August 2012 RPG Blog Carnival - What's in your Backpack?

The Gassy Gnoll of Game Knight Reviews is hosting this month's RPG Blog Carnival and asks the question "What's in your Backpack?" to which I answer "Item Cards".

A sample of item cards - Available as a free PDF from RPG NOW

Now you may think that this is just a piece of blatant self promotion, but in reality this is a question which has plagued some of my (and possible your) games for years...

THE BACKPACK OF HOLDING

These non-magical backpacks, which are entirely indistinguishable from a normal backpack, bestow upon certain players the uncanny ability to pull out exactly the right item with which to execute their plan and save the day in the nick of time.  When challenged these players will often say that they've had the item for ages or that they bought it in that town they visited 6 months ago. 

In the interests of game play it is often best not to argue, but there are times when it can be detrimental to the natural flow of the plot and you need the party to have eaten their last lembas cake, supped their last drop of water or be confronted by the reality that they don't have a rope to their name when they've got a rope type dilemma.

ENCUMBERANCE IS A CHORE

As Berin Kingsman writes, the backpack is "an in-game manifestation of my least-favorite mechanic: encumbrance" and I've got to agree with him.  Maintaining your equipment list as a part of your character sheet is a downright chore but it also presents a few other problems.

1.  Character sheets are a player's preserve not the GM's - When GMing, I'm pretty busy and certainly don't have time to ensure that your equipment is in order and that you've been marking off your rations like a good little player, that's your job!!.  However, this is easily rectified through item cards.  Basically, if you can't produce it when challenged then tough, you simply don't have it.  You can't argue all you want that you left it in your other backpack or it's in the saddlebags on the horse which is currently enjoying a holiday in the dragon's belly, but you'll only look stupid in front of the other players.  This also cures the "infinite spell components" faux pas which affects most spellcaster PCs.

2.  PC thieves steal from other PCs, fact! - How many times has your party contained a kleptomaniac PC who likes to look through everyones gear, well now they can, safe in the knowledge that they won't see any secret annotations on the victim PCs character sheet.  Just hand them the contents of your backpack and let them rifle through to their hearts content.  Better still, do it secretly and the victim PC might not even notice that the item is gone.

3.  PCs lose stuff all the time - If you had a 300 year old heirloom sword you'd look after it right?  Not PCs, they leave these things on inn tables, in slain dragons, on the floor, under pillows, in fact everywhere other than in their scabbard or sword belt.  Now unless these weapons are magical hammers like Mjolnir, most will only return to their owners hand with the assistance of copious amounts of strong elastic, which the last time I looked wasn't in their backpack!! 

Again the item card comes to the rescue, when they lose an item they have to give it up to the GM and it is lost unless they make a concerted effort to find it.  This also goes for those clumsy characters who seem to find every ravine or cliff edge and then fall off it, you break it you lose it.

A Medieval Flint and Steel

4.  Finding stuff is fun and rewarding - Finding shiny stuff is a pleasure that can often become dull with time.  But you should see your players eyes light up when you give them a new card with a picture of a diamond necklace, or a +1 magic spoon of dining.  It's like watching a bunch of kids opening pokemon boosters, all their birthdays and christmasses have come at once. 

But seriously, having a representation of an item can also be incredibly useful and educational.  A fact I discovered Whilst researching the images for my item cards.  My preconceptions about what an item looked like or how it was used were frequently challenged.  Just take the common or garden flint and steel, for years I imagined a piece of flint and a knurled steel rod (just like I used when I was a boy scout), but the medieval version was actually hoop shaped and held in the fist like a knuckle duster.

Likewise, I find players treat their loot differently when they can visualise it with a jewellery card or a gemstone card.  You can even make items critical to your plot in the form of a key or the parts of a puzzle.  When I last ran "Challenge of Champions" I created item cards for each of items provided in each challenge which was an immense help to my players (who are not all card carrying D&D geeks) when they tried to solve the puzzles in real time.

5.  50' of hemp rope is pretty large and heavy - This is the bit of encumberance which is frankly a cludge, as it's usually interpreted  as a function of weight and not a factor of bulk.  Other items aren't easily stowed such as a 10 foot pole.  It only takes up one slot on an equipment list but it doesn't fit in a backpack which means it has to be either put together in sections or you have to hold it.  Which leads on to the next problem...

6.  PCs only have one pair of hands, usually - The classic faux pas of most players is that they're so busy fighting with a two-handed weapon they forget that they're still taking the AC bonus from their shield.  Item cards come in handy (pardon the pun) as a visual reminder of what their PC is holding at any one time, a concept familiar to Legend of Zelda players the world over.  The logical extension of this is for players to arrange their cards in a series of stacks as a visual reminder, I normally define this as the BACK (carried on your back) RIGHT (hand), LEFT (hand), WORN (on a belt or on your head) and STOWED (on a horse or in a backpack) stacks. 

