s and 13. Total Merit Points: 6.</p><p>The first place we're going to use the Merit Points is to see what Branch of the Marines we can get into. It takes 4 to get into the Garrison Infantry, the bottom rung of the USCM. With 5 we can get into the Line Infantry, the standard field Marines. The next rung up, Auxiliary, are the specialists of the USCM, but that would require 7 Merit Points, and we don't have it. So Line Infantry it is.</p><p>So, we learn some skills now. In <i>Aliens</i>, you have a Learning Roll, it's equal to Intelligence plus Motivation minus 10. So for this Marine, it's 10. That means this Marine has a whopping 10% chance to learn something when given the opportunity. In Basic Training, failing the Learning Roll means being Novice, and passing means Certified. Outside of training, it's all or nothing to improve a level, and for the upper skill levels multiple consecutive Learning Rolls are required.</p><p>So, in Basic, we roll Gun Combat, Balance, HTH Combat, Climbing, Scouting, Survival and Infiltration. Rolling... 05, 07, 64, 87, 17, 53, 28. I'm calling that lucky. Certified in Gun Combat and Balance against the odds. Novice on everything else. We can now apply for Specialist Training by having qualifying Characteristics and rolling less than half our Merit Points on a d10 - oh, BTW, in this game a '0' is zero on the die, not ten. Wow, most specialist jobs require <i>all</i> Primary Characteristics at 12+. Rough. We don't qualify. A grunt we are. Now we roll a d10 to see how many years active duty our character has. 4. A reasonable term. So, now we'll roll through the experience table, which is a bit like <i>Traveller</i> in that you get an assignment, a chance to earn some skills, a chance to pick up some awards, and maybe get promoted or earn an award or two.</p><p>Each year, we'll roll an assignment, which will yield some skill chances. Roll less than the Learning Roll to raise a skill. Then there's a chance to earn Merit Points, which occurs if a Learning Roll is made. If this puts the character above the Merit Points required for promotion, another Learning Roll is made to secure the promotion. It's pretty obvious you want to roll a decent Intelligence and Motivation when you are creating a character.</p><p>First tour - 22, Military Police. Check a Class 2 and a Class 5 skill, and then a chance for Merit Points. When a skill chance is given in a class of skill, choose the skill before rolling. We tried HTH and Diplomacy, failed both. 29 for Merit Points, also failed. For my free skill roll allowed each year, my Marine will attempt to learn Comm/Computer as a hobby.15- close, but no joy.</p><p>Tour Two. 49 - Security, off world. 1 Class 3 and 2 Class 4 chances. We'll go Scouting, and Espionage twice. 34, 11 (DAMN!), and 36. No go. 1 Merit Point chance... 89. Trying again for Computers as a hobby... 17. Nope.</p><p>Tour Three. 25. Tactical Team on Earth. Class 1, 3, and 4 skill chances. 1 is a no-brainer, there's only Gun Combat. But for 3 and 4 we'll try Scouting and Espionage. 72, 99, and 56. 1 free Primary Skill Chance, I'm going to roll for Gun Combat, 52. No. 1 Merit Point Chance 35. Negative. And hobby once more... 23.</p><p>Final tour of duty. 84, which is a Hot Patrol as a member of a Strike Team. This is what the RPG considers Lieutenant Gorman's team from the film, a Strike Team. Class 1 and 3 chances, 1 Primary Skill Chance, and TWO Merit Point chances. So, Gun Combat, Scouting, and Gun Combat. 36, 07, and 99. Holy crap! We made one. Scouting becomes Certified. Merit Points, 85 and 98. If we <i>were</i> using the optional rules for awards, this would have been some kind of reprimand or prison sentence. (Rolled a 94 for shit and giggles, it would have been a Court Martial.)</p><p>So, our 23-year-old Marine is still a Private. We select armor and gear now. The book indicates that what the Marines in the film were wearing is "light" armor. So we'll go with that. With a Strength of 17, wearing Light Armor, our Marine can carry 65lbs of stuff in addition to the armor without losing Combat Actions. We get the standard Marine gear on page 13, but need to figure out what our Combat Load is. So, M41-A Pulse Rifle, Pistol, two magazines for each. Knife, 8 Grenades, Light & Comm Gear.</p><p>Using the tables, we find we have 5 Combat Actions per turn, a Knockout Value of 23, and are paid 34 credits per month. 34 credits. See, in <i>Aliens</i> the Colonial Marines are paid based on their skills, not their rank. Our Marine has four skills at Novice, and three at Certified. 1 credit for each Novice skill, 10 for each Certified. If we had anything at Professional, that would be 100 credits, and 1,000 for Expert or higher. This is above and beyond food and housing. On the surface, this seems kinda ludicrous, a pittance, why would anyone sign up for the USCM for this kind of pay? Well... the room and board, given the poverty and squalor the book mentions is rampant on Earth. So, I guess I can suspend disbelief enough to enjoy this overly Corporate ideal of paying Marines.</p><p>Now, our Marine is ready for play.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">The streets of Houston were always covered in a sort of murky slime, the oppressive heat mixing with the ever-present humidity, and vast swaths of the city a vulgar parody of old Venice as the sea levels had climbed steadily over the past centuries. This was where Bobby Garcia had grown up. His family lived in a dilapidated modular home in dire need of some repair or other as long as he could remember. With far too many relatives and far too few credit vouchers under the roof, Bobby received the standard substandard education at the hands of the Corporate public schools, but had no desire to compete for one of the low-paying jobs that occasionally came open around the city. There had to be a way out, a way to take the burden of his upkeep off his family, and maybe send some money home. He was a strong, healthy young man with a likeable personality and a keen eye, and managed to qualify for the United States Colonial Marine entrance exam. He was off to MCRD San Diego, his first time outside the Houston sprawl.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">13 weeks in San Diego made a Marine out of Bobby, now Private Garcia. He did well on the rifle range, and in athletic endeavors, but his qualification scores were not quite high enough to get him into any specialist schools. He was an 0311 and it looked like he was going to stay that way. His first tour was a year of Military Police duty supporting local law enforcement to ensure calm and orderly food distribution in neighborhoods much like his own, but on a different coast. It was here he learned to keep his head on a swivel and his streetwise ended up with him assigned to scouting ahead of the unit and walking point in the really bad parts of town. From there, he transferred to the fleet, and spent some time as a scout with an offworld platoon on security duty for US government personnel.