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| From "Fantasy Role Playing Games" by J Eric Holmes MD (p177) A tense moment. The cloaked figure of the thief (Ral Partha) crouches listening at the door as the rest of the party (Ral Partha) led by the Elf mage (Dragon Tooth) guard the corridor intersection. |
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
3 abreast in a 10' Corridor: Photographic Evidence from J E Holmes
Jeff Rients recent post jogged my memories of playing with old school 25mm minis and this plate from Dr Holmes' book "Fantasy Role Playing Games" seems to support it. Citadel and their 1 inch plastic bases have a lot to answer for.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Spellbooks as Physical Accessories
This fits in well with my preference for the "Spell Slots" form of spellcasting, where as long as the spell is in a PC's spellbook (ie: they have indepth knowledge of the spell) and they have an unused spell slot (ie: they have sufficient energy) then they can cast it. I also insist that the player come up with their own cantrip or rhyme which they recite when casting the spell.
Although some will undoubtedly think that this isn't very fair on the poor player who has to go to the extra effort of creating their own spell book, hang on a minute, there are a few paybacks.
PAYBACK FOR EFFORT
 |
| Mary Queen of Scot's Prayerbook and Rosary |
As DM I can give XP rewards to spellcasters for "roleplaying" their casting attempts. It's far too easy for spellcasters to get ignored (or just become non combat time specialists) when you're not upfront slaughtering the bad guys and getting XP for combat.
I've always struggled with the notion that if spellcasting characters "level up" in a wilderness, they essentially forfeit any advantage until they can get to a major urban location or meet another wizard to learn new spells and go through the whole "non-game time research" rigmarole which is not always possible to do in a fluid campaign.
Using the spellbook system, "levelling up" just means that you have had a breakthrough and that you have unlocked another level of mastery. If you already have, or subsequently find, a spellbook containing spells of your new level, you will now be able to "understand" them enough to add them to your own spell book. To my mind it is only right that mages should covet each others spellbooks, as a font of thaumaturgical knowledge. Cue a campaign where mages are being rounded up and slaughtered for their books.
PLAYING DOWN POWER
"But this might make spellcasters too powerful!" I hear you exclaim. Not so, there are ways in which you can temper their ability, whilst still making it interesting and challenging for them as players.
Environmental factors can make for interesting play. One of my players wizards had to cast all his spells from the safety of a trapped airpocket inside a submerged boat during an underwater encounter as he didn't want to get his book wet.
More powerful spells require longer incantations (the length of recital should be in line with the spells casting time) and therefore there is a greater chance that they will stutter or fluff their recital. This gives you the opportunity as DM to be a little bit creative with the resultant spell effect. Perhaps that level 5 Magic Missile wasn't quite on target or lacked a little concentration?
CRAFTING SPELLBOOKS
There are plenty of ready made notebooks, such as moleskines or the plethora of hand made notebooks, which you can buy off the shelf or from ebay. Personal organisers (medieval monks used miscellanies which were a kind of proto filofax) also make good spellbooks and have the advantage that you can add pages as you go. If you're a dab hand with word, photoshop or GIMP you could create your own page templates and paste in the important data in a fantasy font.
- There are plenty of instructables about making antiqe paper with tea or coffee
- The Necronomicon Notebook has some excellent downloadable pdf pages
- Use a thrift store belt as a book clasp.
- Follow Zombie Nation's Necronomicon Tutorial to make an awesome cover.
- All Things Crafty's Spellbook with Removable Recipe Pages has a useful \bootlace binding.
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Levelling up
In his latest Legends and Lore article Monte Cook posits that:
"levels serve as a means to incentivize people to keep playing the game"
Whilst this may be true for the majority of MMORPGs and those time wasting level machines on facebook, it is not necessarily the case for D&D and other level based RPGs.
Levels are a Challenge Metric
D&D 3e introduced the concept of the Challenge Rating (CR) as a device to scale your encounters / scenario to match the levels of the PCs in your group, and before CR, we used a Monster's Hit Die. However, the constant used in both systems was the PCs level system. Successive layers of "Customizeable Elements" such as powers, feats, skills and kits have only added to the complexity of character generation and consequently devalued "Levels" as an effective constant.
