Hollow Earth Update

Have I been lazy about updating or what?

The new found interest in 40k has been a bit of a nerd-time suck. I've got my second game this weekend and I've been modeling like mad. Fortunately, the guys I'm playing with are okay with me showing up with unpainted models, so I've actually had time to eat, sleep, go to work, etc.

My tuesday night my regular group (Dave, Allen, Hickey, Paul and Brad) finished up our Hollow Earth Expedition adventure. Brad was absent and Paul, being back from tour, got his first chance at play in the Hollow Earth.

The adventurers had succeeded in thwarting Dr. Von Wartenberg's plan to steal the Atlantean crystal in the previous adventure, but discovered their way out of the Hollow Earth had abandoned them. They decided to follow the Nazi's tracks through the jungle. They heard some tribal drumming and what sounded like a woman shouting insults. The heroes quickly (and quietly moved towards the sounds) and stumbled across what appeared to be humanoid lizards in the midst of a ritual sacrifice of a beautiful woman (played by Paul -- hah). Some chaos and combat ensued and woman is released and joins the fight against her reptilian captors. When the group realizes that more lizardmen are being alerted to the disturbance, the party high-tails it towards a raft on the river bed.

They proceed down the river, with much chaos (including a fight on the raft with 2 lizardmen and a velociraptor and almost going over a giant waterfall), and eventually find a ruined temple in the valley beneath the waterfall. Inside the temple, they are able to solve a puzzle that opens the waterfall. There are a bunch of traps which are navigated on the way to a large room with some sort of glowing crystal. The players grab the crystal, shit goes haywire, the caverns start to flood. The snooty professors falls in the drink, and Dr Dan the field biologist gets crushed in a trap.

They stumble out of the ruins and notice the prof crawling out of the lake looking like a drowned rat, but otherwise okay. As the waterfall begins to close, they realize they are surrounded by Nazis, let by Von Wartenberg. As he delivers a soliloquy on what happens to those who defy the Reich, the adventurers spot a pack of lizardmen making their way towards the group. From the other direction a horde of Raptors and finally, from the surface of the lake, a giant octopus surfaces. As the 5 way fight breaks out, the players high-tail it into the jungle as the screen fades to black.

Good game. I think everyone enjoyed it and we'll likely run more HEX adventures in the future. Definitely recommended for folks looking for some pulpy action and adventure.

Status Update

Wow! It looks like I let over a week creep by with out a post. I not doing a good job of keeping up with my self-appointed posting numbers. I should be doing some studying for some up coming games, really, but I'll sneak a post in before that, and hopefully get some feedback.

Speaking of upcoming games, I'll be running my second session of Swords & Wizardry White Box this weekend. All seven players from the first session were so enamored with the play style (particularly the speed and lethality of the combat), that they demanded a deeper delve into the dungeon. When we last left them, they were down a man or two after a scuffle with some goblins in a hallway. Fortunately, they left some potential adventurers up with the horses and supplies on the surface level. Those unnamed mooks will be getting tossed into the scrum.

Tuesday, I'll be running another session of Hollow Earth Expedition for my regular crew. As I mentioned in a recent post, it went over big, so we're going to keep rolling with it for a few more sessions. I decided to drop some cash over at FRP Games to pick up the GM Screen, Secrets of the Surface World and Mysteries of Hollow Earth source books. Eventually, I foresee a longer, campaign style game, with the players actually generating characters instead of using the pre-gens from the book. Well, at least I hope that happens, since I put another $70 into the system.

Expect some brief play reports from the sessions in the next few days. After HEX wraps up, we have to decide what is next. Allen, who runs my regular Call of Cthulhu game has offered to do CoC adventure for this group, which could be a good experience for everyone. After that, it may be time to revisit the ongoing 4e campaign for a few sessions.

Up next will be a post on "Appendix N" and my exposure thus far.

More thoughts on HEX

I had a question about the Hollow Earth Expedition System after my previous post. I was typing a response in the comments and realized I was going a bit long, so instead I decided to expand it into a more complete post. If anyone has any additional questions, let me know and I'll try to answer, based on my experiences playing / game mastering.

Hollow Earth Expedition uses a dice pool system, known as Ubiquity Roleplaying System. With Ubiquity, you can roll any dice you own, as long as they have an even number of sides (so keep those Gamescience d3s, d5s, and d7s in your dice bag). Instead of looking for 4 or better, like your might in a table-top war game like Warhammer, you're just looking for the even numbers. Count them up and that gives you the number of "successes". Alternatively, Exile Games sells a set of "Ubiquity Dice" to use with the game. It's kind of an innovative system to cut down on the number of you roll each turn. I picked up a set at Origins last year after checking out a game demo. Essentially, the white die is the equivalent of rolling "one die", the red die is the equivalent of rolling "two dice", and the blue die is the equivalent of rolling "three dice". All the probabilities are worked out with the numbers on the faces. So, to represent a dice pool of 6, you can either roll 6 white dice, 3 red dice, 2 blue dice, or 1 white, 1 red, and 1 blue, or 2 red and 1 blue, and so forth. I was the only one using the Ubiquity Dice last night. As a bit of a dice nerd, it was fun to use something off the wall, but by no means necessary. Then again, our Big Game Hunter was dumping 14 dice on the table every time he fired his rifle. He could have done that with 3 blues, 2 reds and a white from my pool (the Ubiquity Dice set comes with 3 of each color).

The GM determines how challenging the task should be, allowing for adjustment for creative ideas or tactical advantages. The system also supports the use of the average successes for scenarios where time is not a factor and nothing critical is happening. For example, in last night's game one of the players has a high Linguistics skill. We decided that he understands the basics of most European languages to avoid having to roll every time one of the NPCs spoke Norwegian. When that same NPC spoke Atlantean, he had to make a roll, because it was unlike any language he had experienced. Even with a success, he was only able to understand the very basics of what was said. It allowed the game to move quickly, but we could leave it to chance when that had the opportunity to make the game more interesting.


Combat is handled with opposed rolls. The attacker rolls a number of dice based on his or her weapon skill and the quality of the weapon. In the case of our Big Game Hunter, that number turned out to be 14. Here's how it breaks down: Firearms are based on your dexterity (4 for BGH). During character creation, he spends build points on three levels and buys a Talent, boosting his Firearms rating another 2. Additionally he buys a specialization in rifles, adding another point, bring him to a total of 10 dice. The .405 Winchester Rifle has a rating a 4L (the L stands for lethal damage). There it is 14 dice. When using his .455 Webley revolver with a 3L, his attack drops to 12 dice, because he can't count the rifle specialization. The defender rolls his defense rating. I don't have my books in front of me, but I think the defense rating is a combination of your Intelligence and Dexterity scores (plus any armor you might be wearing). Subtract the defense success from the attack successes to determine the damage you take. There are some rules for cover and special attacks, but those are the basics. It sounds a bit complicated, guess, but in practice it went pretty fast. People seemed to enjoy having the "active" defense, because I think everyone likes rolling dice. Their dice rolling prowess (aka LUCK) had something to do with how well they shrugged off a potential hit.

I've never played any other dice pool system, and I don't think any of my players have much, if any, experience with them either. The rules were light enough that everyone picked up on it pretty quickly. Since I was the only one who owns/read the book, we skipped over some of the fiddly options for combat (like the continuous initiative option and some more advanced combat actions).

Having a more limited/generalized skill set, than say, BRP or Call of Cthulhu, allowed the players to be a bit more free-form/creative with their actions, and the skills and skill specializations made sense to everyone. I think the players were pretty innovative in combining their player smarts and character skills.  The Style points were also popular. As I said in the previous post, the players did a pretty good job getting into character and seemed legitimately excited to gain a Style Point. I need to refresh myself on the rules and suggestions for distributing the points throughout the game. I'm not sure if they were going out too easily or I was being stingy, but it felt right for a first try at the system.