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Private Garcia seemed to have found his niche, and transferred to a tactical team on Earth, taking on assignments more likely to result in actual combat. The tour was uneventful, against all odds, but it got him noticed enough to be assigned to a Strike Team- where the real action was. The Strike Team had a hot patrol, engaging colonial separatists on several worlds, and at the end of an exhausting tour, Private Garcia was glad to return to Gateway and wire what little money he had accumulated back to his family. All in all, Bobby Garcia is disappointed he's not moved up in the Corps, nor excelled at a more diverse set of skills, but he's just re-upped for another 4 years for lack of any better options.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifmqAKw86G6UTrcTdIalQZ0eJofvPnIuIVom92EQzyZULCjlXXNdvezoq7ztvluEqNvUote8VbaslZLRZ5NB6AtJ5DDfHN21wm4BCbe6OcmzJOgj1VkRtlWCPv7193uOtKdP7fm7KKxRqM/s791/20+-+Bobby+Garcia.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="791" data-original-width="647" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifmqAKw86G6UTrcTdIalQZ0eJofvPnIuIVom92EQzyZULCjlXXNdvezoq7ztvluEqNvUote8VbaslZLRZ5NB6AtJ5DDfHN21wm4BCbe6OcmzJOgj1VkRtlWCPv7193uOtKdP7fm7KKxRqM/s16000/20+-+Bobby+Garcia.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts<br /></h2></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, despite all the combat craziness, I really like this game. Like, beyond reason. I know it's not elegant. I know the combat is overly complex. I know it's burdened by a system that requires separate charts for different kinds of creatures, so is rather limited by that factor. For instance, the only vehicles you really have stats for are the ones we see in the film, and maybe one or two more. But since vehicles require a complex chart for hit location, penetration, and damage... it makes adding new stuff rather difficult. Same with weapons, the list is very short, and for a system that prides itself on detail, you end up fudging quite a bit since you only have the weapons from the film, plus a sniper rifle and an SMG to really play with.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But I keep running this every couple of years. I play it at North Texas RPG Con with my gaming buds from the panhandle. I just... dig it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here's the thing, though. I think there's a decent game in here if you streamline combat. Take out about three steps and replace the damage rules with something more conventional, like HPs. I know it goes against the realism and detail the authors originally intended, but it makes the game simpler and more playable. Character creation and the skill rules are pretty solid - though you could argue the Learning Roll is pretty damn punishing. Also- characteristic generation is pretty hard core given the requirements to be anything but a grubby private. But then, most of the Marines in the movie were grubby privates. Only Gorman was an officer, and Apone, Hicks, Dietrich and Ferro were the NCOs, all of them corporals save Apone. Even the specialists, like Hudson, Vasquez, and Drake were privates. I guess the USCM doesn't believe in Privates First Class or Lance Corporals. Well, this version of the USCM doesn't, there are several PFCs in the film according to the computer readouts and script, and the later published material mentions the ranks. But the game just has Privates.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I once had a bunch of house rules for this based on reading the Aliens novelization, and being a USMC JROTC cadet at the time I got the game in in 1991. So our Aliens games had more specialist roles (like ComTech, which was Hudson's role in the novelization, and MedTech, which was Dietrich's) and all the USMC ranks.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Damn. Now I wanna play this again. Yes, I know there's a new <i>Alien</i> RPG. But I'm also hunting for the nostalgia of playing this game I loved in High School. Oh, well. Another game for the list.<br /></div><p><br /></p><p> <br /></p></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-57560143246345079182021-01-19T00:30:00.124-06:002021-01-19T00:30:00.147-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 19: The Batman Role-Playing Game<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHDWVSntVglKisq3MqFAvqfS6I1kfL2JMg9WCLjhOZQD6DirlO1YkarEMFvCWN2l-t32mVaxHd4IUNBjCPZwKVHRB9rbfR_ppqC3sR1MfZ3v8AgR5rW9HapcLW2H8dNQpuphJ6Unm9zcO1/s578/Batman+Logo.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="555" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHDWVSntVglKisq3MqFAvqfS6I1kfL2JMg9WCLjhOZQD6DirlO1YkarEMFvCWN2l-t32mVaxHd4IUNBjCPZwKVHRB9rbfR_ppqC3sR1MfZ3v8AgR5rW9HapcLW2H8dNQpuphJ6Unm9zcO1/w384-h400/Batman+Logo.JPG" width="384" /></a></div>1989 was the year of Batmania. The Tim Burton <i>Batman</i> film released that year, with Michael Keaton in the lead role. The Dark Knight was everywhere. This was arguably the comic book movie we'd all been waiting for. Richard Donner's <i>Superman</i> was great, and <i>Superman II</i> was also pretty damn good... <i>Superman III </i>was OK... and downhill from there. It had been a while since we'd had a good superhero film. And here was one that wasn't as cheerful, bright, and sunny as the Supes movies. It was dark, very, very dark in visuals. Gotham City looked like an Art Deco nightmare, and many scenes of the film take place in poorly lit venues- the city feels oppressive, and as Jack Napier opines, "Decent people shouldn't live here."<p></p><p>Mayfair Games took the opportunity of the film release to drop <i>The Batman Roleplaying Game.</i> A small, cut-down version of the <i>DC Heroes</i> RPG, this is sort of a .5 edition, between the boxed first (1985) and second edition (1990). It is a complete, playable RPG for street-level heroes. All you need for a campaign of heroes around the Batman, Robin, Batgirl power levels. I bought my first copy at Hasting's right after seeing the film, and many years later Half Price Books had many copies for $1 each, and I bought a dozen. I still have 3 of those, but I've given away others to gamers over the years.</p><p><i>Batman</i> uses the Mayfair Exponential Game System, or MEGS. In this innovative system, each value is (roughly) double the earlier value. For example, a character with the human average AP (Attribute Points) of 2 in Strength can lift 200lbs. A 3 Strength would life 400lbs, and a 4 800lbs. This makes the game a bit low-resolution at normal human ability levels, which does have an effect in the kind of characters players will likely create in <i>Batman</i>, but the system has a way of making numbers easier to handle once you get used to it.</p><p>I'll admit as a kid, I had some issues grokking MEGS as a system for the first few games, but as an adult I realize it's pretty slick. I still lean towards the Marvel FASERIP system, but that's probably because I had more experience with it back in the day. Today, I appreciate MEGS overall, and specifically the <i>Batman Roleplaying Game.