This is a particularly useful mechanic when either entering or engaged in combat,  as player will need to decide what they are going to attack with before hand.  If they lose a weapon through a fumbled roll they may need to draw a different one.  Spellcasters and other non-combat specialists may become embroiled and have to use up combat rounds fishing about in a backpack for that wand or pot of greek fire that they want to use.  It really does make a difference to how your party treats combat.

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Thanks of course go to Of Dice and Dragons for continuing to promote the RPG Blog Carnival.  This is my 3rd entry and you can read the rest by clicking the RPG Blog Carnival tag below.

The Stainless Steel Rat is no more, RIP Harry Harrison

Stainless Steel Rat author Harry Harrison has passed away aged 87.  He will be sorely missed.

Stainless Steel Rat for President
2000AD Prog 393

Make: iPhone Dice Tower

iPhone 3G box - nicely sized for use
as a dice tower or dice box

Prepare to decouple

Decoupled!

Ready to nest

Nested and ready for action!!

Okay, so it's not a dice tower made out of actual iphones, rather just the extremely sturdy boxy it came in.  I stumbled on this instructable the other day and knocked this out in a lull between olympic events last night.   

My iphone 3G got stolen a couple of years ago and I still had the box, so i decided to put the box to good use.  The 3G box is considerably larger than either the 3GS or the iphone 4 boxes (as used in the instructable) and makes a more practicle dice tower and also doubles as a capacious dice box. 

I followed the general guide in the instructable, but as I wasn't using exactly the same box, I needed to fiddle with the dimensions of the opening hole.  I also elected to just go with one baffle which throws the dice forwards onto the cradle and then down onto the 45 degree baffle at the bottom.  I think that the second baffle's job is to slow down the dice, lessening bounce-out, so I would reccommend that you stick with the instructable and put 2 baffles in if you try this yourself. 

After construction I discovered that my hand was just a bit too podgy to comfortably retrieve the dice and the visibility from an observers point of view was also quite poor.

It was a trivial matter to trim the edges of the lid at a angle to rectify this whilst maintaining its function as a lid.  I also discovered during modification that there is enough material in the off-cuts to make your baffles.  It is entirely possible to construct the dice tower solely from the contents of the iphone box with no need to resort to scraps of foam board.  Of course you will still need the glue to hold the whole thing together.


The other advantage of the using an iphone 3G box is that it comes with foam pre-glued into the lid already, which dramtically reduces the chance of dice bouncing out. 

Cyberpunk: Appendix N - Inspirational and Educational Material

In the Gygaxian tradition here is my Appendix N for Cyberpunk, a list of the books, movies and anime which have inspired my cyberpunk adventures since first encountering it in the very late 80s.  Also available on Pinterest. 

Please do not treat this an exhaustive list of what is and isn't considered cyberpunk, these are just the things which have inspired me, I will probably add to it when I get access to the deep recesses of my cortex.

Cyberpunk - APPENDIX N: Inspirational and Educational Material

BOOKS

• William Gibson - Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero,  Mona Lisa Overdrive), Bridge trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties)
• George Alec Effinger - Marid Audran series (When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, The Exile Kiss)
• Walter John Williams - Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind
• Bruce Sterling - Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (Editor and contibuting author), Islands in the Net
• Ian Hamilton - Fallen Dragon
• Ian Mcdonald - River of Gods
• Cory Doctorow - Makers
• Justina Robson - Keeping it Real
• Charles Stross - Halting State
• John Brunner - The Shockwave Rider
• John Courtney Grimwood -  reMix, redRobe,  
• Jack Womack - Terraplane 
• Jeff Noon - Vurt, Pollen
• W.T. Quick - Dreams of Flesh and Sand

MOVIES

• Æon Flux (2005)
• A Scanner Darkly (2006)
• Blade Runner (1982)
• Dark City (1998)
• Equilibrium (2002)
• Escape From New York (1981)
• eXistenz (1999) 
• Gantz (2010)
• Gattaca (1997)
• Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
• Max Headroom (1985)
• Minority Report (2002)
• Priest (2011)
• Repo Men (2010)
• Returner (2002)
• Robocop (1987)
• Sleep Dealer (2008)
• Southland Tales (2006)
• Strange Days (1995)
• Surrogates (2009)
• Total Recall (1990)
• Ultraviolet (2006)
• Videodrome (1983)
• Virtuosity (1995)

ANIME

• AD Police (1999)
• Æon Flux (1991)
• Akira (1988)
• Appleseed (2004)
• Appleseed: Ex Machina (2007)
• Cowboy Bebop (Series) (1998)
• Ghost in the Shell (1995)
• Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002)
• Vexille (2007)

NSFW Movie Double Bubble - Cobra The Space Pirate and Cockneys vs Zombies

The classic 80s adult themed anime Space Adventure Cobra gets a live action movie directed by Alexander Aja (Piranha, The Hills Have Eyes).  Scheduled for 2013 there are no details other than this sweet poster.  I could be mistaken, but is that David Wenham (300, Van Helsing, Lord of The Rings, Australia)  posing as Cobra, I do hope so, cos he's a great character actor.