I found it a bit funny that my players were kind of in Call of Cthulhu mode, rather than high adventure mode, but that might have been related to their selection of characters.

"Hey Guys! We're going on a big adventure, filled with all kinds of crazy traps and dinosaurs and evil Nazis!!"
"I wanna be a snooty college professor!"
"I call the Field Biologist!!!"

My one concern, so far, with HEX is handling future adventures. Part of the fun of the game was the players not knowing what was going to happen. I pretty much told them that we'd be playing a pulp adventure game. I made some references to some books and movies for framework, and they new the game was Called Hollow Earth Expedition, but they didn't know much else about the setting. How do you keep the concept of a foreign world interesting to the players if they've delved into the world in the past. You loose the freak-out my players experience when their characters watches and compasses malfunctioned and the sun never set. You can roleplay that feeling for a new set of characters, but not for the players behind those characters.

I think the Ubiquity system could easily be used for other gaming styles, but there doesn't seem to be much else out there right now. There's no reason that I noticed that you couldn't reskin the skills, talents, and flaws, for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc. I see that an upcoming supplement for the game is called Revelations of Mars, which I have to assume will allow for some Sci-Fi gaming. There is also a fairly active section of the Exile Games Forum, where folks discuss alternate uses for the Ubiquity system. I could see this eventually competing alongside Savage Worlds as a nice, compact, generic system for running a variety of games. The folks at Exile would probably need to do some significant work to strip off the pulp adventure layer, though.

The world is big enough, and with the two supplementary products currently in print (Secrets of the Surface World and Mysteries of Hollow Earth) there is more than enough for players to do and see. I'm curious to see how this demo game develops and if my players request a longer campaign in the future. After finally getting to play a game, I do plan on grabbing those books, plus the GM screen at some point. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like any of my FLGS currently carry this game. I'm going to talk to Jeff down at Phantom of the Attic to see if they can get it from their distributors, though, as I'd rather pass the cash through them than Amazon or something.

Entering the Hollow Earth

My regular Tuesday night group had their first adventure in the Hollow Earth last night. I made some slight modifications to the adventure featured in the back of the Hollow Earth Expedition core rule book...

The Cast of Characters -
Allen - Dr. Whipple Van Phillips - Snooty Professor
Brad - Crosby ?? - Big Game Hunter
Dave - Dr. Daniel ?? - Field Biologist
Hickey - Dr. Albert Franklin - Mad Scientist

I laid out a few sample pre-generated characters that were available on the Exile Games website (the same that are included in the book). The players veered towards the more scholarly types, with the lone exception of the rifle-toting Big Game Hunter. Other options were Fortune Hunter, Rugged Explorer, Occult Investigator, and Intrepid Reporter. 

I won't bore you with a full recap of the adventure, as it is mostly retelling of the sample adventure, with a few minor additions. Since two of the four players have a fair amount of experience playing Call of Cthulhu, they had a basic understanding of what it means to play and investigative game and jumped right in, looking for clues and leaving no stone unturned. The other two players caught on quickly. I feel like I gave up some information a bit too easily,  but they were really drilling me with questions and observations, so any game master is bound to slip up occasionally.

I will say that my players did come up with some fairly interesting methods for resolving the problems and did a great job playing in character. I wasn't sure how many Style Points I should have distributed throughout the evening, but Allen, particularly, was cracking me up with his snooty behavior. He insulted everyone at the table at least twice, prodded a velociraptor with his umbrella, and scooted up a tree at the first sign of trouble (including making sure to climb just a bit higher than his compatriot in the same tree, assuming the raptor might be full after the meal of Field Biologist). Everyone had their moments to shine, though. Dave befriending a triceratops and arguing the scientific method, Hickey blowing up a dino with a makeshift bomb and attempting to sell mining equipment to Norwegians. Brad regularly threatening folks with his boom stick and putting his neck on the line to protect the others.

Overall impressions? First, all the players seemed to be enjoying the session. They were coming up with creative solutions to the problems. The one bit of combat went pretty quickly (though I missed an opportunity to introduce some NPCs in the manner I planned, because I was so wrapped up in all of it.) It was fast and fun, but I think I'm going to need some work. I might have another player joining, and where I left it, it might be a challenge to introduce him. Additionally, the story as written in the book is about to wrap. I have some ideas on where to go next, but it's going to depend on the direction the players take it. I've dropped plenty of hooks for future adventures, but I have no inkling which direction they'll go with it, which is good. I need more practice at not "over-planning" and railroading, for sure. I'd like to run at least two or three more sessions of the game, to get a  good feel for it before moving on to something else.

Up next? Returning to re-read some of the fluff sections of the HEX book and see where we might take this. I'm going to need to so some sort of planning to at least have a basic story arc to work from. I think the game can be used for sandbox storytelling, but the way I've started the adventure, it's looking like it would be best to have some sort of resolution at the end. Since this is a distinct short adventure, I really feel the need to have a beginning, middle and end to a story-line, even if it gets pretty free-fore there in the middle. I'll also need to review some of the mechanics. I'm thinking that some of the parts I'm confused about may make a bit more sense, now that we've successfully completed a game session.

If we end up playing again in the future (and I hope we do), I'd certainly like to allow the players to create their own characters. I skipped it this time, because we're all still learning the rules and I didn't want to blow the whole first session on character development. It was nice, because the sample characters came complete with notes regarding

Airport + Free Wifi = Post

I'm officially on my way to San Diego for the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. It's my first time flying in over a year, but everything is about the same around here. Well, except for that backscatter scanner thing. It's a bit insidious. They don't tell you what it does. They don't offer you a pat-down. They just tell you to stand between these walls, then they blast you with radiation, and voila. Someone in some unseen room sees your junk and you're free to fly the "friendly" skies. Do I feel any "safer"? Not really. Do I think my rights have been violated? Maybe a little. If I knew this was the only way to stop attacks on commercial flights, I wouldn't mind a bit, but I know that this procedure is likely only in place due to some savvy lobbying by the company that builds those scanners. There are certainly some less intrusive measures that would work just as well. Anyway, enough with that noise...on to gaming thoughts of the day.

Today, I'm just going to post about some projects I've seen around the web. I'm guessing most of my readers have seen these, because they are from some of the bigger blogs, but just in case, here you go.

Up first is the announcement about the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG by Goodman Games. You can read more about it here, here, and here. It looks like the pre-order for the print edition is now available. The question is, do I really need this? The game is designed to run old school style D&D, using the OGL content and D20 rules. Sounds like a great meeting point for the Pathfinder/3.5 folks and the Old School folks. Then again, I'm already playing Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry to get my Old School fix. All that said, the game rules use all the crazy Lou Zocchi dice, which is pretty neat (since I already own a set -- still need a d7, though, I guess.) Over all, it looks like a pretty cool game, and the playtest report from the Mule Abides (linked above) sounds promising.

The second thing I wanted to mention was the Gygaxian Democracy Series Zak has been releasing on Playing D&D with Porn Stars. Any regular readers of this blog know that I'm absolutely in love with Zak's creativity and these posts don't disappoint. Essentially, he posits a situation in a game and gives some possible scenarios for what might happen, then he opens it up to the greater community. He has a great group posting on there, so there are some really creative ideas. Check it out and join in the fun.

Recording, travel, and the Hollow Earth

It's really too late for me to be writing this post. I should be sleeping by since, since I'm due into the office in about 8 hours. My reason for being awake at 1:00 AM on a "school night"? My band, Abysme, was in the studio for our third day of tracking for our debut LP, Strange Rites. My bass parts were all done, but I wanted to be there with the guitarist while he did his overdubs, so I could verify all my parts were okay. We still need to do the vocals and mixing. No set day for release yet, either, but it is getting closer, hopefully by the Summer of 2011? Hopefully...

