Wednesday 29 August 2012
Red Dwarf X - Go Vindalunar!
To celebrate the release of the new series of Red Dwarf (X) on the 4th October 2012, the boys at Dave have launched a vindaloo and a can of JMC Leopard Lager into space.
Sunday 26 August 2012
Everyone is John
This Friday's game was postponed and a new GM, Thora, stepped up to the plate and offered to run a a one session game called Everyone is John. I'd never heard of this game but as it was described as a rules light freeform competitive game, it was just up my alley.
The set-up for the game is simple, John is a normal bloke going about his day-to-day existence when he has a schitzophrenic episode and begins to listen to The Voice in his head. Each player becomes a voice, with their own unique set of skills and obsessions. However, John can only listen to one voice at a time so the players must bid using willpower to control The Voice and thereby influence what John does. It's handy if you represent willpower with a bunch of tokens as players can simply reveal how many tokens they have in their hand. The winning bidder then loses those tokens for the rest of the game.
John is quite fickle and so control of The Voice only lasts for about 10 minutes or until a player fails a roll, at which time the bidding process starts again.
SKILLS AND OBSESSIONS
Each player is then issued with 6 blank cards upon which they have to write 3 skills and 3 obsessions. These are then randomly distributed to each player making sure nobody picked their own skills or obsessions.
Skills are used to reduce the difficulty of completing an action and can be actual skills (Boxing, PC Repair, Knowledge: Thermonuclear Devices), special abilities (Hail a cab first time everytime, ) or equipment (Letter Opener, Mobile Phone, Sonic Screwdriver). Remember, the game is competitive and what you write down goes to your opponents so picking really usefull or powerful skills will most likely work against you.
Obsessions are your victory conditions and are ranked in 3 levels:
Level 1 - Easy (pig out on candy, pick your nose on live TV)
Level 2 - Medium (steal a fast car, kiss a celebrity)
Level 3 - Hard (become President of the United States, Go to the Moon)
Each time you complete an obsession you score its Level, the more times you complete them the more points you score. At the end of the game, the player with the most points is declared the winner.
HOW IT PLAYED FOR US
Our Skills
Our Obsessions
What John Did
John began the game walking through Victoria Station, London when he had his first episode. He then ran outside the station and hailed a cab telling the driver to head for Madame Tussauds Waxwork Museum. (BID) He asked the driver to head instead for London Zoo and if he could stop by some road works on the way. The taxi driver pulled over to the side of the road and John leap out and grabbed a traffic cone, stuck it on his head and started singing "Ive got the Power... To Pick up a Flower". He then summoned forth all traffic wardens and got back in the taxi.
As the taxi sped towards London Zoo, traffic wardens were walking out of side roads in a zombie-like trance. The taxi driver swerved around them and John opened the window and tried to grab one as they passed but failed. (BID) John immediately demanded the taxi head to Madame Tussauds and he tried to use his sonic screwdriver to make the taxi go faster, but unfortunately failed. (BID) John abandoned the taxi and whilst smoking his last cigarette, summoned the TARDIS. As it began to materialise he spotted a nearby Lollipop Woman and kicked her up the bum and ran towards the TARDIS (but unfortunately not like Charlie Chaplin). The Doctor was suprised that the TARDIS had been so easily summoned but when John asked to go back in time to the Jurrasic era to capture a dinosaur, his curiosity got the better of him.
Arriving in the Jurrasic era, The Doctor agreed to wait in the TARDIS for John to return and watched him walk off into the swamp. (BID) John used his Literary Criticism to argue with himself that the Doctor was a fictional character and that the TARDIS was a poorly executed plot device and so could not possibly have transported him back through time. This clearly meant that the swamp he was in was simply a Jurrasic era exhibit in a Natural History Museum somewhere like Sydney, Australia. He promptly tore the shirt off his back and waved it around in the air and shouted "I claim this land in the name of Queen and Country and hereby name her Australia!!"...
Conclusion
The players got into the swing of things pretty quickly and it was definitely the most hilariously anarchic and inventive game I've played in a long time. Most RPGs are not wild fights of fantasy for obvious reasons, but it is good to let your hair down every now and then to play something which demands unbridled creativity. This game would be great in an after convention/party situation or as we found as a filler game if your regular DM hasn't turned up.
With slight modification to the pre-amble (Mental Health is a serious issue) and possibly pre-defined skills/goals (to keep the action a little more grounded) this concept could be used quite successfully as an introduction to RPGs for non-gamers. It encourages problem solving through creativity and imagination and the action is fast paced with only a modicum of dice rolling so should be able to hold most people's attention.