</i> Why? Two reasons- it wraps up <i>DC Heroes</i> into a neat, portable package, and it's directly associated in my head with those wonderful years of the late 80s and early 90s when I was really hitting my stride as a person, and as a gamer.</p><p>Time to slide down the bat-pole and create a character for the <i>Batman</i> RPG. And while I'm doing it, I've put on the '89 <i>Batman</i> film- the opening Danny Elfman music still sends chills down my spine.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Step 1 in the <i>Batman</i> RPG is to think carefully about the character you want to create. This is important, since this game uses a point-buy system. In many of the games we've seen in this series, stats are rolled or generated before choosing other details. But unlike random games, the character is tailor-made to be what it is before points are spent.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, our hero will be a martial artist in keeping with the fisticuffs style of most of the Bat-family. No guns, and rarely lethal weaponry. Hey, there's an idea. This character will be the (die roll...) niece of Alexander Knox, the reporter portrayed by Robert Wuhl in the '89 film. This young lady has followed her uncle's stories in the paper about The Batman, and once it became apparent he was a defender of Gotham at the end of the film, she decided to become a crime-fighting detective in her own right. The issue being, she's young, not a billionaire, and has no access to all of Batman's "wonderful toys" and vehicles.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, her physical attributes will be above average, as she trains and works out, but not so high as to be outside the realm of possibility. Her gear will be rudimentary, maybe what she can construct herself with her obsession-enhanced education, but that education means she has quite a bit of book knowledge on the things she thinks are important to fighting crime. So, let's give her a bit of gadgeteer, as she uses her head and her research to make up for her stature.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Step 2 is purchase attributes. There are nine basic attributes in this system, divided into three areas, Physical, Mental, and Spiritual. Within each are three individual attributes- one controls how much power a character can exert in that area, one how much control the character has over that power, and one how resistant the character is in that area. For example, in Physical, Strength determines damage out put, Dexterity the accuracy of that damage, and Body the resistance to physical damage. So, we'll giver her a DEX of 5, really good but not superhuman. STR and BOXY will be 3, above average but not ridiculously so, she's a young woman who works out, but she's no body builder (yet). Her mental attribues, INT, WILL, and MIND will all be 5, equivalent to scientist Dr. Kirk Langstrom, higher than a Mob Boss, but still with room to grow to get to the level of seasoned heroes like Nightwing or The Batman himself. This costs 232 of our 450 points.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Step 3 is purchasing powers and skills. She won't have any powers, per se, but skills- absolutely. She'll have Actor, Charisma, Detective, Gadgetry, Martial Artist, and Thief.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Skills are purchased by paying Base Cost, plus a cost associated with the number of APs of skill you wish to have. Our character is better than average at the things she does, but again, not in the same league as an experienced hero. So let's give her a rating of 4APs in each skill. Better than a Thug or Henchman, but not super badass. We're now at 417 points out of 450.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For Advantages, we take City Knowledge, a Connection (Uncle Alex), and a Gadget. The Gadget is a device to make getaways or stun opponents - like a camera strobe on steroids. It has a Body of 4 (21 points), the Flash power with 5APs (44 points), can only work 4 times before recharging (-10 points) and has a Reliability of 5. This totals to 55, divided by 2 since it's a Gadget, for a final cost of 28.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We're now overbudget by 25 points, so we'll need some Disadvantages. Age is an obvious one, our heroine is still a teenager. We'll also grab Secret Identity. These two together net us the -25 we needed. Our heroine is ready to play!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character<br /></h2></div><div style="text-align: left;">Uncle Allie should have won his Pulitzer for the events in Gotham City, Kari told herself for the fifteenth time as she re-read the carefully clipped articles he'd written on The Batman. It was still so unbelievable, the whole thing, that some... what... caped crusader was sneaking through the city beating up criminals? The Gotham syndicates had gone underground, the police seemed to be getting a handle on crime, and suddenly Gotham wasn't such a bad place to live. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">She smiled as she clicked the last piece of plastic into place over her new bracer gauntlet thing. She hadn't decided what to call it yet. But it was the hottest camera strobes she could lift from the storeroom at the newspaper with some of the most powerful batteries she could get her hands on at Radio Shack. This thing should be able to blind just about anyone looking in it's direction when it goes off. She'd better remember to look away and shut her eyes. Maybe her next project would be protective goggles.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Tonight would be her first patrol, her first opportunity to help, like Batman. She was sure that with her dark costume, her flash device, and her other skills she could lend a hand and do some good for people. And in the process, maybe she'd run across Batman herself. Maybe she could get him to show her a few things. Maybe Batman needed an understudy? Maybe she could talk him into giving Uncle Allie an exclusive interview...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Oh! There was her alarm, time to go to Karate Class. She had to keep perfecting her fighting form if she was going to beat up criminals. After class, when mom thought she'd be at the library, then it'd be time to patrol. She <i>really</i> needed to come up with a hero name...<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(The Batman RPG did not have its own character sheet, so the character is presented below in the format in which it would have appeared in the <i>Batman The Roleplaying Game</i> book.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width: 245px;"><colgroup><col style="mso-width-alt: 1645; mso-width-source: userset; width: 34pt;" width="45"></col>
<col style="mso-width-alt: 1389; mso-width-source: userset; width: 29pt;" width="38"></col>
<col style="mso-width-alt: 1645; mso-width-source: userset; width: 34pt;" width="45"></col>
<col style="mso-width-alt: 1243; mso-width-source: userset; width: 26pt;" width="34"></col>
<col style="mso-width-alt: 1865; mso-width-source: userset; width: 38pt;" width="51"></col>