Thursday, I'll be heading to San Diego for the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. If any of my readers know of any awesome gaming stores or used book stores in the downtown area, please let me know. I'll be there until Tuesday and I'll have some down time. Right now, I'm mostly in the market for old stuff, but if I found a store with a good selection of Savage Worlds or Hollow Earth Expedition books, I'd likely pick up a few things. If the store is only likely to carry newer stuff (d20, Pathfinder, 4e), I'm probably not that interested, right now.

To make sure there is at least something gaming related on here, I've been studying the rules section of the Hollow Earth Expedition rule book for an adventure that will start on January 18th, hopefully. Everything "makes sense", but I'm a little nervous, as I haven't actually played the game, outside of a 10 minute demo at Origins this past Summer. I usually like to get some time as a player before I sit down and try to run something, but I don't know anyone who runs HEX. We'll see how it goes. The players are all friends, and are all pretty forgiving of foibles, so it should be fine. It will be a new experience for a few of them, though, because they are more familiar with more "tactics-heavy" rules, like D&D 3 & 4. I'm hoping they can all get into the "mind" of the pre-generated characters I'm providing, because if they spend too much time worrying about what's on the character sheet, this might be a flop. The group isn't that heavily geared towards the actual role-playing aspects of the games we play, it seems. They do great with the exploration, puzzle solving, and combat, though. Role playing is definitely one of my limitations as a Game Master, too. I really need to get more practice at portraying the NPCs in a realistic manner. They aren't (all) just cannon fodder or hint/rumor delivery units. I'm hoping this game experience will bring all of us out of their shells, at least a little bit.

I'm going to use a published adventure for the seed. Since the game is so different from what I'm used to running, I'm having a hard time gauging how long it will take the players to complete the adventure. One thing that is great about the adventure is that it leaves a lot of threads open. When the players complete the primary task, there are still plenty of options. I'm trying not to over-plan, so I don't end up railroading them. I think the system is light enough that I can come up with something on the fly, if we need more content. I hope to keep it running for at least three or four sessions, assuming everyone is having fun and I can come up with enough threads to keep them busy.

Finally, I'm working on scheduling the next session for the Swords & Wizardry White Box game. All seven players seem pretty excited about it, so hopefully we'll be able to continue the game for a while. One nice thing about dealing with that many folks: if someone misses a session or drops out of the game, we still have more than enough people at the table to play. Dealing with that many personalities (and schedules) can be a real challenge, but I think it will work out in the end.

Projections and Reflections

Seems like the blog-0-sphere is rife with posts giving the "2010 in Review" and "What's on the Plate for 2011" type posts. I figure it's as good a time as any for reflection and prediction. The slate is clean, in a sense. I was hoping to get a few more posts made before the end of 2010, but averaging over a post a week isn't so bad, all in all. I got a little distracted by the holidays, shopping, a new Wii and episodes of Angel on Netflix. Granted the blog was buried from March until October. If it weren't for successfully completing the Daily Blog Challenge in November, I wouldn't be anywhere near that number.

I started this blog about a year ago...I made few posts and it stalled. I recognized the problem almost immediately. There was no direction. I wanted to leave it as open as possible, allowing me to write about all sorts of topics of interest. The problem? It didn't really keep my interest. You see, I don't think of myself as a natural writer or anything. I don't dislike the writing process, but the words don't just "flow" for me, either. Combine that with a long standing desire to procrastinate and0 any lack of focus is probably a bad thing. If you go back to those earliest posts you'll see a bunch of brief movie reviews, some commentary on Food Network programming, a couple posts on RPGs.

Back in October, I decided to resurrect the blog and give it a bit of focus. Gaming, and RPGs specifically have been taking up a lot of my free time these days (although I still do watch a fair amount of trashy movies, listen to heavy metal records, and watch Food Network programming -- though I do wish we had access to their newish Cooking Channel with our current cable service. The programming over there appears to me much more my "style"...I can't believe I just admitted to that...anyway)...

So what is in store for 2011? More gaming, for sure, and hopefully more posting. Right now, I'm considering setting a schedule for myself. I'd love to average 12-16 posts a month, which is quite a high number, considering my posting history. For that to happen, I'm going to need some inspiration, so in the coming days, expect to see some posts that are more brainstorming than content or review. We'll see what happens. I'm going to apply for the Role Playing Game Bloggers Network at the end of January, because I'm hoping that having potentially more readers will be an enticement to post more content.

Well, what about 2010? It was a big gaming year for me, for sure. I've met a bunch of cool new people, I went to a couple gaming cons, I've found some great blogs, I've bought some box sets, and I've played a bunch of games.

October was my first visit to GASP Games day, and honestly, I'm kicking myself for not checking out this group sooner. Great people. Great games. I highly recommend it to anyone in the Pittsburgh area interested in trying out new games. At that first event, I didn't know anyone there. I started making some contacts on the forum, but just showed up ready to play. I got to check out a bunch of board games and I was finally able to check out Labyrinth Lord. I also went to my first "big" gaming convention, Origins, where I got to play Aces & Eights and Hackmaster Basic, sat through some RPG demos, checked out a bunch of board and card games. 2010 was my inaugural attendance at GASPCon, too. Again, I wish I had checked the event earlier. I met even more rad people and played way too many hours of RPGs. Right now, I'm planning on signing up to GM at least on session at the next con.

That Labyrinth Lord game at GASP Games day really set me off on a huge OSR / OD&D / retro-clone kick. I had been following some of the games for a few months, but hadn't played that style of D&D since the late 80s. Since then, I've played 4 additional sessions of LL, a session of Spellcraft & Swordplay, a session of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and a session of Hackmaster Basic. I refereed a session of Swords & Wizardry which appears to have the potential to turn into a campaign. In addition to all that, my "every other Tuesday" group is still going strong. We started out as a 4e group, but due to a little 4e burnout on my part we've been exploring other games. We just wrapped a 3 session Gamma World (new edition) adventure. In a couple weeks, I'll be running a Hollow Earth Expedition adventure. We're not sure where were going after that; maybe back to the 4e campaign for a while, maybe some Savage Worlds, maybe something else. More details as they become available. The 3.5 Ravenloft Campaign I play in sputtered for a while, but seems to be back in the swing. The same could be said for the 3.5 Forgotten Realms campaign. The Call of Cthulhu game is still going strong, although I believe we're approaching the end of the story arc.

Since deciding to focus this blog on gaming, I haven't posted much on other topics. I quit my regular DJing gig down at the Smiling Moose. We were doing a weekly "Metal Night". All vinyl. Old school. Anyway, the crowds morphed into packs, and the packs morphed into stragglers. I was burned out of playing records for the same 15 dudes every week, so we called it off. No regrets, but my heart really wasn't in it any more. My heavy metal record collecting has definitely slowed this year, too. I already own more records than I know what to do with, but the lure of vinyl is strong. I have all the old records I want that are easy to find. I got lucky and started collecting Heavy Metal records before the collector mentality took over the scene, so I was able to grab a lot of the cool 80s stuff before it got out of hand expensive. There are still some gaps I'd love to fill in, but I have no love for eBay (or paying $50 for 30 year old record). Because of eBay, and n00bs willing to drop that kind of cash, I'm kind of out of luck. The cool records just aren't showing up in the shops like they used to...they're all in collectors hands or sitting on eBay at ridiculous prices. Oh well, like I said, I already have more than I know what to do with.

My band, Abysme, is set to begin recording our debut LP, Strange Rites, tomorrow. It's death metal, taking influences from Entombed, Nihilist, Hellhammer, Celtic Frost and Repulsion. If that sounds like it's up your alley, check us out. We'll be playing the Smiling Moose on January 15 with Nunslaughter and Derketa.

Well, that's enough for now.

New Graphic Banner!

Check it out! I have a banner! With Pig-Faced Orcs!

Just wrapping up a few things at work and I'll be off until 2011. Hopefully, I'll get a couple more posts in before the end of the year, though.