This is definitely going into my GMs Survival Kit and may well get another play quite soon.
 |
| John Cleese |
John is quite fickle and so control of The Voice only lasts for about 10 minutes or until a player fails a roll, at which time the bidding process starts again.
 |
| Jon Bon Jovi |
Skills are used to reduce the difficulty of completing an action and can be actual skills (Boxing, PC Repair, Knowledge: Thermonuclear Devices), special abilities (Hail a cab first time everytime, ) or equipment (Letter Opener, Mobile Phone, Sonic Screwdriver). Remember, the game is competitive and what you write down goes to your opponents so picking really usefull or powerful skills will most likely work against you.
Obsessions are your victory conditions and are ranked in 3 levels:
 |
| Jeanne D'Arc |
Level 2 - Medium (steal a fast car, kiss a celebrity)
Level 3 - Hard (become President of the United States, Go to the Moon)
Each time you complete an obsession you score its Level, the more times you complete them the more points you score. At the end of the game, the player with the most points is declared the winner.
HOW IT PLAYED FOR US
Our Skills
| Can Touch their Nose with Their Tongue |
Tune a Guitar | Eat Fire | Can Communicate with a Single Ant |
| Sonic Screwdriver | Bricklaying | Kung Fu | Summon a mode of Transport by Smoking his Last Cigarette |
| Can hail a cab first time, every time |
Fly a plane | Literary Criticism | Become the Master of the Universe by wearing a traffic cone on his head and singing "I've got the Power, To Pick up a flower" |
Our Obsessions
| LVL 1 | Cook an Ostrich |
Become a Buddhist Monk |
Pick Nose on Live TV |
Kick an Authority Figure up the Bum and run away like Charlie Chaplin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LVL 2 | Steal an Atom Bomb |
Stop a Terrorist Bomb from destroying the Eiffel Tower |
Steal a Waxwork of Maggie Thatcher from Madame Tussauds |
Draw a moustache on a Traffic Warden |
| LVL 3 | Capture a Dinosaur |
Discover Australia |
Find Evidence that Aliens Exist in Area 51 |
Make a dog have a white poo |
What John Did
 |
| John Shuttleworth |
As the taxi sped towards London Zoo, traffic wardens were walking out of side roads in a zombie-like trance. The taxi driver swerved around them and John opened the window and tried to grab one as they passed but failed. (BID) John immediately demanded the taxi head to Madame Tussauds and he tried to use his sonic screwdriver to make the taxi go faster, but unfortunately failed. (BID) John abandoned the taxi and whilst smoking his last cigarette, summoned the TARDIS. As it began to materialise he spotted a nearby Lollipop Woman and kicked her up the bum and ran towards the TARDIS (but unfortunately not like Charlie Chaplin). The Doctor was suprised that the TARDIS had been so easily summoned but when John asked to go back in time to the Jurrasic era to capture a dinosaur, his curiosity got the better of him.
 |
| John Belushi |
Conclusion
The players got into the swing of things pretty quickly and it was definitely the most hilariously anarchic and inventive game I've played in a long time. Most RPGs are not wild fights of fantasy for obvious reasons, but it is good to let your hair down every now and then to play something which demands unbridled creativity. This game would be great in an after convention/party situation or as we found as a filler game if your regular DM hasn't turned up.
 |
| John McEnroe |
This is definitely going into my GMs Survival Kit and may well get another play quite soon.
Friday 24 August 2012
A Fresh-ish look at Goblins
After a year long hiatus I'm back at work hanging more meat on the bones of my campaign world. A long time ago I decided to have one of the land masses, Khorngeldte, inhabited by the goblinoid races who were locked in an incessant war with their neighbhours, the teutonic humans of Wulfschlossen. This has been largely restricted to both sides forming raiding parties which cross the narrow Straits of Desperation.
In my last campaign I hacked an old Dungeon Magazine scenario for the Therran Campaign (The Secrets of the Towers) in order to visit Korngeldte and introduce two new characters, a Wulfschlossian Knight and his enslaved Half-Orc tracker of undetermined orgin. Essentially the towers became a convenient plot device allowing the PCs to escape numerous pursuers, cheat death and travel great distances quickly, but importantly, it allowed me to break ground on an untravelled section of my campaign world.
Inevitably this caused me to think about the bigger picture and how the goblinoid races fit into the world, and in the best traditions of world building, do something different which the players won't be expecting.