<col style="mso-width-alt: 1170; mso-width-source: userset; width: 24pt;" width="32"></col>
</colgroup><tbody><tr height="26" style="height: 19.5pt;">
<td class="xl65" colspan="3" height="26" style="height: 19.5pt; mso-ignore: colspan; width: 97pt;" width="128">Kari Knox</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 26pt;" width="34"> </td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 38pt;" width="51"> </td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 24pt;" width="32"> </td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">DEX:</td>
<td class="xl68">5</td>
<td class="xl67">STR:</td>
<td class="xl68">3</td>
<td class="xl67">BODY:</td>
<td class="xl68">3</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">INT:</td>
<td class="xl68">5</td>
<td class="xl67">WILL:</td>
<td class="xl68">5</td>
<td class="xl67">MIND:</td>
<td class="xl68">5</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">INFL:</td>
<td class="xl68">5</td>
<td class="xl67">AURA:</td>
<td class="xl68">4</td>
<td class="xl67">SPIRIT:</td>
<td class="xl68">4</td>
</tr>
<tr height="21" style="height: 15.75pt;">
<td class="xl69" colspan="3" height="21" style="height: 15.75pt; mso-ignore: colspan;">INITIATIVE:</td>
<td class="xl69" colspan="2" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">HERO PTS:</td>
<td class="xl70">450</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" colspan="2" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt; mso-ignore: colspan;">●
<span class="font6">Powers</span></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71" colspan="2" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">None.</td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" colspan="2" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt; mso-ignore: colspan;">●
<span class="font6">Skills</span></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71" colspan="5" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">Actor:4, Charisma:4,
Detective:4</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71" colspan="5" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">Gadgetry:4, Martial Arts:
4</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71" colspan="2" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">Thief: 4</td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" colspan="3" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt; mso-ignore: colspan;">●
<span class="font6">Advantages</span></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71" colspan="5" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">City Knowledge (Gotham)</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71" colspan="5" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">Connection (Alexander
Knox)</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71" colspan="5" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">Gadget: Flash Gauntlet
(BODY 4,</td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71" colspan="4" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">Flash:5, Ammo:4)</td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" colspan="3" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt; mso-ignore: colspan;">●
Disadvantages</td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71" colspan="4" style="mso-ignore: colspan;">Age, Secret Identity</td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" colspan="2" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt; mso-ignore: colspan;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>● <span class="font6">Wealth:</span></td>
<td align="right" class="xl71">3</td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
<td class="xl71"><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="20" style="height: 15.0pt;">
<td class="xl71" colspan="6" height="20" style="height: 15.0pt; mso-ignore: colspan;">●
<span class="font6">Alter Ego:</span><span class="font5"> Unnamed Vigilante</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts</h2><div style="text-align: left;">I haven't gotten to <i>play</i> this game in literal decades. It is a frequent bedtime read because I have an extra copy in my bedside bookshelf, and because the book has a pretty good sourcebook worth of Batman information inside it. It's been ages, but making this character has taken me back to Freshman year of High School when Tim Burton's film had just come out. Batman for me before that point had always been Adam West, or the <i>Superfriends</i> portrayal. I mean, he'd even guest-starred on <i>Scooby-Doo.</i> Sure, I'd read a couple of Batman comics, but I was really a Marvel kid growing up save for DC's run of <i>Star Trek</i>. I was far more likely to read <i>X-Men</i>, <i>Spider-Man</i>, <i>GI Joe, Transformers, What If?, What The?!?, </i>and things like that. It wasn't a conscious decision, just kinda how it was. Oh! Wait, <i>Forgotten Realms</i> was DC, too... I had a few of those, come to think of it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Anyway, the <i>Batman</i> film had a profound effect on me and how I thought about superheroes. It also changed how we <i>played</i> superheroes. In <i>The Marvel Superheroes Roleplaying Game</i> by TSR a hero would lose all their accumulated Karma if they killed or allowed someone to be killed. In the Burton <i>Batman</i>, it's pretty clear <i>Batman</i> kills or allows some of Joker's henchmen to die. And what about Johnnie Gobbs? Yes, this was out of character for the Dark Knight Detective, and I became more aware of that as I got older and learned more about the character than I'd known from the campy (but fun) 60s series and the animated shows of the 70s. All of a sudden, a superhero game could be gritty, and dark, and street-level. And then we got the brilliant and groundbreaking <i>Batman: The Animated Series.</i> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This game, though I've not played it since those heady days of High School, and then only a few times, holds a special place in my heart for the place and time in which it came into my life. It is a reminder of that year of Batmania, of starting High School, of being a young adult but still hanging on to a vestige of childhood. I fondly remember the RPG section at our Hastings, and seeing this book there, and knowing I <i>had</i> to have it. It was the final year of the 1980s, the decade that continues to define me thirty years later. Now I'm in my 40s, with kids of my own, and I can take the time to collect these old games and reflect on them. To paraphrase Alexander Knox "You know why grognards are so nostalgic for old games? Because they can afford to be."