D&D Gamma World (AKA the new edition)

My every other week, Tuesday night group wrapped up the Gamma World adventure earlier this evening. I've mentioned the game on here before, but to recap, the DM, Dave, ran the adventure in the back of the rule book. We played through all the encounters over the course of 3-evenings. At the end of the session tonight, we had just hit 3rd level. None of the PCs have died yet, but most of us have had to make a death save or two. All 5 of the players have over 2 years of experience playing 4e D&D, so all the mechanics of the game came pretty naturally.

A few comments? Sure...We all had fun, as far as I can tell. The combats didn't seem to drag as much as what we were experiencing with late heroic and early paragon tier 4e D&D. Everything does a lot more damage, so it's easier to kill things fast (and potentially easier for PCs to die, too). The adventure, which Dave ran pretty close to the book, was fun. Basically we entered the crazy warehouse and stopped the baddies from building a robot army. Honestly, I think this edition of Gamma World is pretty great. It's got all the tactical finesse of modern D&D without getting too bogged down. I truly wish 4e came out a little more like this game.

It's been said already, but I'll just put it out there again...If you HATE 4e outright, no matter what, you probably aren't going to like this game. If you have some unnatural attachment to earlier editions of the game and feel that any updating should be a crime, you probably aren't going to like this game. If you hate "goofy" and/or "random" crap happening constantly, you probably aren't going to like this game. If you hate fun, you probably aren't going to like this game. If you are a munchkin or powergamer, you might not like this game.


Personally, I still like 4e for what it is, I've never actually played an earlier edition (but I want to), I love when goofy and or random crap happens if appropriate, I like fun, and I'm not a munchkin, so I like this game....a lot.

For anyone playing or interested in playing D&D Gamma World, there are a couple of cool things out on the web to check out.

• WoTC released a FREE character generator. It has all the possible mutations for both the core rules and the Famine in Far-go expansion. Character generation was already pretty fast, but this made it a snap!
• Critical Hits has unleashed the Junkulator on an unsuspecting world. The Junkulator should work just fine for any edition of the game. Essentially, random junk makes up a lot of the treasure in a Gamma World game. It's up to the player to figure out how to use a wireless mouse, remote control, or a portable table saw in the game. The Junkulator pulls junk for your game from a random list of nearly 900 objects compiled from all editions of GW and its supplements! Wicked. Very wicked.

A couple of nifty OSR "Toys"

Hey cool...I'm up to a dozen followers! Thanks folks!

There are a couple mega-cool things that popped up recently on blogs I read.  Meatshields! The Classic Fantasy Hirelings & Henchmen Generator allows DMs to make simple cannon fodder for their old school campaigns. The DM enters the size of the location, either village/small town or large town/city. For 5 gp, the players can The players can even choose to give an extra 5 gp to the town crier to get some extra (and I assume somewhat better) applicants. The example below gives the general idea of the output.

Name	Type	Race	HP	Sex	Weapon	Armor	Alignment	Background	Possessions & Knowledge	Notable Features
Samix	Torch-Bearer	Human	2	M	Dagger	None	Neutral	Mercenary	Nothing	Unwashed
Ulmyr	Torch-Bearer	Human	2	M	Dagger	None	Neutral	Failed Apprentice Mage	Nothing	Yellow teeth
Balgar	Man-at-Arms	Human	5	M	Spear, Dagger	Leather	Neutral	Failed Tradesman	Nothing	Pudgy
Beyda	Man-at-Arms	Human	4	F	Spear, Dagger	None	Neutral	Street Thug	Nothing	None
Corgard	Torch-Bearer	Human	4	M	Dagger	None	Neutral	Beggar	An ink pot	Hook for a Hand
Worford	Man-at-Arms	Human	2	M	Club, Dagger	Leather	Chaos	Escaped Slave	Nothing	None

 Notes for the DM:
The two most commonly recruited hirelings are:

• Non-combatant humans who serve as torch-bearers, porters, potion-testers, door-spikers, etc. Suggested rate of pay: 5sp/day.
• Zero-level human men-at-arms. Suggested rate of pay: 1gp/day.

In rare instances, the party may also recruit:

• Zero-level demi-human (dwarf, elf, or halfling) men-at-arms. Suggested rate of pay: 3gp/day.
• First level human henchmen (fighter, cleric, or magic-user). Suggested rate of pay: 1/3 share of employer's treasure.

Anyway, check it out. Pretty simple and a lot of fun. I'll definitely be using it for the Swords & Wizardry White Box game whenever appropriate.

Another cool OSR thing to play around with is the Weird Things in Rooms (d100) Random Table that popped up on Beyond the Black Gate yesterday. Lots of fun stuff on there to drive those players that assume everything in a room has to be there for a reason right up the proverbial  wall. Seriously. Dump this stuff in some room with no reason for them to be there and somebody will spend half the game session trying to figure out what they need to do with it.

Here's a couple examples to wet your whistle:

• 3. A large stone wheel set on one wall, clicks when turned.
• 14. One wall has been painted to look like three windows looking out into a lovely garden.
• 33. Seven fluffy orbs of light dance and float in the air of this room, remaining ever beyond your reach.
• 70. A mannequin stands in one corner wearing a surcoat made from fresh meat.

Just to be fair to your players, make sure you make these random rolls right before they enter room, so you have to be on your toes, too!

Swords & Wizardry White Box game report

Well, I guess I'm one step closer to being a complete and "official" member of the Old School Renaissance. At least that is my opinion. I felt like I was just on the edge of the OSR chasm. I have PDFs of Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future, and Swords & Wizardry. I own the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role Playing box set and the Swords & Wizardry White Box box set. I've played convention games of LotFP and Labyrinth Lord convention games. I'm playing in two Labyrinth Lord campaigns at GASP Games Day. I write about OSR games, at least occasionally, on this blog. Off the top of my head, I can come up with 3 major gaps in my participation in the OSR. I needed to DM a game, design a mega-dungeon and publish something....anything...for someone else to use at their table.

Sunday evening I DMed/Refereed my first OSR game, checking one of my gaps off the list. We used Swords & Wizardry White Box. I selected White Box for a couple reasons. First, I had ordered the third printing of the S&W White Box from Brave Halfling and wanted to try it out. I hadn't played any of the S&W flavors and this seemed like as good of an opportunity as any. Second, I was looking for something rules-light. I was going to have 7 people around the table. Only two of them had played any of the retro-clone games. Three of the players had very limited experience with table top RPGs. The last two are more familiar with the more modern flavors of D&D. I wanted this to play as sort of a "beer & pretzels" style RPG. I figured it was unlikely that most of them would actually read the rule book (a correct assumption, from what I can tell). I wanted something where the players are open to "try anything" and I could make a ruling without having to check through a million rules. Finally, I just wanted to run one of them funky OSR games. I've been reading the blogs and buying/downloading some of the product, so I just need to check it out first hand.

I got together with the players and we rolled up characters. 3d6 straight for the stats. They then picked class, based on those rolls. I did let them start with max hit points at level one, because I was kind of nervous about how deadly the dungeon might be. As it turns out, it was plenty deadly...more on that later.

The Characters / Players -- 
Logthark the Oxford - Magic User, played by Ed
Meruus - Cleric, played by Brad replaced by Teruus, Cleric
"Dutch" Elmsplitter - Dwarf, played by Allen
Arum Vulgare - Cleric, played by Gina
Lorch - Magic User, played by Ben
Filthy - Halfling, played by Dave replaced by ???, ???
Angus Longshank - Fighter, played by Curt

Play Report
The party had left their home land of Syrtaff many days ago, traveling to Moseen. There are many rumors of great treasures in the hills and mountains of Moseen. Unfortunately, very few who travel to the region seemed to ever return to Syrtaff. They must have found their fortune and were living like kings....right?

The party consists of the seven listed about, plus a few other adventurers (OOC -- potential PCs in the case of character death), a torchbearer named Rais (NPC), two mules, and their handler (NPC). 