Thanks to the Troll Lord Stephen Chenault, for finding the trailer for Cockneys vs Zombies which if you haven't seen it is here.



Michelle Ryan (Eastenders) leads an unlikely ensemble cast including Alan Ford (aka Bricktop), Honor Blackman (aka Pussy Galore) and Richard Briers (aka Tom Goode) in a tale of Eastend bankrobbers going toe-to-stump with the walking dead.  Looks like a riot.

I'm no Eastender but isn't cockney rhyming slang for zombies, Stale Bread ... Walking Dead?

Help Save Great Sci-Fi for the Future

Roger Zelany's "Damnation Alley"

Savethescifi.com is a great sounding startup which aims to preserve out of print vintage sci-fi novels by turning them into e-books.  It's certainly an interesting business model and a worthy cause which has support from noted authors Neil Gaiman and Ken Macleod. 

Essentially as a subscriber you will help to choose which books they acquire the rights to and you get it as part of your membership.  The small team of 3 "time-travelling archivists" aim to save at least 1 book a month and they already have a list of some quite suprising candidates in the shape of:
 
Roger Zelazny's "Damnation Alley", Poul Anderson's "Day of their Return", "Mayday Orbit" and "Go Home, Earthman!", Arthur C Clarke's "Imperial Earth" and  Michael Moorcock's "The Final Programme".

There is also a plan to launch a new Brooklyn bookstore where you can buy the saved works (and others) in dead tree format do help join the this and save some sci-fi books from being lost in the future.

10 Reasons Why D&D is better than an MMORPG

Bill Cavalier

1.  D&D doesn't crash hang or lag
2.  D&D doesn't have gold farmers
3.  D&D minions don't respawn
4.  D&D doen't need an internet connection or a subscription
5.  D&D graphics are the best you can imagine
6.  D&D lets you rewrite its bugs yourself
7.  D&D has the best plots you can imagine
8.  D&D doesn't become obsolete, just unfashionable
9.  D&D has an infinite number of hours play
10.  D&D doesn't have cheat codes

Thanks to Bill Cavalier's latest video "The Stingy DM" for the inspiration.

My Fighting Monks are Benders... discuss

In my experience, when a party is being assembled, the fighting monk is always the guy that gets picked last (even after the gnome).  

An Earth style mage using
Earth Fist Technique

Although monks are competent fighters and have a few neat abilities at higher levels, they always lose out in favour of a cleric because of their lack of magic.  This is a bit of a contradiction when considering that in most wuxia movies monks are kick ass characters full of mystical know-how.  In the Avatar anime franchise specifically, they are are masters of the four great elemental forces of air fire wind and water. 

In my recent Castle and Crusades campaign, when one of my players (a self confessed street fighter fanboy) decided he wanted to play something different,  I thought it would be nice to apply this Avatar concept on a new character class.  Luckily for me, I made a concious choice in the design stages of The Lands of Dual to create all of the landmasses first and then allocate cultural memes to each of them.  This enabled me to apply any of the associated mythologies and styles as I saw fit whilst simultaneously restricting any game destabilising effects to just one locale (in case they got out of hand).

One of these memes was that of the Feudal China seen in hundreds of Wuxia movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or House of Flying Daggers.  The island of Huang-Zua is my attempt to combine all of my favourite wuxia memes in one place and so it has become the home to the mystical Martial Mage's who use their mastery of fighting techniques to shape elemental forces to their will. 

The Martial Mage

Prime Attributes: Intelligence & Strength
Race: Human only (Huang-Zua)
Starting Gold: 30-120gp
Hit Die: d12
Alignment: Neutral Good or Neutral Evil
Weapons: None
Armour: None
Abilities: Unarmed Attack (as monk), Elemental spell-like abilities (as below)

The Four Elements, Styles and Schools of Martial Mages

Every Martial-Mage adopts a fighting style related to one of the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire or Water) and is taught how to use that styles techniques in one of four fighting schools.  Only that school can teach the secrets of their fighting style and their is fierce rivalry between all four schools.  It is forbidden to practise more than one school of fighting at a time although each fighting school's archive contains accounts of one or more styles being practised simultaneously by their ancient masters.

The Techniques

In the Avatar series, all the manifestations of this elemental power are triggered by a series of fighting moves and in RPG terms a conventional ranged touch attack is required in almost every instance.  This retricts the spell casting abilities of the Martial Mage character to use in solely in combat, but also distinguishes it as a class from other spell casters.