<br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-65021145996221165732021-01-18T00:30:00.001-06:002021-01-18T00:30:06.113-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 18: Marvel Superheroes<p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKmsn9CmthyphenhyphenrTGK-XXm3DUxgH3Kt3vzrfWxT69XTed5HM5EeAtktdkvZh3_PpW6qR23_ipIIlC0NpTnW4J49qyGBm0dL9-qkgML4PVFpa00xIVpVP0FyH6zkE2Fo9WzvH16Y4uw_4RkPL4/s515/MSH+Logo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="209" data-original-width="515" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKmsn9CmthyphenhyphenrTGK-XXm3DUxgH3Kt3vzrfWxT69XTed5HM5EeAtktdkvZh3_PpW6qR23_ipIIlC0NpTnW4J49qyGBm0dL9-qkgML4PVFpa00xIVpVP0FyH6zkE2Fo9WzvH16Y4uw_4RkPL4/s16000/MSH+Logo.JPG" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;">Marvel Superheroes by TSR was my first foray into superhero gaming. I had missed out on Villains & Vigilantes, Champions, and DC Heroes so far- I would discover those games later. I remember sitting with some friends after a session of M.U.L.E. on a Commodore 64 and cracking open the box. I was greeted with none other than the Amazing Spider-Man telling me what the game was and how to play it in the yellow-covered Battle Book.<br /><br />It’s no secret that Spidey was my favorite superhero as a kid, and remains so, and while I appreciated the Superfriends, I was a “Make Mine Marvel” kid whose all-time favorite superhero cartoon still is Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. So this… this was freakin’ awesome.<br /><br />TSR Hobbies went through this phase in the mid-80s where everything had to have these multi-colored charts to resolve die rolls. Indiana Jones, Conan, Zebulon’s Guide for Star Frontiers and the 3rd edition of Gamma World all had them. Marvel was perhaps my favorite incarnation of all of these, and the way it worked was a great emulation of the supers genre with the slams and bashes and bullseyes and stuff.<br /><br />So, MSH is a system that uses percentile dice to roll on a table for everything. This table has columns given ratings like “Good”, “Excellent”, “Fair” etc. For example, if Spider-Man needed to do something based on Agility, he’d roll on the “Amazing” column and see what result he got. A white result was a no-go, a green result was a success, and a yellow or red result were very good indeed, sometimes coming with special effects. The game is often referred to as FASERIP, which stands for the abilities. Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche. Each rank has a number associated with it. For example, Cyclops can fire Optic Blasts of Excellent (20) damage. This means if he hit someone wearing Good (10) body armor, he’d do 10 damage. If someone had Excellent (20) or better body armor, Cyke would have to roll a critical.<br /><br />Marvel also has Karma, which are both XP, and a pool of points from which the players can adjust die rolls and pull off new power stunts. I keep thinking that plot points, bennies, etc. are 21st Century inventions, then I remember they existed back in the 80s. Oh, and if you kill someone? You lose ALL your Karma. Heroes don’t kill people. Let’s roll up a heroine. We’ll be using the original Basic Set.</p><h2 id="docs-internal-guid-e019a3ff-7fff-8eaf-9424-b4e0e7bc98ad" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #434343; font-family: Arial; font-size: 17pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Character Creation System:</span></h2><br />All right, True Believers, we’re digging into the original Marvel Superheroes Campaign Book from 1984, to see what kind of heroine we’re going to create. <br /><br />First, we roll for origin. Is this hero a mutant? A robot? An inventor like Tony Stark? A human altered by circumstance like Peter Parker? 26 on the dice- that makes our heroine a Mutant.<br /><br />Step two is rolling up our FASERIP. D100 for each, in order. 06, 97, 37, 35, 83, 65, 60. So our initial ranks are:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Fighting: Poor (4)</li><li>Agility: Amazing (50)</li><li>Strength: Good (10)</li><li>Endurance: Good (10)</li><li>Reason: Incredible (40)</li><li>Intuition: Remarkable (30)</li><li>Psyche: Remarkable (30)</li></ul>Wow. So, let’s see who she compares to. Her Fighting is comparable to Jolly Jonah Jamison. Well, it coulda been Aunt May (Feeble.) An Amazing agility puts her on par with Spidey himself. Good strength is on par with Daredevil or Iron Fist. Good Endurance is equal footing with Rogue or Dazzler. Incredible Reason is the realm of Professor X or Tony Stark! Remarkable intuition is like unto Moon Knight or Cyclops. Finally, her Remarkable Psyche is again equivalent to Cyclops, or Mr. Fantastic. Oh, wait, Mutants increase Endurance by one rank, so it bumps up to Excellent, like Beast or Sue Storm!<br /><br /><br />Step three is calculating the derived numbers, like Health and Karma. Health is the sum of the rank numbers for the first four scores, F+A+S+E. Starting Karma is the sum of R+I+P. So our heroine has a Health of 84 and a starting Karma of 100. That’s not too shabby. Her starting Popularity is… grim. Starting with a figure of 50, subtracting 20 for a secret origin, and another 20 for a secret identity, then 40 for being a mutant… Yeah, Senator Kelley called, he hates our heroine, whose initial popularity is -30. We rolled an 09 for Resources, meaning her financial situation is Poor.<br /><br /><br />Step four: POWERS! We roll to see just how many our heroine has. 16, she has two. Rolling for what kind of powers, the first one is an offensive body alteration power, and the second a nature control power. We choose Weather Control and Claws. Rolling for how powerful these abilities are, we get a Weather Control of Excellent (20) and a Claws of Incredible (40)! Also- I think she now has a name. Thundercat! (A quick search of the Marvel database we didn’t have in the 80s shows no character by that name)<br /><br /><br />In step five, we get talents, what other games would call skills. We roll to see how many… 99! Wow, Thundercat has the maximum of four talents. Let’s see what they are… Genetics, Geology, Scholar, and Aeronautics (Pilot). This is getting interesting. Now we go to ste six, which is the details of the character’s life. So we’ll go ahead and put that in the next section.<br /><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character:</h2>Felina Fairlane led a perfectly happy life for her first decade of childhood. Naturally gifted academically and athletically, she excelled in gymnastics and was completing High School science coursework in 4th grade. She was on track for an early graduation when tragedy struck- a freak accident as her parents were pulling into their driveway. An inattentive driver slammed into their car as Felina stood on the porch with her gym bag, waiting to jump in the car for gymnastics. She saw the accident, and a combination of adrenaline and the latent mutant powers she had not yet discovered spurred her to leap onto the car, slicing away the twisted metal with claws she instinctively knew she could summon. As she struggled to free her parents from the wreckage, relieved that they were at least alive, she turned to see the unhurt driver of the other car staring at her in disbelief. Her rage at the careless motorist expressed itself in a darkening of the skies over the accident site, and a sudden volley of thunder and unearthly winds. Unbidden, at least not consciously, a bolt of lightning struck and killed the hapless driver as Felina’s dazed parents watched.