The journey to Moseen has been tough, and, in truth, more than the party bargained for. The weather has been uncooperative and the maps have been inaccurate, to say the least. They were running short on supplies, and from the look of the storms on the horizon, in dire need of some solid shelter for the evening. As luck would have it, the party has spotted an ancient outpost on the crest of a hill in the distance and hastily made their way towards it.

After arriving at the the outpost, they discovered the upper levels mostly abandoned, but there were a few signs of recent activity, particularly a couple of underfed wolves held in the stables. Surviving the wolf attack, and few other tricks and traps (included a chest that left Filthy and Logthark temporarily blinded), the party was able to find a couple passage ways into deeper levels. 

Meruus was not quite so lucky in the second combat of the session, as he was swarmed by giant rats. After just a couple well placed bites, the young cleric was bleeding out. The party called for his brother, Teruus, but alas, it was too late. The priest had passed on...Teruus took up his holy symbol and joined the party. 

After discovering another secret passage that led to an even lower level, the party came across 4 goblins guarding a hallway. Unfortunately, where there are 4 goblins, there are often more goblins in waiting. 12 additional goblins poured out of nearby rooms to join the battle. Lorch was able to charm one of the creatures and Logthark put many of the others to sleep. Again, unfortunately, the brave little (and scummy) halfling was still surrounding, and eventually cut down, by the monsters. 

At this point, we called it a night. There is still much to explore in the dungeons below the outpost, but that is another story for another time.

Commentary
I was using the module The Outpost on the Edge of the Far Reaches, which I found online. I liked that it was a nice generic dungeon with a nice variety of monsters and treasures. I wrote up a few notes, but kept the intro as short as possible. I wanted to imply a bit of setting without spending any time developing it. I was presenting the game as a one-shot, with the potential for future adventures, so I didn't want to put too much into back story. I think what I came up with leaves the game open enough for sandbox style adventuring for the future.

As I expected, combat was quite deadly. Meruus the Cleric dropped dead after two rat bites in the second fight. Filthy the halfling was felled by a pair of goblins with short swords. Even with max hit points at first level (6 or 7 depending on class), a single swipe from a sword was enough to kill a character. I had a few characters I had created to practice rolling up, so Meruus dubbed my example cleric Teruus, and decided he was his twin brother. We wrapped the game after Filthy died, so I'm not sure what Dave is going to do for the next session.

The players took to the abstract combat and d6 based initiative pretty well. A couple of the players said they preferred it to the more concrete tactical combat of 3rd/4th edition. They felt that the cinematic quality was much more in line with the rest of the game, rather than feeling like a tactical wargame with some RP stuff tacked on to it. In general, I tried my hardest to present information about a room and let them go at it. Sometimes that was pretty challenging. There is a balance between providing enough information to pique a players interest and just giving everything away. I think learning that balance will come with more practice.

I was curious to see how players handled some of the standard "let the thief/rogue find the trap/pick the lock" type things, since I was running with just the 6 basic class/race options. It worked pretty well. I ruled some doors/locks could be pried open with a crowbar or bashed down and others would just require a key (or the discovery of another, possibly secret, entrance). The players seemed to accept that and there were no arguments.

The thing I found most challenging was being descriptive enough with the rooms. The players were doing their own mapping. Some of them clearly didn't care and were just bouncing from room to room. Others wanted to get it documented. Again, finding the balance was a challenge, but I think we will be able to overcome those challenges with more practice/experience.

Everyone was pretty excited about the session and wanted to continue, so I'll be scheduling another game in the near future. I think the set-up I have so far will allow for fairly casual play which should be fun for all involved. I'm excited to see where this all goes. I'll definitely keep the blog updated with additional updates.

Being Busy

Well, I'm certainly not keeping up with the blog with the same ferocity I did during the Daily Blog Challenge. I suppose that is to be expected. I didn't set any hard deadlines for myself or anything. Honestly, I'd probably rather be gaming or working on something game related than writing about games, at least right now. Plus, I post on a couple message boards, so that gives me some lower commitment opportunities to write about gaming experiences (and often provides nearly instant feedback)...

So I said I was busy, right? Well I've played 6 RPG session in 4 days this week. Saturday was GASP Games Day, which I wrote up last Sunday. Sunday, the 3.5 Ravenloft game resumed. Unfortunately, for the third session in a row, 3 of the players weren't able to make it. The three of us that did make it soldiered on and advanced the plot, though. Monday, I played in a grinder of a 3.5 Forgotten Realms game. My poor rogue was getting destroyed. I tried to design him as more of thug/brute than a sneaky type (he's got 2 levels of fighter and 6 of Rogue), but he was getting hammered on. I think he took nearly 200 points of damage over the night and was down/dying once or twice. Ouch. Tuesday we played Call of Cthulhu. We're still working through Masks of Nyarlathotep.

This weekend, I'll be running my first OSR game. It's going to be a one-shot that may lead to more sessions, depending on how it goes. The game is going to be made up of 3 guys from my usual Tuesday night game, another gamer friend with a lot of experience with new and old editions of the game, and 3 total novices. Two of them haven't played any RPGs in over 10 years and had pretty limited experience then. The third has never played anything, ever. I wanted to keep everything loose and light on rules, so we'll be using Swords & Wizardry White Box. I'm going to run a dungeon I found online called "The Outpost on the Edge of the Far Reaches". Since at least a couple of the players read this, I'm not going to give away any info. I know they're good and won't spoil it for themselves.

For the game system, I thought about using Labyrinth Lord or LotFP, but White Box is so stream-lined, it just seemed like a good fit. I want to save LotFP for my regular Tuesday night crew. Depending on how this goes, I may run a future one-shot with Labyrinth Lord or S&W Core, to see if people like a slightly more advanced system.

I am limiting to the 3 base classes and races -- Fighter, Cleric, Magic User, Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling. Players are going to roll their stats 3d6 straight. I've already come up with a few simple house rules to fill in the intentional gaps in the system, and I'm excited to see what I'm going to have to rule on the fly. All the combat is going to be abstract. We're not going to worry about minis or tactics or anything. I'm even going to try to get them to map the dungeon on their own, just using my descriptions. None of us are used to playing this style of gaming, so hopefully it goes okay. I want to have a little bit of culture shock for the people at the tabe, with out putting them off from old style play.

I'm really curious to compare the play style of the completely new person to the people that have been spending a lot of time playing newer editions of the game. Are the regulars going to get tripped up by the lack of skill system? You'll notice, I am running the version without the Thief class. I'm excited to see how they handle those locked doors and trapped passageways without somewhere there who can just roll a couple dice to "fix" it.

Anyway, I think I'm ready to do this. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I was a bit nervous. Running this kind of game seems like a significantly different experience than what I'm used to. I think I'm going to do just fine, but the unknown element always adds some jitters (and excitement). I'll be back with a full report on how it goes and probably some notes on the S&W White Box and the adventure.

GASP Games Day Report

I attended GASP Games Day for the second time yesterday, a local gaming group. Games Day usually happens the second Saturday of each month. There is open board gaming, minis gaming, CCGs, and RGP sessions. To find out what's happening or learn more, I recommend the GASP Forum, where there are sections for each type of game and discussion threads. As Games Day approaches, people usually start organizing events.

Since I'm primarily interested in RPGs, I jumped in a couple extra games. I joined a DragonLance game that is using the Labyrinth Lord rules. Since there was some open time slots due to cancellations, someone offered to run a Gamma World (new edition) game that I jumped in on, and the second session of the Darves Hill Labyrinth Lord Campaign.

I joined the DragonLance Campaign because I was hoping to get at least one more regular game in at Games Day. To be honest, I was most interested in it because it's being run with Labyrinth Lord. I'm not really familiar DragonLance. I know the basics of the setting, but I've never read the novels or anything. As it turns out, we're actually playing characters from the original trilogy (I'm playing the barbarian/plainsman Riverwind) and playing through the novel's story. Kind of a different playing style from what I'm used to, but the group is good and the DM is letting us solve the scenarios as we see fit. I plan on sticking with it, unless something really intriguing shows up in the first slot.