Players use this metric during play to judge their own survivability and determine their reactions when faced with obviously superior force strength or capability. For example a lower level party will often resort to non combat means to overcome an encounter if they suspect that there is a high chance that they won't survive. Being a hero doesn't always have to mean slaughtering the enemy, particularly if a GM has intentionally used the monsters level to frighten or provoke a non-combat solution.
Storytelling Incentivizes Continued Play
In the same way that the storyline of a soap opera incentivizes millions of people to keep watching, the continuation or completion of a plot in an RPG incentivizes players to keep playing. Although min-maxing and power-gaming exist as styles of play these are generally regarded in a negative light and are discouraged in favour of more positive storytelling or cooperative styles.
Posturing vs Retrospection
Hands up those who've had (or overheard) a conversation before a game session which goes like this:
"My 5th level fighter will kick your 5th level rogue's ass..."
or after a session:
"Remember when I saved your ass by taking out that orc chief..."
As a DM, I know which one I'd prefer to hear my players use.
"levels serve as a means to incentivize people to keep playing the game"
Whilst this may be true for the majority of MMORPGs and those time wasting level machines on facebook, it is not necessarily the case for D&D and other level based RPGs.
Levels are a Challenge Metric
D&D 3e introduced the concept of the Challenge Rating (CR) as a device to scale your encounters / scenario to match the levels of the PCs in your group, and before CR, we used a Monster's Hit Die. However, the constant used in both systems was the PCs level system. Successive layers of "Customizeable Elements" such as powers, feats, skills and kits have only added to the complexity of character generation and consequently devalued "Levels" as an effective constant.
Players use this metric during play to judge their own survivability and determine their reactions when faced with obviously superior force strength or capability. For example a lower level party will often resort to non combat means to overcome an encounter if they suspect that there is a high chance that they won't survive. Being a hero doesn't always have to mean slaughtering the enemy, particularly if a GM has intentionally used the monsters level to frighten or provoke a non-combat solution.
Storytelling Incentivizes Continued Play
In the same way that the storyline of a soap opera incentivizes millions of people to keep watching, the continuation or completion of a plot in an RPG incentivizes players to keep playing. Although min-maxing and power-gaming exist as styles of play these are generally regarded in a negative light and are discouraged in favour of more positive storytelling or cooperative styles.
Posturing vs Retrospection
Hands up those who've had (or overheard) a conversation before a game session which goes like this:
"My 5th level fighter will kick your 5th level rogue's ass..."
or after a session:
"Remember when I saved your ass by taking out that orc chief..."
As a DM, I know which one I'd prefer to hear my players use.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
My 10 Favourite Sci-Fi Posters
Thanks to Davis Chenault for his post highlighting the IGN 25 Top Sci-FI Posters.
Here's my top 10 (in no particular order) with some alternate versions thrown in for good measure:
1. MAD MAX
I love the graphic simplicity of the original release, but the UK poster (which I remember from my childhood) makes me wanna see the movie NOW!.
2. DUNE
The haunting alien vista of the UK poster is infinitely preferable to the car crash of bad airbrush art that is the Japanese version. Who is Paul Atreides supposed to be kissing, cos it sure doesn't look like Sean Young.
3. BLADE RUNNER
The crazy angles and harsh edged look to the original composite are given a more sympathetic and dreamlike treatment for the directors cut. Much better poster IMHO.
4. THEY LIVE
Rowdy Roddy Pipper eyeballs your "alienness" in the original, but there's a nice subversive edge to Marc Palm's "Hope" version.
5. STAR WARS
The original is a masterpiece of both composition and oil painting, even if the blasters seem to be firing light-sabre beams. The Olly Moss homage is an elegant piece of graphic design genius. I'm officially torn between the two.
6. ALIEN
The minimalist original has it all, black for space, weird cracked egg with green glowy yolk, scary byeline and alien eggbox landscape. The poor poles have no idea what they're letting themselves in for with their bizarre blood vessel drawing of what I can only presume is a facehugger?
7. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
The Big Apple has gone all to hell in the iconic (if a little cliched) original as the characters are caught in a spot of mid escape terror. The Special Edition looks like one of Snake Plisken's holiday snaps, posed right after he's brought down the Statue of Liberty in some sort of explosive mayhem.
8. SCANNERS
In the definitive original, Michael Ironside's about to explode!!!. But I love the comic book style and vivid fiery reds in the Italian version.