Revisiting Goblinoid Stats
When looking at the D20 SRD we find that as stats go goblins are the weakest goblinoid races, but what they lose in physical strength they make up for in cunning and dexterity. This lead me to the conclusion that if they are to be able to build (and sustain) a kingdom capable of waging war across the straits of desperation then they must rely on either technology or magic.
A similar concept is seen in the Lord of The Rings movies where the goblins essentially assist Saruman in the construction of his Uruk army as blacksmiths, engineers and medieval geneticists.
Comparing the stat blocks for the major goblin/orc races shows that in every case goblins do not suffer an INT penalty making them far more likely to develop technologies to compensate for their small size and weak nature.
Goblins only have an improved DEX stat but their Rogue class leanings lends nicely to the idea that they are tinkerers and inventors as well as skulking backstabbers. This is supported in the Warhammer universe where the goblins are seen to be quite inventive in nature and get all manner of cool, if shoddily constructed, war machines like the Spear Chukka, the Skull Crusher and the Man Mangoler. One of my favourite depictions of a goblin was in the movie Hellboy II: The Golden Army where the Elf King employed the goblins to manufacture an unstoppable army of robots to wage war on humanity.
Another popular goblin trope is that of the Warg or Wolf riding goblin which suggests they have become accomplished animal handlers in order to seize a tactical advantage. Using animals as beasts of burden and ultimately as a power source for machinery is a necessary step upon the ladder of technological evolution.
Hob-Goblins are slightly less numerous and do not suffer the CHA penalty which hints at a possible demi-human connection. Their Fighter class makes them likely to resolve conflict through arms rather than cunning so I can quite happily see them being turned into some sort of specially bred warrior class.
Bugbears are the rarest of all the goblins and their propensity for living in caves in very small tribes esssentially writes them off for me as a potential leader.
Orcs are basically big, strong, dumb, savage, barbarians and have significantly smaller tribe sizes than goblins which leads me to conclude that an organised goblin leader could control these creatures in small numbers if he found suitable forms of leverage as a reward for loyalty such as an addiction to a psychotropic brew or some other delicacy that the Orcs enjoyed but could not manufacture for themselves... human flesh perhaps?
Half-Orcs occupy an uncomfortable middle ground in my world, they are despised by both Humans and Orcs for not being Human or Orc enough but are an unhappy by-product of Orc raids. I have already used a Half-Orc PC as an enslaved tracker and suspect that the goblins will have some sort of menial place for those Half-Orcs that escape the clutches of the their trueblood bretheren.
The Goblin King
Putting David Bowie's portrayal of the Goblin King Jhared aside, the concept of a Goblin King features in many myths and legends. Some etymological research suggests that the word "Gob" or "Ghob" refers specifically to the King of the Gnomes and that Goblings are lesser gnomes. I need a Goblin King to rule my Goblin Kingdom and see this role being filled by a goblin of unnatural intelligence, cunning and deceit. A goblin society founded on the meritocrious principle that any goblin could rise to be the ruler through cunning, deceit and backstabbery might also produce a peculiar class of goblin politicians which I find perversely appealing.
Technology
In order cross the Straits of Desperation, my goblin war bands would need boats, these could be orc powered in the form of a bireme or longship, but if the goblins have started their own industrial revolution then a more fitting form of transport would be crude steamships. My background for the goblin capital Tak Mor has this situated between the "Iron Tree Forest" which supplies the ore for smelting and the "Fetid Sea" which the goblins are polluting with their oil waste.
I am particularly enamoured by the Empire Landship models produced by Warhammer Forge. I'm sure that any Wulfschlossonian villagers would be terrified if they saw one of these monstrosities lurching out of the sea on its paddle-wheels.
I know I'm not the first person to suggest the concept of intelligent goblins, but I feel that their current niche in the fantasy bestiary as monster minions just doesn't do them justice.
In my last campaign I hacked an old Dungeon Magazine scenario for the Therran Campaign (The Secrets of the Towers) in order to visit Korngeldte and introduce two new characters, a Wulfschlossian Knight and his enslaved Half-Orc tracker of undetermined orgin. Essentially the towers became a convenient plot device allowing the PCs to escape numerous pursuers, cheat death and travel great distances quickly, but importantly, it allowed me to break ground on an untravelled section of my campaign world.
Inevitably this caused me to think about the bigger picture and how the goblinoid races fit into the world, and in the best traditions of world building, do something different which the players won't be expecting.
 |
| Goblin by Marcus Dublin |
When looking at the D20 SRD we find that as stats go goblins are the weakest goblinoid races, but what they lose in physical strength they make up for in cunning and dexterity. This lead me to the conclusion that if they are to be able to build (and sustain) a kingdom capable of waging war across the straits of desperation then they must rely on either technology or magic.