<br /><br />Rather than their gratitude, Felina found herself the object of her parent’s horror- her eyes were now slitted like a cat’s, and the gleaming claws that now protruded from her fingertips glistened in the headlights of the stricken family station wagon. A tail snaked its way up from her back, and a coat of soft black fur grew before Felina’s eyes as she watched with amazement. Her mother screamed, her father made the sign of the cross.<br /><br />The bodily changes went away with the adrenaline, but the fear in her parent’s eyes never did. Felina’s parents treated her like a stranger, and took her to numerous doctors, psychologists, and priests to try to find answers. Their search ended when Felina met Professor Charles Xavier, who told the Fairlanes he could teach their daughter to control what her parents had come to call “demonic episodes.”<br /><br />Four years at Xaiver’s School taught Thundercat, as she now preferred to be called, how to control her transformations, and fly the Blackbird. Felina finished her undergraduate work by age 18 and transferred to Empire State University to finish graduate work in Geology and Genetics. To the world, she became Doctor Felina Fairlane, Ph.D., postgraduate researcher at ESU, but at need, she is Thundercat of the X-Men.<p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX1fX6lr9iMrzaXjrF8dnS1Kf7spjvINa0iK8YQPeF7fXwkAju34QIeUjuWic_ZQmyDVXNXK5nPwGNWykYzW_p-ysQqEIC6QutS-RqrnbK-6EwtzZs5NwjLJSXYU4cUM-KaJKQX1heyuNl/s910/18+Thundercat.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="910" data-original-width="692" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX1fX6lr9iMrzaXjrF8dnS1Kf7spjvINa0iK8YQPeF7fXwkAju34QIeUjuWic_ZQmyDVXNXK5nPwGNWykYzW_p-ysQqEIC6QutS-RqrnbK-6EwtzZs5NwjLJSXYU4cUM-KaJKQX1heyuNl/s16000/18+Thundercat.JPG" /></a></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts:</h2>OK, dammit. Now I wanna play Marvel. Man, did I forget how much fun it was to roll up random supers and try to explain their powers. This was half the fun of playing Marvel, to be honest. Damn, do I love this game.<br /><br /><br />So, Marvel is another game that I love to show people who aren’t roleplayers. Star Wars and Marvel are usually gateways for people into full-on geek gaming. Grab some d10s, some poker chips for Karma, and maybe even a crap ton of HeroClix minis for a massive battle. One of the best Marvel GMs I’ve ever played with, Kelly Rowe, laid out a huge battlefield for us to try to do Avengers: Endgame our way, to see if our solution was any better, and damned if Galactus didn’t show up to take a swipe at the Infinity Gauntlet for himself. I mean, maybe he could fit in on the tip of a fingernail?<br /><br /><br />The chart can feel a bit cumbersome at first, but once you get used to it, it really produces some fun results. For example, The Thing can uproot a light pole and whack a Doom Bot with it, baseball style, and “grand slam” the Bot across the street and into a building, where both the building and the bot will take additional damage. It’s clobberin’ time. My advice is make sure each player has a color copy of the chart in front of them- print a few at a copy shop and laminate them.<br /><br /><br />Again a game worth playing, but I don’t think I’m doing characters from any games that aren’t.The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-89381625933358635832021-01-17T00:30:00.129-06:002021-01-17T00:30:02.680-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 17: Ghostbusters<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9nanqygcM2z3UZ_lk4mYFkZFw4PA8TH_I5pYm4kCUnQny_7H0_Z2ER8adNC0hHuK8UqrjaHG3farbBHDO3SUhnvjdSVYGcxkHt_6MSkdovWOeXhO17aSOzPg9pW7jwrquREJ7QbJKb5xz/s546/GBLogo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="149" data-original-width="546" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9nanqygcM2z3UZ_lk4mYFkZFw4PA8TH_I5pYm4kCUnQny_7H0_Z2ER8adNC0hHuK8UqrjaHG3farbBHDO3SUhnvjdSVYGcxkHt_6MSkdovWOeXhO17aSOzPg9pW7jwrquREJ7QbJKb5xz/s16000/GBLogo.JPG" /></a></div><p><br />There it was, on the shelf at King’s Hobby Shop. <i>Ghostbusters: The Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game</i>. Somehow I’d missed the adverts for this in Dragon magazine and elsewhere. I had to have it. I was a huge fan of the film, the cartoon, the Commodore 64 computer game. This was going to be awesome.<br /><br />This game is an ancestor of the D6 system I adore from the West End Star Wars RPG, but even more free-form and fast-and-loose. Characters fit on index cards, and in fact, the box comes with punch-out cardstock Ghostbusters ID Cards that double as character sheets. There’s also cards for equipment, with proton packs, traps, an Alpine kit with lederhosen, a beach kit… you know, everything you need for supernatural elimination.The game uses six-sided dice only, with the only twist being the Ghost Die. This is a special die that was, sadly, printed rather than engraved. This means most Ghost Dice from the 80s are blank white cubes now. Anyway, the 6 face was replaced by the Ghostbusters logo, and when that came up, something bad had happened. Otherwise, total the dice, beat a target number. That’s it. The rest of the game was a whirling mixture of horror and hilarity. With modules like <i>Hot Rods of the Gods</i> and <u><i>Ghost Toasties</i></u> it’s pretty clear the intent of the game focuses more on the funny than the scary, but it was definitely fun.</p><p>The game itself is ridiculously simple to play, roll some d6s, add them up, and if the Ghost Die came up a ghost, something unfortunate happens. That's it. That's pretty much the entire system. The rest is up to you, even the selection of, well, "skills" in the form of talent specialties. Which can be anything - <i>anything - </i>the players and GM can agree upon. Let's see how it works.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">So, a Ghostbuster has four Traits. Brains, Muscle, Moves, and Cool. To determine your Traits, divide 12 dice among the Traits, with a minimum of 1, and a maximum of 5. Your Ghosbuster will roll that many dice any time that Trait is used, unless the roll has to do with your a specific talent within each of the four main Talents. And, as referenced above, it can be pretty much anything. Egon has <i>Physics</i>, which seems reasonable, then Venkman has <i>Seduce. </i>I guess there's a Bard in every game.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">OK, so, let's create a character in the vein of Winston from the original script. Our everyman hero, Winston Zeddemore, was originally a former military man. He brought a certain amount of physicality and combat ability to the team. In the final film, the everyman aspect won out, and Winston becomes our POV character, bringing the perspective of someone without a PhD to the film.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So... Brains 2, Muscles 3, Moves 4, Cool 3. Now we have to come up with a Talent for each of these. Each of the sub-talents gets an additional 3 dice when it comes up in play. For Brains we'll go with Mechanics. Muscles? Climb. Moves will be Fire Weapon, and Cool will be Calm Under Fire.