9. GODZILLA VS MEGALON
Godzilla is kicking Megalon's butt in the original and classic poster. In the alternate version The Lost Continent of Mu has been given the boot in favour of a battle on top of the Twin Trade Towers which due to the exaggerated scale makes both these Kaiju look a bit puny by comparison. Nice idea, poor execution (and the typeography lets it down as well)
10. THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN
The arthouse style original with its dirty steampunk qualities are eschewed by Ken Taylor for a heavily inked composite illustration evocative of a Hammer Horror movie poster.
Here's my top 10 (in no particular order) with some alternate versions thrown in for good measure:
1. MAD MAX
 Original Theatrical Poster |  UK Poster |
2. DUNE
 UK Poster |  Japanese Poster |
3. BLADE RUNNER
 |  |
4. THEY LIVE
 Original Poster |  Marc Palm Homage Poster |
5. STAR WARS
 Original Poster |  Olly Moss Homage |
6. ALIEN
 |  |
7. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
 |  |
8. SCANNERS
 |  |
9. GODZILLA VS MEGALON
 |  |
10. THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN
 |  |
Saturday, 21 January 2012
Fantastic Locations: Mega City One
This month's RPG Blog Carnival, kindly hosted by Keith J Davies, is entitled Fantastic Locations, and whilst it is tempting to write up one of my own Fantasy campaign locations (like the home plane of the Djinn Caliph), I decided to look again at the origin of the word fantastic.
According to merriam-webster the definition of fantastic is:
Mega City One
First appearing in Prog 2 of 2000AD (on 5th March 1977), Mega City One it is arguably the real star of the long running Judge Dredd comic book series.
Originally stretching across the entire Eastern seaboard of the once proud nation of the United States it was largely destroyed during the Apocalypse War and now is home to some 400 million citizens. It's western edge is bordered by a gigantic wall which protects it from the mutant inhabitants of the irradiated wasteland known as the Cursed Earth.
Architecture of Mega City One
The majority of Mega City One's citizens live in gigantic 1000 storey high Post Atomic Tower Blocks dominating the skyline. Nestled amongst these are smaller 500 storey blocks and puny 100 storey Pre-Atomic Blocks. The proximity of the blocks means that daylight cannot reach the lowest (and consequently) poorest levels of some blocks leaving them in permanent darkness and giving rise to the nickname "City Bottom". Much of what were once the shining corporate edifices of cities like New York has long ago been concreted over to form the foundations of these mega blocks and has created a subterranean "undercity" inhabited by a degenerate subhuman species of troglodytes.
Winding around and through all of these structures are a spaghetti like network of megways (roads), slidewalks (moving walkways) and pedways (pedestrian only) which allow citizens to move between blocks and other locations. Some of the citizens live in computer controlled mobile homes known as mo-pads which perpetually drive around cities megways.
The larger blocks house upto 60,000 citizens and contain everything that a person may need from schools, shops and recreation facilities to hospitals, offices and greenhouses. Each block is a self contained town and it has been known for some citizens to live out their entire lives in the same block until they die and are carted off to Resyk for disposal.
Life in Mega City One
Robot labour has largely replaced that of humans and unemployment runs at a staggering 87%. Most citizens try to find ways of aleviating boredom inevitably leading them to commit some sort of criminal activity which is dealt with swiftly by the city's law enforcers the judges.
This constant search for new ways to entertain oneself creates a steady stream of new crazes which sweep through Mega City like a plague (and are often just as deadly) and disappear just as rapidly leaving a swathe of destruction in their wake. The crazes which have graced the pages of Judge Dredd strips over the years are often influenced by contemporary fashions or pastimes, but taken to an extreme level For example body modification becomes crazes like fatties or uglies, extreme sports becomes crazes like boinging and skysurfing, even something as simple as being a pigeon fancier can be taken to the extreme when a "pigeon" is a giant prehistoric pterodactyl.
Living cheek by jowl can be stressful and there is always the chance that local rivalries will errupt into a full scale Block War between neighbouring blocks. Each block is equipped with its own militia (aka Citi Defence) in order to prevent large scale conflict from ensuing but they are sometimes as much of a problem as a solution. However, there are those citizens who just can't take living in such a crazy city are diagnosed as suffering from Future Shock Syndrome and end up taking their own lives and as many bystanders as they can.