Avatar Fan-art by DeviantART user slifertheskydragon

Likewise, in order to perform any of the techniques a martial-mage must have access to a source of elemental material matching their fighting style.  For example, a water style martial-mage must have access to a suitable volume of water.  This makes some fighting styles difficult or even impossible to use in certain environments, for example a water style mage would find it extremely hard to use their techniques in a desert, and fire and air style mages would both find using their techniques almost impossible whilst submerged.

ELEMENTAL FIST (Level 1)
Duration: Instant	SAVE: NO
Description and Damage
When using this attack the casters hands are enveloped by elemental material. A successful melee attack inflicts 1d6 +1 per level of damage to the target.

ELEMENTAL STRIKE (Level 2)
Duration: Instant	SAVE: NO
Description and Damage
When using this attack the caster shapes a ball of elemental material into a 1ft diameter ball. Upon a successful ranged touch attack, they can fire this ball upto 100ft at a single target inflicting 1d6 +1 per level of damage.

ELEMENTAL SHIELD (Level 3)
Duration: 1 Turn / level	SAVE: NO
Description and Damage
This technique allows the caster to form a ball of elemental material into a free floating disc approximately 6ft in diameter which they can move around their body at will like a shield. This affords them a +3 AC bonus against all attacks directed at them during melee and missile combat. This also affects spells which require a successful touch attack, those that automatically hit are unnafected.

ELEMENTAL SHARDS (Level 4)
Duration: Instant	SAVE: NO
Description and Damage
When using this attack the Martial Mage collects and shapes an amount of elemental material into a 1ft diameter ball. Upon a successful ranged touch attack, they can fire a barrage of shards in a 20ft wide, 100ft long cone inflicting 1d6 +1 per level of damage to anyone caught in the cone.

ELEMENTAL STEED (Level 5)
Duration: 1 Hour / level	SAVE: N/A
Description and Damage
This technique allows the caster to create a spinning ball of elemental material which can be ridden much like a horse or other beast of burden. The ball can move in any direction at a speed of 5mph / level of caster. Any change in direction or speed requires a DEX save to avoid falling off.

ELEMENTAL BLAST (Level 6)
Duration: Instant	SAVE: DEX
Description and Damage
By using the stomp technique a Martial Mage emits a shockwave of his chosen element material in a 50ft radius sphere around him. This shockwave does no damage but all targets within the blast radius (including those flying) must make a DEX (with a +1 difficulty modifier per level of caster) save or be immediately knocked to the ground.. Alternatively a mage can direct the stomp technique at a single target up to 100ft away.

ELEMENTAL CAGE (Level 7)
Duration: Instant	SAVE: DEX
Description and Damage
After making a successful ranged touch attack, this technique allows the caster to surround the target with a mass of elemental material unless they make a DEX save (with a +1 difficulty modifier per level of caster). Targets who are successfully captured can also break free on a successful STR save (with a +1 difficulty modifier per level of caster)

ELEMENTAL WALL (Level 8)
Duration: 1 Hour / level	SAVE: DEX
Description and Damage
When using this technique a Martial Mage shapes a wall of his chosen elements material into a 50ft high, 10ft thick wall upto 100ft in length directly in front of him. Any targets caught in the path of the wall who fail a DEX (with a +1 difficulty modifier per level of caster) save will be hit by the wall (causing 1d6+1 per level damage) and be pushed out of the way in the direction that the wall is growing. In the case of Air and Water Style, the wall can be as transparent as the mage wishes, however in the case of the Earth and Fire the wall can only ever be opaque. The wall is impervious to all attacks other than those which take the form of the same element which do half damage.

ELEMENTAL SPHERE (Level 9)
Duration: 1 Round / Level	SAVE: N/A
Description and Damage
The caster surrounds himself with a 10 ft diameter sphere of elemental material which is impervious to all attacks other than those which take the form of the same element which do half damage. Whilst maintaining the sphere the caster cannot attack or perform any other action.

ELEMENTAL FLIGHT (Level 10)
Duration: 1 Hour / level	SAVE: N/A
Description and Damage
Using this technique the Martial Mage can achieve flight. For Earth and Water styles this is achieved by creating a disc of material underneath the caster which is then levitated vertically and horizontally in the air. In the case of Fire and Air styles, jets of material are emitted from the casters hands and or feet which propel the user vertically or horizontally. The caster can accelerate or decelerate at upto 10 Mph per level and achieve a maximum height of 1,000ft per level.

Read an RPG in Public Week

Today, in memory of Gary Gygax's Birthday, I took a stroll along the river and read an RPG in public.

Reading Diana Warrior Princess by Marcus L Rowland

Not 5 minutes later this little lot rowed by...