RPGA ended up canceling this weekend, so there were a bunch of open spaces in the RPG pod. I don't have any interest in RPGA style gaming, so somebody else's loss is my gain. One of the other GASP members threw a Gamma World game together. I'm really liking this new edition for mini-campaigns and one-off sessions. The GM had picked up the new Famine in Far-Go expansion, and we were able to try out the new mutations. I ended up rolling a Seismic Plagueweilder name Dirty Girt. I mostly bashed the enemies with a piece of concrete covered re-bar. I think everyone at the the table was having fun. It's a nice little system, and even though parts of it can be a bit fiddly, it's pretty simple over all.

Finally, the reason I got involved with GASP, the Darves Hill Megadungeon. We did get a third player, who rolled up a Cleric with a Dwarf retainer. The party of 6 headed back to the hill to continue the exploration. Unfortunately, we met with a bit of tragedy. In the very first building we entered, we were attacked by a mutated skeleton. The new cleric made quick work of it, but a bunch of bugs rose up out of the soil. In befitting Old School style, one bite to the poor sickly Tyrvand Dedsoon, my magic user retainer, was enough to take him down. Dead.

Tyrvand Dedsoon RIP.

You were the first Dedsoon to ever leave the confines of Nahm and return in one piece, even if it was only two days. He will be remembered by his kin and stories will circulate through the Dedsoon clan, telling of the brave adventurer Tyrvand, who died of a bug bite. 

I rolled a new character. I was hoping for stats for another Magic User, but the dice weren't cooperating. I ended up making a fighter named Targ. He wears chainmail and swings a heavy pick. He worked out pretty well. We solved a strange musical puzzle, defeated another half-demon, and discovered some other crazy hidden clues about the history of the temple at Darves Hill.

Unfortunately, I'm going to miss out on the next session at GASP, as I'll be in San Diego for the American Library Association Conference. I'll definitely be heading back for the February date, though. Great fun. I highly recommend it.

Post-DBloC Update

Well....I'm back. I survived a month full of posting and needed a little down time, but after a little less than a week, I'm back in the swing of things. I was further delayed as I needed to finish up some record reviews for the zine I write for, Short, Fast & Loud.

I was hoping to have a bit more to post about this evening. I was supposed to have my 3.5 Forgotten Realms game with Tim Robes DMing, but one of the players pulled a no-show. It wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but it was supposed to be his last game for a while, as he is studying abroad next semester. The whole evening was supposed to be dedicated to his character. Not sure what happened, but it was a let down for sure. We did get a  few rounds of Zombie Dice in before calling it a night.

I hit the Steel City Toy and Comic Convention this weekend. I have never attended before and wasn't sure what to expect. It was sort of like a combination nerd flea market/convention. A lot of the stuff there was pretty junky, but it was fun walking around checking everything out. That said, I didn't really find much of interest. As far as collectibles go, I don't really care about action figures, most comics, Star Wars/Star Trek stuff, Barbies, trading cards, or other knick-knacks and doo-dads. I was hoping for some old-school gaming supplies and maybe some horror/exploitation film stuff. There were a couple booths selling horror merch including DVDs, VHS, and magazines, but with the holidays quickly approaching, I refrained from buying anything. I did find a few gaming supplies, but not much. One guy had a box of Palladium and Rolemaster stuff, but none of the core books. Another guy have a few 3e books and a few other odds and ends. I did talk to a guy selling a bunch of old TSR board games, including a first edition of Dungeon!, but everything was a bit out of my price range. I picked up a couple sets of Game Science dice, because he was selling them for cheap. I also found the first Buffy Season 8 trade for $5, and I got to see Wrestling Legend Bruno Sammartino and TNA Knockouts Velvet Sky and Angelina Love, plus Lou Ferigno, Richard Kiel, and Priscilla Barnes. I saw some cool Planet of the Apes toys, but I decided that I needed another thing to collect like I needed a hole in my head. There were a bunch of people in (mostly Star Wars) costumes walking around, which was entertaining. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon for sure. I'll probably be back for the spring show in March.

Lots of gaming in store for the rest of the week. Session 2 of Gamma World is tomorrow. If everything goes as planned, we should hit second level by the end of the game session. Saturday is GASP Games Day, where I'll be playing in a Labyrinth Lord Megadungeon campaign. I'm still only signed up for one RPG. I was hoping to get in on another session, but right now nothing is jumping out at me. Hopefully in 2011, there will be some other games of interest. I might contact the GM for the other Labyrinth Lord game to see if he has seats. I know I have to miss the January Games Day, because I'll be out of town, so I may just hold off until February and see if anything new is offered. Sunday is the return of the Team Evil Ravenloft game. Monday, I might be trying to do the make-up session for the failed 3.5 game from tonight. Tuesday should be another Call of Cthulhu game. Brutality. Very excited.

Anyway, I just wanted to get back in the swing of things and make a post on here. More from me soon.

HEX character generation

Here it is...the eve of the last day of Daily Blog Challenge. Today, I'm going to walk through the process of creating a character using the rules in Hollow Earth Expedition. It's going to be sort of a live blogging experience. Keep in mind, I've only played about a 10 minute demo of the game. I've never seen in played otherwise. I've read most of the rule book, though.

Step 1: Archetype
Since this is my first attempt at character generation, I'm going to go with one of the archetypes in the book. I'm going to go with Soldier, since there isn't an example in the book. The adventure I'm planning on running for my players will likely have some government connection to kick it off, so offering a soldier as a pre-gen makes sense. Apologies ahead of time to any military folks in the audience. My military experience doesn't extend much past watching "The Dirty Dozen" a couple times.

Step 2: Motivation
Again, there is the option to select between the motivations in the book and making up your own. I'm going with a motivation Duty. Kind of cliched for the Soldier, I suppose, but I'm just feeling things out right now.

Step 3: Attributes
Starting characters have 15 points to spend on starting attributes. You have to spread them between 6 attributes. Nothing can be over 5 or under 1 (so essentially 6 of your points are accounted for off the bat). I decided this guy was some sort of sniper, so I gave him a 4 in Dexterity and a 3s in Strength and Intelligence. He's got 2s in Body and Willpower, so he's a bit of a glass-jaw for now, but that's okay. That left me with 1 left for charisma. He's not so good in social situations. Maybe he's a bit "backwoods" or something?

Step 4: Secondary Attributes
Secondary attributes are based directly what you selected for Step 3. You just fill in the blanks. I ended up with a Move and Initiative of 7, Defense of 6, and Perception of 5. I think that works for the character concept.

Step 5: Skills
Here's where you determine what your character is good at. Since I was going with the military sniper motif, I gave his some ranks in firearms with a rifle specialization. He also has Brawl and Melee (with a spear specialization, which applies to the bayonet on the rifle). I also gave him Larceny, with a specialization in Security and Stealth with Camouflage specialization (for entering and hiding in those good sniping spots).

Step 6: Talents and Resources
You start with one talent or resource. I chose to the resource Rank.

Step 7: Flaws
I chose Superstitious. I decided the character has a lucky lighter that he rubs and fiddles with all the time. If he loses the lighter, he's psychs himself out and is less effective.

Step 8: Experience
You start with an additional 15 points to spend, but the skills and attributes aren't as cheap now. Since he's supposed to be a sniper, I spent all 15 to get the Accuracy talent, which allows him to ignore -2 worth of penalty on a called shot.

Step 9: Finishing touches
I equipped the guy with a .30-06, a bayonet, and a Colt M1911 pistol, general adventuring gear including a backpack, binoculars, fatigues, rope, a scope, and a few other things. It's more than $100 listed in the book, but I'm using my Rank resource to justify it. I still need to write a bit of background for the character, but it's coming together nicely.

Step 10: Style
He's going to get a style-point for the flaw. I'll give him a couple more once I write that background.