A similar concept is seen in the Lord of The Rings movies where the goblins essentially assist Saruman in the construction of his Uruk army as blacksmiths, engineers and medieval geneticists.
Comparing the stat blocks for the major goblin/orc races shows that in every case goblins do not suffer an INT penalty making them far more likely to develop technologies to compensate for their small size and weak nature.
| STR | INT | DEX | CON | WIS | CHA | TRIBE SIZE | FAV. CLASS | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GOBLIN | -2 | - | 2 | - | - | -2 | 40-400 | Rogue | |
| HOB-GOBLIN | - | - | 2 | 2 | - | - | 30-300 | Fighter | |
| BUGBEAR | 4 | - | 2 | 2 | - | -2 | 0-20 | Rogue | |
| ORC | 4 | -2 | - | - | -2 | -2 | 30-100 | Barbarian | |
| HALF-ORC | 2 | -2 | - | - | - | -2 | - | Barbarian |
 |
| Goblin Blacksmith from Hellboy II: The Golden Army |
Another popular goblin trope is that of the Warg or Wolf riding goblin which suggests they have become accomplished animal handlers in order to seize a tactical advantage. Using animals as beasts of burden and ultimately as a power source for machinery is a necessary step upon the ladder of technological evolution.
Hob-Goblins are slightly less numerous and do not suffer the CHA penalty which hints at a possible demi-human connection. Their Fighter class makes them likely to resolve conflict through arms rather than cunning so I can quite happily see them being turned into some sort of specially bred warrior class.
Bugbears are the rarest of all the goblins and their propensity for living in caves in very small tribes esssentially writes them off for me as a potential leader.
Orcs are basically big, strong, dumb, savage, barbarians and have significantly smaller tribe sizes than goblins which leads me to conclude that an organised goblin leader could control these creatures in small numbers if he found suitable forms of leverage as a reward for loyalty such as an addiction to a psychotropic brew or some other delicacy that the Orcs enjoyed but could not manufacture for themselves... human flesh perhaps?
Half-Orcs occupy an uncomfortable middle ground in my world, they are despised by both Humans and Orcs for not being Human or Orc enough but are an unhappy by-product of Orc raids. I have already used a Half-Orc PC as an enslaved tracker and suspect that the goblins will have some sort of menial place for those Half-Orcs that escape the clutches of the their trueblood bretheren.
The Goblin King
Putting David Bowie's portrayal of the Goblin King Jhared aside, the concept of a Goblin King features in many myths and legends. Some etymological research suggests that the word "Gob" or "Ghob" refers specifically to the King of the Gnomes and that Goblings are lesser gnomes. I need a Goblin King to rule my Goblin Kingdom and see this role being filled by a goblin of unnatural intelligence, cunning and deceit. A goblin society founded on the meritocrious principle that any goblin could rise to be the ruler through cunning, deceit and backstabbery might also produce a peculiar class of goblin politicians which I find perversely appealing.
 |
| Goblin King by Tristan HaoHao |
Technology
In order cross the Straits of Desperation, my goblin war bands would need boats, these could be orc powered in the form of a bireme or longship, but if the goblins have started their own industrial revolution then a more fitting form of transport would be crude steamships. My background for the goblin capital Tak Mor has this situated between the "Iron Tree Forest" which supplies the ore for smelting and the "Fetid Sea" which the goblins are polluting with their oil waste.
I am particularly enamoured by the Empire Landship models produced by Warhammer Forge. I'm sure that any Wulfschlossonian villagers would be terrified if they saw one of these monstrosities lurching out of the sea on its paddle-wheels.
 |
| Marienburg Class Empire Landship - expertly painted by James Wappel |
A to Z of Judge Dredd at Quaequam
I'm highlighting my old chum James Graham who is currently blogging an A to Z of Judge Dredd which is well worth a look.
Keep up the good work Jim.
Saturday 18 August 2012
The Super Secret Happy Birthday Gary Gygax Giveaway Bundle Extravapalooza!
 |
| WOTC reprint 1st Edition Players Handbook |
The Secret DM is running a great contest with an awesome prize...
A complete set of WOTCs recently reprinted 1st edition AD&D books!!
and
The chance to have your submission published in a professionally produced digital edition!!
All you have to do is to come up with a 10 room dungeon which evokes the feeling of 1st edition and submit your entry to thesecretdm@gmail.com with the subject line Gygax Contest.
The contest runs until 27th September 2012, so get your designing pens out... I know I will.
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