Royal Barge "Gloriana" carrying the Olympic Torch along the river Thames
(click to embiggen)

... which was nice

The Boys are Back!!

The first trailer for the new series of Red Dwarf is out and by the looks of it the Boys from the Dwarf are on top form.

Congratulations Bradley Wiggins...

I've just watched Bradley Wiggins become the first British rider to win the Tour de France, the world's most gruelling bicycle race covering 4,000km over 21 days.  Congratulations to Bradley and all the other members of team SKY who helped make this possible.

Bradley Wiggins leads out Mark Cavendish during the final lap of stage 20 of the 2012 Tour de France

What has this got to do with roleplay you ask, "plot and decoration" I say, and an excuse for a rambly article about sports in RPGs.

Sporting events have featured throughout all the ages of history in some form or another and there's no reason why they cannot be incorporated into any RPG scenario when the PCs enter a new town or village. 


Medieval Sports

Victorians are often credited with inventing "leisure time" but it is estimated that medieval peasants had up to 8 weeks holiday a year, during which they engaged in a range of games and sporting activities such as:

Archery - In "The Assize of Arms" of 1252, King Henry III, mandated that every Englishman between the ages of 15 to 60 equipped themselves with a bow and arrows. In 1363, Edward III, Passed the Archery Law obliging all Englishmen to practise with their longbow every Sunday and holiday.  Needless to say archery competitions were very popular and should be a staple of any pseudo medieval fantasy game.

Bowls - Medieval bowls was a simple game of throwing a ball at a target, this illustration from the Bodliean library, shows a group of peasants taking turns throwing a bowl at a feather stuck in the ground. So popular was the game that In 1366 Edward III outlawed it as it had become a distraction from Archery practise. Edward IV issued a similar edict in 1477 against a range of pastimes such as "bowles, closh, kayles, hand-in and hand-out".

Feather-bowling (Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Douce, 275, f. r12)

Boxing - Traces its origins to the Pankration of Ancient Greece where early pugilists wrapped their hands with leather thongs leaving their fingers free.  Romany Gypsies often resolve family disputes in bouts of bare knuckle fighting and there is no reason why these should not feature in the arsenal of every DM either to prove a PCs mettle or just to earn a few silver pieces when the times get tough.

Colf - The game of Golf has its origins in a much simpler version where contestants tried to hit a ball at a target such as a tree, with a wooden club.  The winner being the player who hit the target in the least number of strikes.

Gameball - Many games are considered to be the progenitor of football, but my favourite example is that of gameball and the report of a match played in the village of Ulgham, Northumberland in 1280, which resulted in a player being killed after running onto an opponents dagger.  Sounds more like Bloodbowl than football to me and could be a great opener for a murderous plot..

Henry VIII throwing a sledge hammer

Hammer-Throwing - This olympic event can trace its origins all the way back to the Tailteann games held in Ireland in 1829 BC.  Even the young Henry VIII is said to have enjoyed the sport.  I expect that every Dwarf in the Known (and unknown) Kingdoms to have a penchant for this sport.

Hurling or Shinty - Another Gaelic sport which can trace its origins back 3000 years. 

Horseshoes - Given that every village worth its salt would have at least two things, an Inn and a Blacksmith, it's inevitable that someone would invent a game which involved throwing old horseshoes at a target.

Horse Racing - The chariot races of ancient Rome had long since died out and by the Middle Ages, equestrian sport was largely confined to using horses in jousting tournaments, although I find it hard to believe that races between bored rich nobles did not take place in Medieval England.  However, on the continent the Palio di Sienna can trace its origins back to 1590 when the then Grand Duke of Tuscany outlawed bull fighting and so the population took to racing buffalo and donkeys around the piazza.  Those crazy europeans...

Palio di Sienna

Jousting Tournaments - The joust has its origins in the Gladiatrial Arenas of Rome, the word joust is actually derived from the Latin 'Juxtare' (to meet together).  By the Middle Ages these had formalised into one of two forms, the Joust a Plaisance, an organised tournament taking place over several days with several elimination rounds or the Pas d'armes, where a Knight would advertise for combatants from the local area and then take on all challengers at once in a single bout.  Could your Knight or Paladin resist the temptation to sign up if they found one of these adverts nailed to a tree?

Quarter-staff Contests - The Robin Hood vs Little John duel is probably the most famous example of a quarter-staff contest in popular culture.  The rules for such contests are unknown but by Elizabethan times these had evolved into a contest between two people similar to fencing.  Examples of a range of polearm fighting techniques are graphically illustrated in the 1459 Fechtbücher (literally Fight Book) "Alte Armatur und Ringkunst" written by the fencing master Hans Talhoffer (An online version of the which is available courtesy of the Royal Library, Copenhagen).