That's it. Mechanically, I was able to throw this together in about an hour, with no previous experience. That said, I had a pretty well defined, and simple, character in mind when I started. I'm sort of tossing around the idea of letting the players come up with the characters, rather than just jamming pre-gens in their faces, but it could be a bit too time consuming, considering I'm the only one with the book.

What I've been reading...

The end of the Daily Blog Challenge is in sight...This is post number 28. Just two more posts after today. I don't have a plan for posting once December starts. I don't foresee the daily posts. I may end up trying to set up a regular schedule to keep myself dedicated to writing and posting. I think I laid out enough threads over the past month to keep myself pretty busy.

So, besides Hollow Earth Expedition, what else have I been reading?

I'm about halfway through Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, a sort of a combined memoir and exploration of gamer lifestyle. Subtitled "An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms", the books covers traditional table top RPGs like D&D, LARPs, MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, SCA events, and gaming and other fantasy related conventions. Described by NPR as "Lord of the Rings meets Jack Kerouac's On the Road," the author, Ethan Gilsdorf, travels the globe, interacting with fans of role playing of all types. He plays with a few legends at GaryCon, swings some foam swords at a boffer larp, and interacts with some interesting people spending their free time exploring fantasy worlds. So far, it seems like he's grasping towards some sort of reason why people gravitate towards these types of experiences, but even at this point in the book, I'm not sure he's really going to find it. It's got to be pretty different for different types of people. Sometimes, it even seems a bit disjointed, almost like he is trying to force some kind of theme across the book. That said, it's been a fast and easy read. It's fun, but in the long run, I don't feel like I'm really going to learn much about my group of friends or myself. It did make me want to attend GaryCon at some point, though.


I also read James Raggi's latest Lamentations of the Flame Princess module, Hammers of the Gods. A stand alone module designed for character level 3-5, it looks like it could be inserted into just about any home campaign pretty easily. I'll probably be using it for a future OSR campaign, so I want to avoid spoilers, especially since my players read this, but I'll point out some highlights. First, I love the list of books held in the library. There are 100 titles, all with descriptions, that are chocked FULL of ideas for future adventures for the players. The alternate history for dwarfs is interesting and can certainly fit within the ideas I've been constructing. Like the other LotFP stuff I've read (the RPG box set, Stargazers Tower, No Dignity in Death, parts of the 4 issues of Green Devil Face), the adventure is steeped in atmosphere. What it lacks in combat encounters, it makes up for with interesting environments. I'm curious to see how I handle his modules in action, since I more used to running highly combat oriented RPGs. I'm also curious to see how the players will react to a significantly more deadly play style than what they are used to playing. 


Finally, I've really been digging the writing on B/X Blackrazor, an OSR blog out of Seattle. The author is probably best known for his OSR book The B/X Companion, which provides a continuation/completion of the game presented in Tom Moldvay's Basic Rules and continued in the Dave Cook/Steve Marsh Expert Rules. I haven't read the book, but his writing on the blog has me curious. He recently provided a highly amusing play report of his group playing through the classic D&D module White Plume Mountain. Far too often, I find play reports to be tedious, even if I understand the purpose from the DM & player point of view. I found his reports to be a great deal of fun to read. I need to spend some time digging through his older posts for interesting content. 


That's all for today...See you tomorrow!

The rest of Hollow Earth Expedition

I've been putting this off all day, but here it is...Yes! It is Daily Blog Challenge post 27...

No inspiration yet today. I'm feeling rather spent. I guess it was a long night with one too many beers or something. I watched the Pens win then City of Lost Children. I'm still considering another show this evening, but I don't have much motivation to leave the house this evening. I kind of want to crash out right now...

Since I haven't come up with anything better to write about, and I'm too tired to try to come up with something more interesting, I'll go through the last few chapters of Hollow Earth Expedition. I'm hoping this series of posts will prove helpful for me when I putting the game together. Sometimes writing about something makes it all a bit more clear.

Chapter 6 is on Gamemastering. Rather than assuming the reader has no knowledge of RPGs, the book actually assumes that this isn't your first experience running a role-playing game. Rather than spending a lot of pages talking about the generalities of RPG gamemastering, it jumps in with content specific to HEX. As someone who has read a fair number of gamemastering chapters for different games, it was a nice change of pace. "You already know how to do this. Here's some tips for doing it with HEX." There are sections on genre conventions, HEX conventions, and story structure. The chapter also provides a great deal of good information for forming both short and long campaigns. There are some great story seeds and some examples of developing the seeds into a plan for a game. I think these few pages have given me enough to put something together for my players.

Related to yesterday's post, where I talked about whether or not to use a battle mat for combat, the chapter does actually specifically state that HEX is not a tactical game and is not designed to be played with miniatures. I'm glad to see it in print, as I wasn't planning on running the game in that fashion anyway. There are some great examples given for getting the players and GM on the same page. For example, there is a suggestion for inviting the players over for a pre-campaign party, where you watch one of the films suggested in the appendix for inspiration, then discuss ideas for the up-coming campaign. With this information, the players can make some informed decisions as to what type of character to create. I won't do this for our demo game, but it sounds like a great technique for getting everyone on the same thematic page.

Chapter 7 is a sort of gazetteer for Hollow Earth, offering possible entry ways and a cosmology, explaining "how things work". I know a lot of my players read the blog, so I don't want to give away any spoilers at this point. Chapter 8 is titled "Friends and Enemies". It includes a laundry list of possible friendly and not-so-friendly organizations and NPCs. The NPCs are fully statted-out, and generic enough that they could be applied to any campaign a GM would want to run. There is a section for surface world people and groups and another for Hollow Earth people and groups. Chapter 9 is the bestiary, which features all sorts of dinos, giant animals, and deadly plants! Finally, there is a sample adventure, a pretty good list of pulp resources which includes print, film, comic book, radio, and television, a glossary, and an index.

I'm getting very excited about trying out the game. As I believe I mentioned (probably a few times), I'll be running HEX for my regular game group as soon as our Gamma World adventure wraps. I'll be sure to update with a game report and comments once that happens.

Combat (and more) in the Hollow Earth

Submitted for your approval, Daily Blog Challenge post 26.

As promised, I'm here to talk a little bit about the combat rules in Hollow Earth Expedition. I'm plowing through the rule book to prep for running a demo game for friends. Talking about the game the other day piqued some interest around the table, so I volunteered to try to sort out the rules and give it a go...

The Combat chapter starts with an overview of the combat turn, which should look pretty typical for most gamers. Roll initiative, take some actions, make an attack and defense, calculate damage, rinse, repeat if necessary. Initiative is handled by the players rolling a number of dice equal to their initiative number. The player with the most successes (even numbers on the dice) goes first, then the player with the next highest, etc, until everyone goes, then the next turn starts. There is an optional set of rules for "Continuous Combat" which mimics the initiative rules in Hackmaster Basic and Aces & Eights, where different types of actions take different lengths of time. It helps equalize fast, but light damage weapons, like daggers with slower, big damage weapons, like great swords. Fast weapon fighters might get off an extra attack or two before the slow weapon fighter gets to swing again. It's an interesting concept, but there is no way I'm going to try to include it in my demo game. Too much to track for new players and a new GM.

In combat, players are able to move, attack, and defend each round. There are a wide variety of options for attacking including aiming, calling shots, charging and disarming. It all makes logical sense, but it's a bit more complicated than I would have assumed, based on the 10 minute demo I played at Origins and the flavor of the earlier text in the book. "Complicated" might be the wrong word here? Maybe "crunchy" is the better term. Granted, compared to something like Hackmaster Basic or 4th edition D&D, this looks like a breeze. Certainly not an exercise in tactical miniature war-gaming crammed into an RPG, but it makes me wonder if it will slow down the action at all. I guess I was expecting this section to be a bit more "rules-light", in line with the Rules and Intro chapters. My players don't have the rule book, so explaining all the combat options will be tedious. Hopefully, they will come up with creative ideas that mimic the options in the book, and I can referee as appropriate. I realize I can modify what is here for a more cinematic feel, stripping a lot of the special abilities and actions in combat.