<br /><br />Now, we get 20 Brownie Points. These are our Hit Points, as well as extra dice we can roll, 1 per Brownie Point spent. Finally, we have to have a goal. Egon's is "Soulless Science." Venkman's is "Sex." In homage to Winston, our goal will be "A Steady Paycheck."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And... that's it. That's character creation. Probably the shortest and simplest we've had so far.</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Robin Hill was <i>done</i> with the Army. She had her DD-214 in hand, and was ready to do something else. After eight years of the Green Weenie it was time to find a better way to spend her time. Problem was, most of the job offers she'd gotten were for PMCs or former mates trying to get her into law enforcement. There had to be something else out there... and then she saw the ad. Some crazy bastards were trying to open a <i>Ghostbusters</i> franchise.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">She remembered her family members talking about what happened in '84, and '89, before she was born. But nobody'd caught any real evidence of supernatural phenomenon since then. There were no ghosts, and maybe all that crap in the '80s was just mass hysteria.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So... if these folks had money to pay employees... and they were hunting things that didn't exist... that might make for a nice, relaxing job until the idiots ran out of their nest egg. Maybe this gig could buy her a few months of gainful civilian employment until she could find something else.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">How hard could it be?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgaUXwH1qg8tPLIZeJKj2HyvikWhR_V_J2DGAKA13X6tcopp1WKtTBlqzxv9j-2Sq5cmHmL-A9ccLsV9GeGuSdCr046MHhAhDmfvre3vgOWEDJbO73tBJcmkk7Fy1HWvwZcXYMKZb_98ff/s531/17+-+Robin+Hill.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="531" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgaUXwH1qg8tPLIZeJKj2HyvikWhR_V_J2DGAKA13X6tcopp1WKtTBlqzxv9j-2Sq5cmHmL-A9ccLsV9GeGuSdCr046MHhAhDmfvre3vgOWEDJbO73tBJcmkk7Fy1HWvwZcXYMKZb_98ff/w400-h318/17+-+Robin+Hill.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts</h2><div style="text-align: left;">I've always held that West End's <i>Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game</i> was the greatest "gateway drug" to gaming since Red Box D&D. It was a world nearly everyone is familiar with, it used only six-sided dice, and it had a very simple system. <i>Ghostbusters</i> is the parent of that game, with an even simpler version of the system. And hey, <i>Ghostbusters.</i> This should also be on the list of simple, accessible games to get non-gamers to dip their toes in the pool.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I have played some amazing games of <i>Ghostbusters</i>. My favorite was when we were on a cruise in the Gulf of Mexico, and we all went up to the Lido Deck, grabbed some food and booze, and played <i>Ghostbusters</i> in the ship's library on our way to Cozumel. The GM, Bobby, had us aboard... the same ship we were sitting aboard in real life. There was a paranormal conference aboard, you see, and the keynote speech was going to be from Dr. Egon Spengler. We were aboard to listen to him speak, as franchisees from Texas. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Remember the kid from the original film, who was actually starting to guess the ESP cards thanks to electric shocks? Apparently, those shocks did awaken ESP abilities in this kid, and they became super powerful and drove him mad. He had come to get his revenge, and we had to defeat him without sinking the damn ship. Proton Packs being effective against ghosts, but also pretty hard on collateral damage.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">It was amazing! We felt connected to our heroes from the movies. We felt connected to our environment, because we were using the deck plans of the very ship we were sailing upon. The game system just got out of the way. And we busted some ghosts. And we busted a lot of things on the ship.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">Folks, if you can get your hands on the boxed set, or the slightly different <i>Ghostbusters, International</i>, go for it. It's a great piece of gaming history, <i>Ghostbusters</i> trivia, and it's just a damn playable game. <br /></div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5395501958781740798.post-57104762040312618562021-01-16T00:30:00.217-06:002021-01-16T00:30:03.624-06:0031 Character Challenge Part 16: Dark Places & Demogorgons<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidmrES_-gASwXCsYEc24bha_NxKXUrgjbNUom6gR5LicLx5xuPofrh_foC4eH7xf0Ey-qlPFe4BoUDtBOE5V8oXpliJI3ebj5x0hD1vx8qq6OailrItDGC8EV57H0DuVvQj8LMyZCRcGbV/s668/dark-places-and-demogorgons-logo.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="668" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidmrES_-gASwXCsYEc24bha_NxKXUrgjbNUom6gR5LicLx5xuPofrh_foC4eH7xf0Ey-qlPFe4BoUDtBOE5V8oXpliJI3ebj5x0hD1vx8qq6OailrItDGC8EV57H0DuVvQj8LMyZCRcGbV/s16000/dark-places-and-demogorgons-logo.webp" /></a></div><p></p><p><i>Stranger Things</i> had a two-pronged effect on the roleplaying hobby. One, it put <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> front and center on an extremely popular television series. Two, it inspired a number of RPGs playing with the themes of <i>Stranger Things</i>. The 80s, or kids solving mysteries, or both. The wonderful <i>Kids on Bikes</i> was the first game of this kind I encountered, then I saw <i>Dark Places & Demogorgons</i>, which was based on the same era of <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> the kids in <i>Stranger Things </i>played, I knew I had to check it out.</p><p>DP&G comes to us from Bloat Games, who has made something of a name for itself by creating a number of old-school based games hitting various genres. I'm particularly fond of their <i>Valor Knights</i> game inspired, it feels, by the original <i>Transformers</i> cartoon. But we're talking about DP&G.</p><p>The game has its own Appendix N, full of references to 80s movies and TV shows, music, games, toys, and so forth. The classes are the archetypes of 80s movies with kids involved - Jocks, Nerds, Goths, Preppies... This game could easily do <i>The Goonies</i>, or <i>The Breakfast Club</i>, or <i>E.T. </i>Teen horror? Sure. Fad movies like <i>Breakin', </i>or <i>BMX Bandits</i>, or any of the old <i>Bones Brigade</i> skater films? Absolutely. There's even a character class called the Karate Kid.</p><p>Anyone familiar with Basic D&D will immediately recognize the core of DP&G. The six Ability Scores have been expanded to seven, adding Survival, a pool of opportunities to re-roll dice that regenerates a point per game. Some mechanics, like Saving Throws, are now roll-under, this and other mechanics are borrowed from the most excellent <i>The Black Hack</i>. What emerges from the pages of DP&G is a good time in the pattern of the films my generation watched growing up.</p><p>So... throw on some Cyndi Lauper, and let's create a character for <i>Dark Places & Demogorgons.