Skittles - The ancestor of modern ten-pin bowling which shares its origins with bowls and other ground billiards games.  An example of a skittles set was found in the tomb of an Egyptian child dating from 2000BC.  In England this was mostly an indoor game played in a wood or clay floored alley with many local rule variations.  For bored PCs what else is there to do in a tavern when you don't feel like quaffing or listening to that rubbish bard?

Stoolball - An ancestor of Cricket, originally played between two "wickets" made from the seats of stools hung from trees or fixed to poles approximately 16 feet apart.  The object of the game was for the bowler to attempt to hit the stool whilst the batter defended with a paddle shaped bat scoring a point for each delivery defended.  A game which has clearly stood the test of time, as a formalised version is still played today.

A game of medieval Stoolball

Wrestling - One of history's most ancient sporting contests which needs little explanation.

The Challenge of Champions
The Challenge of Champions series of scenarios (published in Dungeon issues #58, #69, #80, #91, #108 and #138) by Jonathan M Richards pits a party of 4 players against a series of D&D puzzles with specific challenges for fighter, priest, wizard and thief classes.  They are a lot of fun for the players and can be a great way to put a party of disparate PCs together at the start of a game.

When Will this Plastic Film Revolutionise my Gaming Experience?

Unless you've been hiding in a deep dark cave for the past couple of years you can't have failed to notice the advances that have been made in Virtual Table Top technologies.  Microsoft captured peoples imaginations a while back when they demo'd their Surface project.  Since then there's been an explosion in VTT software offerings from the likes of Battlegrounds, Fantasygrounds, Maptool and a host of others (far too long a list for this article but this wiki has them all) but the display technology has been lagging behind a bit.

For me the VTT has always been about the marriage of old school play with new technology.  It's no good having a great bit of software if you have to carry a 50 inch LCD screen around with you when you want to play.  Likewise I don't really want to push virtual miniatures around on the screen I want real ones which interact with the display.

Cambridge based research lab, Plastic Logic, is aiming to produce its flexible plastic display in their Dresden factory sometime in 2013.  This display meets half of my needs in that it is incredibly robust as demonstrated in this video, but it really needs multi-touch or RFID to be a success.



As the iPad has demonstrated, people aren't content with just watching their display anymore, they want to touch it, and the real market for this type of display is to be an inexpensive e-reader capable of displaying your daily newspaper.  I for one will quite happily jump on that bandwagon when it arrives.  Once they've successfully integrated the multi-touch capabilities into the plastic film (which shouldn't be that far away) you really would have limitless potential for the display to be used as a portable VTT.

In the meantime I guess I'll have to satisfy myself with Dungeon Mapp Lite, my iPad and a good quality screen protector.

Dungeon Mapp Lite on iPad

P.S. For a more indepth look at the technology, watch as BBC's Spencer Kelly gets to look inside the lab to see how Plastic Logic's flexible display is made.

On hitting the big 4 - 0

This year was a landmark birthday for me as I hit the big 4-0... Ouch.

Blood Bowl Team Manager The Card Game

However, my work colleagues bought me some Forbidden Planet vouchers which I promptly blew on Fantasy Flight's Blood Bowl Team Manager the card game.  The game attempts to recreate the fun of Games Workshop's classic Bloodbowl but rather than being a focusing on just one match between two teams, it follows an entire 5 week season of matches with up to 4 teams battling it out in the Blood Bowl Tournament. 

Tonight, I bribed my step-daughter into playing the first game with me (so I could learn the rules) by promising to do the washing up for her.  She wasn't too keen with either the theme or the complexity until she started to get to grips with using the powers on her team upgrade cards and then proceeded to beat my human team with her orcs.

I loved the fact that the matches are boiled down to just the weeks highlights, which sportsfans will recognise as homages to the weekly round-ups on ESPN.  This mechanic forces players to make choices about which cards to play in which highlight in order to maximise their chances of getting rewards such as team or staff upgrades, fans or being able to draft star players.

Although I've only played this game once it does manage to capture some of the flavour of the original game and features some of the famous star players like Morg 'N' Thorg and the Dwarven Death Roller.  It plays quite quickly (our game took slightly less than 90 minutes including reading the rules) and has a nice level of randomness.  Needless to say I loved it and am itching to don my spiked helmet and give it another go very, very soon.  8/10 - Spiketastic

P.S.  There are some great tutorials out there on how to play the game from the team at Fantasy Flight and Crits Happen and a review from the always excellent Tom Vassel's The Dice Tower

Apple Security Questions: aka Choose This Adventure!!

I was so incensed this morning with Apple's ridiculous Apple ID security questions and the lack of sensible choices it provoked me to ranting.

When offering choices for security questions they have to:

1.  PROVOKE CONSISTENT ANSWERS - The best security question always has only 1 answer and a person should be able to answer with 100% reliability consistently.  Asking someone "What is your favourite car you have owned?" may have an answer which changes over time, you could easily buy a new car next week and your preference may change.