I don't know of there is an intent to use a battle mat in combat, but I don't think so...It's never reference in the combat section (at least that I noticed), but there are a lot of references to distance, both in range of weapons and effects of certain attacks and damage. Maybe I'm just so used to playing with a mat in the newer editions of D&D, that I have a harder time thinking about these things in an abstract sense. I didn't plan on using any minis to play the game, but maybe we'll end up using some if we run into a more detailed combat scenario. I'm certainly not opposed to using them, but I sometimes feel like players get to attached to the minis and it strips the cinematic qualities out of the scenario. It turns into a lot of counting and jockeying for position, rather that high action and adventure.

The damage, wounds and healing sections move back to keeping things fast and loose. Instead of requiring extra dice to determine damage, the character suffers the difference between the attacker's success count and his/her defense success count. If you go below zero, you are dying. If you go below -5, you are dead. Wounds heal slowly (non-lethal = 1 per day, lethal = 1 per week), but medical attention and first aid can speed it up. The chapter also has sections on environmental hazards, diseases, poisons, and other threats to character health (falling, electrocution, fatigue, exposure, and fire, for example).

Following the combat chapter, there is a chapter on equipment, with weapons, armor, exploration gear, vehicles and "weird science". Since damage is handled by taking the difference between the attack and defense rolls, the weapons don't have standard variable weapon damage. More deadly weapons have a higher damage bonus. The damage bonus increases the number of dice added to the attack roll. A scimitar has a damage bonus of 3, where a pen knife has a damage bonus of zero. The "weird science" section only includes some sample artifacts, with the expectation that creative players (and game masters intent on offering up villains of the mad-scientist flavor) come up with their own ideas. The sky seems to be the limit here, allowing the GM to referee the process as necessary.

I'll give an overview of the rest of the sections of the book in a few days. I gotta throw together some food before heading over to Gooki's for the Brown Angel record release show. Heavy...

If you want a basic overview of HEX, without dropping any cash, check out the Exile Game Studio website. They have downloads for the 2008 & 2009 Free RPG Day adventures. Obviously, they've simplified the rules greatly for these demos, but they hint at the basic flavor of the game.

More details when I actually get to play the game and see how I handle it from the GM perspective. If anyone has any experience playing or running HEX, let me know in the comments. Any hints or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Happy Thanksgiving

Yep. It's true...we're almost there. This is Daily Blog Challenge post 25, and it's Thanksgiving Day.

First of all, a couple thanks are in order. First off, Curt for pushing to get a game together a few years ago (and convincing me to help DM the Gygax tribute games). Mark for volunteering to act as DM (and cooking dinner). You two got me back into the hobby. Sara for hosting (and healing). Thanks to Tim for allowing me the opportunity to see another DM in action. Dave and Allen for volunteering to get behind the screen so we could try out some different games (and playing in just about every game I play in). Jen for hosting (and trying out this totally bizarro hobby). Hickey, Brad and Paul for agreeing to play in my game (and showing up just about every game session). Tim and John for running some OSR games at GASP and GASPCon, giving me the opportunity to relive my childhood a little (and discover a lot of what I'm missing by playing the modern games). Everyone I've had the pleasure of gaming with over the past 5 years...It's way too many to list, but it was all pretty great. Finally, my handful of readers here at Gutter Cult. Thanks for the feedback and support.

On to a topic of sorts. Well, not really a topic....just letting you all know about the sale going on over at Brave Halfling Publishing. The third printing of Swords & Wizardry White Box box set is on sale for $25 (plus $5 shipping). I probably didn't really need another OSR box set, but I couldn't pass up the deal. The set contains 4 rule books (Characters, Spells, Monsters, & Treasure), a copy of the "Quick Primer for Old-School Gaming" (which I feel should be required reading for all gamers -- pdf is free at the previous link), character sheets, a pencil, and a set of dice, all in a game box. The first 50 orders also get two modules, "The Vile Worm of the Eldritch Oak" & "Ruins of Ramat." Here's hoping I got me order in early enough. They are supposed to ship Monday, so I'll report back, with opinions, once I have it in my hands.

Contents of the S&W White Box box set

Like I said above, I really didn't need this. This is my third OSR related box set. I also have the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasty Role-playing and the limited edition Spellcraft & Swordplay box. All the content is available via free PDF on the Mythmere site. I even have the PDFs saved on my laptop already. I guess I'm just a sucker for these box sets for some reason. I did really like the presentation, though, and I definitely liked the price.

In case you haven't been paying attention or missed my earlier posts where I talked about it, Swords & Wizardry is a clone of 1974 edition D&D, sometimes called OD&D. They have two versions. The Core Rules cover the three original Little Brown Books (LBB), plus the supplements. The White Box only contains rules from the LBBs. There is also well designed set of Quick Start rules for S&W, for those interested in getting a taste without investing to time to read the full books.

That's all for today. Hopefully, I'll have a bit more to say about Hollow Earth Expedition tomorrow. Gonna start reading some more of the core book right now.

Getting ready for the expedition

Ooh...another late post, but here it is: Daily Blog Challenge post 24. Yes. Technically it is the 25th, but I'm sticking with my plan of at least posting before I sleep for the day, so we're good to go...Fortunately, all I need to do on the 25th is wake-up and drive the 2 hours to Oil City then eat. Not much else going on tomorrow.

As for my excuse for the late post? I don't have a good one today. I did some laundry, watched some Mythbusters and the Pens game, played the demo of Puzzle Quest 2, and did some reading. A fair amount of reading, actually.

In preparation for my turn back behind the screen once the Gamma World adventure wraps up, I started ripping through Hollow Earth Expedition. I picked up the book at origins this summer after a quick demo at the booth, but I never really sat down and read it. I have to say, the writing is darn good.

First off, if you are a fan of pulpy adventure stories and that cover doesn't draw you in, you best check your pulse. It is well matched to Hollow Earth Expedition's style: threatened explorers, big-ass dinosaurs, crazy looking scientific equipment. The back cover features some remnants of a ruin civilization. The book itself starts with an introductory pulp adventure story to set the tone followed by an overview of HEX and roleplaying. Pretty standard info here. We're then presented with a sort of gazetteer for Earth, ca. 1936. As the depression continues, the Nazis, Fascists, and Communists are coming to power around the world. There are sections for each region of the world and an overview of fashion, entertainment, and travel in the time period. For someone who doesn't really think about World History all that much, it was quite helpful. In college, when most folks were taking History 101, or whatever, I was studying the history of science. Oh well...

Chapter 2 covers character creation and is loaded with examples for developing the character you want to play. The examples provide a pretty clear thought process for how to develop a character to match your imagination. They also provided 12 complete characters, along with role playing notes and character background. These characters are perfect for inspiring players who need a little push or can be used a pre-gens if you like.

Chapter 3 gets into the rules and explains the Ubiquity system used to run the game. Ubiquity uses a dice pool system, where you have a certain number of nice in each of your attributes in skills. The player is trying to get a certain number of "successes", as determined by the GM. Instead of have a cut off number, such as getting "4 or better" on a six sided die, the players are trying to roll "evens". Every even number counts as a success; each odd is a failure. Sounds pretty intuitive to me. The game also has a system known as "Style Points". Style Points are a bit like Bennies in Savage Worlds. You can use them to get extra dice before you roll, soak damage in combat, or power up your talents. Players get style points in game for roleplaying or benefiting the game. Instant reward system. Nice. Again, there are great examples throughout the chapter to help players understand how to gain and use the style points.

In typical pulp style, I'm going to leave you with a cliff hanger for now. I'll cover chapters 4-9 in a couple days, after I have a bit more time to digest the info. Skimming through, they cover combat, give an example of play (I really love reading examples of play a little too much, I think), equipment, game mastering, Hollow Earth gazetteer, friends and enemies, bestiary, and a sample adventure.