</i></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"> Character Creation</h2><div style="text-align: left;">First, we roll Attributes. It's 3d6 seven times, so here we go. 8, 9, 16, 16, 8, 9, 13.<span> DP&G allows players to arrange the stats to their taste, so I want to look at the classes and figure out which one to create. Hey! There's a Random Background table, so let's see what we get. Wow! 100! So, parents were Doomsday Preppers, they live in the country, have a bunker, and this grants Hunting & Fishing at +1, and Toughness +1. There are 15 classes, so I'm going to roll randomly there, too. d20, ignore anything over 15. 20... dammit. Okay, 6. Karate Kid. Well, I kinda hoped for a Nerd, Jock, or Preppie as a more ubiquitous 80s archetype, but I'm old school and like to play the dice as they fall.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span> </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span>So, Karate Kids need a Dexterity of 9, and Constitution of 8. I've been watching Cobra Kai, so I kinda want to build a scrappy little kid who is smaller than his peers, but all martial arts-y. So let's put our stats as follows:</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span> STR: 8 (-1)<br /></span></li><li><span> INT: 9 (0)<br /></span></li><li><span> WIS: 13 (+1)<br /></span></li><li><span> DEX: 16 (+2)<br /></span></li><li><span> CON: 8 (-1)<br /></span></li><li><span> CHA: 16 (+2)<br /></span></li><li><span> SUR: 9 (+0)</span></li></ul><span>HP is 2d6 plus CON modifier, 3+2=5, -1=4. Well, a character with less than 5HP gets 5HP, so our karate kid has but 5 HP to call his own. Saving Throws are rolled randomly, which is interesting. 4d4+CON Bonus.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Courage: 12</li><li>Critical Injury: 11</li><li>Death: 7</li><li>Mental: 13<br /></li><li>Poison: 9<br /></li></ul></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_prxLedasqRx9dhemzoL0kq9P3D7MdAZNc7MNJXPtpl3lID7g7iaX3NiX7BgxHS73hyphenhyphenRIvIi_upDQneaCe3GeURY4ChYSWnbIz-aQmeKWUCOJIQkdhZt-n3mZuRaAO1UtlJyrwdLpGOey/s1024/shuriken_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="796" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_prxLedasqRx9dhemzoL0kq9P3D7MdAZNc7MNJXPtpl3lID7g7iaX3NiX7BgxHS73hyphenhyphenRIvIi_upDQneaCe3GeURY4ChYSWnbIz-aQmeKWUCOJIQkdhZt-n3mZuRaAO1UtlJyrwdLpGOey/s320/shuriken_2.jpg" /></a></div>At Level 1, we get Basic Athletics, any Asian language, and Martial Arts. Dexterity goes up one, Charisma goes down one, and Armor Class goes up 1.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span>We start with a Karate Gi, Nunchaku, 3 Shuriken, $17, a bicycle, a library card, a lot of Bruce Lee posters, and The Last Dragon on VHS. Having grown up in the 80s, I can totally dig the Black Belt Magazine advertisements where this character probably bought his 'chucks and "Chinese Stars."<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">The shuriken can be thrown two per turn, but only do 1d6-2 damage.</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">I couldn't find the 'chucks, but I'll guess 1d6 since that's what a nightstick does.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Skills are based on the bonus given plus the Attribute bonus linked with the Skill. In addition to the starting skills, a character may choose four more skills. Our Karate Kid takes Investigation, Dancing, Video Games, and Persuasion.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Character</h2><div style="text-align: left;">Marc Wierzbowski was not what his parents expected. Scrawny, more fond of his Atari than a fishing pole, the pressed him to learn the things that would allow him to take care of himself. Rather than learn how to hunt, or shoot, he went with the one thing he had an interest in- the martial arts. He enrolled in Eagle Fang Karate, read <i>Ninja</i> and <i>Black Belt</i> magazine voraciously, knew every Bruce Lee film by heart. Still, he was five foot nothing and ninety pounds soaking wet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i></i><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When the thing- whatever it was- shambled into the school and started trying to eat people, Marc stepped up, distracting it with the shuriken he kept hid in a Tupperware box in his backpack with his <i>Garbage Pail Kids</i> cards, he enraged it and it gave chase. Marc led it to the gym, where he grabbed a baseball bat and made like a ninja sword. That was a mistake... he just didn't have the muscle to make a bat harm the... thing. It took him down in a single backhand. He remembered thinking before he hit his head, maybe his parents will finally be proud of him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When Marc woke up in the hospital, the nurse told him he'd injured himself in gym class. Nobody seemed to have seen the thing, even with all the kids in the hall none of the adults would acknowledge the thing was even real. It wasn't on the news, it wasn't in the papers, and his parents were terribly disappointed in his embarrassing PE injury. Several kids apparently got hurt that day, every one of them a mysterious accident. A dog bite, a bicycle wreck, each of those kids one of the ones the thing had been attacking.<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But there was something going on. And Marc was going to find out what.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQnp0qOzDXy_KUxVqThzX_yrsz9ZrESX-q1QjH-8xTsJ7xu06CN30x5I5WKzEmWCEzp5BUhbyKnXdcVST7hetcnIzxlUPsU8WIo0TbvQb5LhaOfRB_3ExFA4qw5-1XOUrBk9rqHQcDXTJi/s702/16+-+Marc+Wierzbowski.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="494" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQnp0qOzDXy_KUxVqThzX_yrsz9ZrESX-q1QjH-8xTsJ7xu06CN30x5I5WKzEmWCEzp5BUhbyKnXdcVST7hetcnIzxlUPsU8WIo0TbvQb5LhaOfRB_3ExFA4qw5-1XOUrBk9rqHQcDXTJi/s16000/16+-+Marc+Wierzbowski.JPG" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><h2 style="text-align: left;">My Thoughts</h2><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Goonies R Good Enough</i> played in my head the entire time I was making this character. The idea of playing scrappy kids with foul language who solve a mystery without the help of their clueless parents just sounds <i>fun.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i> </i></div><div style="text-align: left;">In fact, I kinda want to toss Stephen Spielberg, Richard Donner, and John Hughes in a blender and see what comes out. Like, <i>The Breakfast Club</i> versus monsters. <i>Ferris Bueller</i> saves the world. Hell, even <i>WarGames</i> might be in this game's wheelhouse... and there it is, on page 196, in Appendix N.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">I've not yet taken this game for a spin, so I can't say a lot about my experiences playing it, but it's been a pandemic read of mine, and I'm looking forward to playing it at some point in the future. <br /></div><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span> </span><br /></div>The Old Dragoonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11678101592407276732noreply@blogger.com0