2.  PEOPLE FORGET - Fact is we are all getting older and our memories fail us, so asking a teenager "What is the name of you first teacher?" will likely provoke a consistent response more frequently than a 40 year old.

3.  PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES - Even though we are all sharing in this global digital experiment they call the Internets, our personal experiences are different depending on our age, sex, nationality and culture.  Ask a person from India "What is the first car you have owned?" and they may never have owned a car.  If subsequent question choices always contain one car question then you have dramatically reduced their options for selecting a question that they can reliably answer in a consistent fashion (see 1 above).

4.  IF YOU'RE GOING TO FORCE PEOPLE TO SUPPLY 3 DIFFERENT ANSWERS DON'T HAVE QUESTIONS WHICH CAN PROVOKE THE SAME ANSWERS - If you ask "What was your first car?" and then in another question "What was your favourite car?" don't be suprised if people choose the same answer!!  They may have only ever owned one car, but more importantly people often have a fondness for their first of any experience.  I can remember the number plate of my very first car almost 20 years ago yet I can't remember the number plate the car that I own now!!

What annoyed me most is that there was simply no reason for this to happen, and it wouldn't if Steve Jobs had gotten wind of it.  The content of the question and it's answer are entirely irrelevant and merely exist as a way to provoke a validateable response in 100% of cases.  Therefore the only logical method is to is ask your users to write their own questions and answers and not to force them to choose between your choices in an Adventure Gamebook style!

Two Birds, One Stone

Buy it on eBay

On Good Friday I stepped into the breach to run a filler game whilst our regular DM was absent, and I used the opportunity to complete two firsts.

One was to run a game of TOON RPG, which I enjoyed playing for the first time a few months back, at Dragonmeet 2011 and the other was to attempt to GM my first session using an iPad.

TOON

Having only played TOON was no real barrier to GMing, but I did kind of struggle with writing the scenario until I found THE TOON ADVENTURE GENERATOR in my copy of TOON SILLY STUFF. 

Clearly, I was overthinking this whole thing and as I recalled the game I played, the players pretty much drove the whole plot with their character choices and actions. 

With this in mind I just came up with the plot synopsis:

Save The Cows Save The World The PCs are all farmyard animals who have to save the cows on their farm from being rustled by an invading Martian with a penchant for strawberry milk shakes.  - Download it Today

I grabbed an image of a farmyard from googleimages and drew a rough map in inkscape to give the players an idea of what was on the farm.  This then gave me enough to start fleshing out some of the zones to give the players enough ammunition (literally) to see off the bad guys.  This was then converted into a PDF and loaded onto the ipad. 

A quick search of the interweb rustled up MP3s of the opening and closing credits for Looney Tunes which would help get my players into the mood.  I also stumbled on a great site with some free sound effects (http://www.freesfx.co.uk/) which I hoped to use during play and these were installed in the usual way via iTunes.

Using the iPAD

I've been trialling a few RPG apps on the iPad (which I'll cover in another post), but the most useful ability is to read and annotate PDFs and after a few false starts I found eDocReader Multiple PDF.  As the name suggests this app allows you to open multiple PDFs at the same time as tabs in the same application, allowing you to have a copy of the rules open as well as your scenario.  The simple annotation tools enable you to make notes directly onto your scenario by either typing or writing with a finger or stylus.

The Experience

The game ran very smoothly which was surprising as all my players were TOON newbies, but from the opening credits to the "that's all folks" they let their imaginations run riot.  The PCs were a duck billed platypus in search of a mate, a dumb but incredibly fast guard dog whose kennel sat atop a subterranean hi-tech lair, a machinating pig who had been ordering ACME products for years and last but not least a bull whose sole mission was to impress the 5 dairy cows with his muscle poses.

All the classic cartoon capers occurred; the pig dressed up as a female Martian to woo the bad guy into eating strawberry looking grenades, the bull became enraged by anything red and broke open the yellow barn to reveal an Indiana Jones style warehouse full of ACME crates, the platypus dropped a gigantic fake bomb on the pond squishing the piranha and the dog and his Martian double ended up having one of those cloud fist fights.

However, the playback of MP3s in the Music app was troublesome, particularly having to stop the iPad from playing the entire playlist.  There are lots (and I mean lots) of SFX pad apps in the appstore but no free ones that allow you to allocate your own custom sounds to buttons as triggers (please correct me if I'm wrong).  I am also on the hunt for ways of embedding sounds into my scenario PDFs so I can play them back from within the PDF Reader as I read out the relevant description text.

Although this first experience wasn't an unquallified success, the main advantage with the iPad is that you can GM with just an iPad and a few player handouts, so the days of carrying whole libraries of books around with you everytime you want to run a game are definitely over.  My new motto from now on will be "Have iPad... will GM".