Locations, Locations, Locations
The beauty of Mega City One is that it operates on a scale so vast that anything you can imagine might exist on an entire planet can exist within the walls of the city. Want a zoo stocked with terrifying alien creatures? have one. Want a 10 mile long ski slope with death defying jumps over a 10 lane motorway? have one. What ever your imagination can conjure up, Mega City One can accomodate it.
Want to Know More?
Thanks of course go to Of Dice and Dragons for continuing to promote the RPG Blog Carnival. This is my 2nd entry and you can read the rest by clicking the RPG Blog Carnival tag below.
According to merriam-webster the definition of fantastic is:
- a : based on fantasy : not real
- b : conceived or seemingly conceived by unrestrained fancy
- c : so extreme as to challenge belief : unbelievable; broadly : exceedingly large or great
Mega City One
 |
| Mega City One Map |
Originally stretching across the entire Eastern seaboard of the once proud nation of the United States it was largely destroyed during the Apocalypse War and now is home to some 400 million citizens. It's western edge is bordered by a gigantic wall which protects it from the mutant inhabitants of the irradiated wasteland known as the Cursed Earth.
Architecture of Mega City One
The majority of Mega City One's citizens live in gigantic 1000 storey high Post Atomic Tower Blocks dominating the skyline. Nestled amongst these are smaller 500 storey blocks and puny 100 storey Pre-Atomic Blocks. The proximity of the blocks means that daylight cannot reach the lowest (and consequently) poorest levels of some blocks leaving them in permanent darkness and giving rise to the nickname "City Bottom". Much of what were once the shining corporate edifices of cities like New York has long ago been concreted over to form the foundations of these mega blocks and has created a subterranean "undercity" inhabited by a degenerate subhuman species of troglodytes.
Winding around and through all of these structures are a spaghetti like network of megways (roads), slidewalks (moving walkways) and pedways (pedestrian only) which allow citizens to move between blocks and other locations. Some of the citizens live in computer controlled mobile homes known as mo-pads which perpetually drive around cities megways.
 |
| Comparative Scales of Contemporary Buildings and a Mega City Block |
Life in Mega City One
Robot labour has largely replaced that of humans and unemployment runs at a staggering 87%. Most citizens try to find ways of aleviating boredom inevitably leading them to commit some sort of criminal activity which is dealt with swiftly by the city's law enforcers the judges.
This constant search for new ways to entertain oneself creates a steady stream of new crazes which sweep through Mega City like a plague (and are often just as deadly) and disappear just as rapidly leaving a swathe of destruction in their wake. The crazes which have graced the pages of Judge Dredd strips over the years are often influenced by contemporary fashions or pastimes, but taken to an extreme level For example body modification becomes crazes like fatties or uglies, extreme sports becomes crazes like boinging and skysurfing, even something as simple as being a pigeon fancier can be taken to the extreme when a "pigeon" is a giant prehistoric pterodactyl.
Living cheek by jowl can be stressful and there is always the chance that local rivalries will errupt into a full scale Block War between neighbouring blocks. Each block is equipped with its own militia (aka Citi Defence) in order to prevent large scale conflict from ensuing but they are sometimes as much of a problem as a solution. However, there are those citizens who just can't take living in such a crazy city are diagnosed as suffering from Future Shock Syndrome and end up taking their own lives and as many bystanders as they can.
Locations, Locations, Locations
The beauty of Mega City One is that it operates on a scale so vast that anything you can imagine might exist on an entire planet can exist within the walls of the city. Want a zoo stocked with terrifying alien creatures? have one. Want a 10 mile long ski slope with death defying jumps over a 10 lane motorway? have one. What ever your imagination can conjure up, Mega City One can accomodate it.
 |
| Mega City One as envisioned by artist Dave Taylor Judge Dredd © 2012 Rebellion Developments/2000AD Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra |
Want to Know More?
- The Judge Dredd Street Sim - Locations
- Lowlife: Creation Part Five: All The Joy I See Through These Architect's Eyes
- Making of Judge Dredd - Mega City 1 Miniature Model Props
- Barney - Kepper of the 2000AD Database
- Judge Minty - A Fan Film
Thanks of course go to Of Dice and Dragons for continuing to promote the RPG Blog Carnival. This is my 2nd entry and you can read the rest by clicking the RPG Blog Carnival tag below.
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