Tabletop!: Wil Wheaton Hosts New Celebrity Gaming Show

Here's a trailer for Wil Wheaton's new web show on Geek & Sundry which airs on Monday 2nd April.



"Celebs" I spotted:

• Colin Ferguson - Eureka
• Grant Imahara - Mythbusters
• Felicia Day - The Guild

My response to 20 Quick Questions

My responses to the 20 Quick Questions posed by Brendan over at Untimateley

1.  Ability scores generation method? 

3d6 allocated as you wish (unmodified rolls below 7 are ignored as they're not heroic enough) if you don't meet a class minimum I'll allow a couple of points to be traded between stats.  If a modified score drops to 7 or below as a result of age or race modifiers then it stays.

2.  How are death and dying handled?

If a PC was trying to do something stupid or after repeated DM warnings then they'll most likely die.  If it was something heroic or their PC background compelled them then they'll probably live... Maybe.  As soon as you hit 0 HP you are considered incapacitated, go below that and you are dying of bloodloss at -1HP per turn until you hit -10 HP were you are dead.  A heal or a first aid can bring you back to 0 HP from where you can heal normally or magically.  Restoration of missing body parts can only be done through magical or divine means. 

3.  What about raising the dead?

Absolutely, but its hard, rare and usually against the law.  If it happens to a PC then then they will return with an extra quirk which, as the DM, I can use to compel the character.  After all, the Reaper must always be paid.

4.  How are replacement PCs handled?

I don't tend to kill off pcs (as a result of Q2) but if it happens then they will have to play an NPC until there's a suitable plot point to inject the character of their choice.  I will often suggest a class to play depending on the party dynamic/class mix or if the dead PCs player was actually trying to play a different class when their PC died.

5.  Initiative: individual, group, or something else?

I use record cards to track combat so every PC gets to roll their own initiative.  Major NPCs get their own individual cards but minion NPCs and monsters who attack in groups only get one card and therefore one initiative roll.  I allow PCs to hold their action, but their card (and consequently) will get placed back into the initiative stack in this new order and stays there unless they hold their action again until the beginning of the next combat round.  As a result they will effectively miss a combat action, but this effecitively models them "waiting for an opportunity" and is a suitable penalty for making me work harder.
 
6.  Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work?

Yes.  PCs get critical hits and fumbles on rolls of natural 20 and 1 respectively, Monsters and NPCs can never score critical hits, only fumbles.  I don't adjust these target values by weapon type but skills and abilities such as marksman or battlerage may lower the critical target to 19 or at very best 18, fumble targets only ever get raised above 1 if the PC is subject to a bad luck curse.  I use my Decision Deck to suggest a theatrical effect for both critical hit and fumble which I can modify depending on the weapon or attack used.  The decision deck effects are ranked in three grades minor, major and fatal and range from just missing an action or being stunned for a few rounds to losing a an eye, limb or being eviscerated on the spot.

7.  Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet?

Yes, you get an armour bonus but there can be other non combat advantages such as disguise bonuses or if they are of horrific or terrible design, bonuses to intimidate or opposed morale checks when worn.

8.  Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly?

You bet, but I will stop short of allowing your stupidity to kill another player, let's hope you don't fumble though.

9.  Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything?

Most encounters are designed to be challenging for the players, but utimately achievable.  However, if the plot requires, for example, that they have a certain artifact in order to defeat the major boss then they'll have to run away.  I occassionally "steer" my players towards a solution by using an impending massively scaled threat, but these are few and far between.

10.  Level-draining monsters: yes or no?

To be fair I've not tried it so far as I've always thought it an administrative nightmare, but I liked Tim Brannan's recent article on the subject Undead: I don't like Level Drain and am itching to give his suggestions a go.

11.  Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death?

No, partly as a result of observing the "rule of stupid" (see Q2) and partly because I hate entirely random deaths.  Anecdote Alert: I once played this sci-fi game where immediately after we had spent an hour rolling up characters we were began teleporting down to the surface of a planet.  The DM said that the teleporter was not 100% effective and lo and behold a PC fumbled their roll (which the DM actually rolled anyway) and they got turned inside out.  What the DM thought they were achieving by doing this is unknown, but what they actually achieved was a 20 minute lag for everyone whilst the unfortunate player rolled up another character.

12.  How strictly are encumbrance & resources tracked?

I have recently taken to using my Item Cards to track PCs equipment but this is mostly so that players manage the items that they've got in their hands, are wearing or have stowed in backpacks (or in their saddlebags which are on their horse which is outside the dungeon (or in the dragons belly!!)).  Each card has a relative encumberance value and from time to time I check the total encumberance and the number of cards.
   
13.  What's required when my PC gains a level? Training? Do I get new spells automatically? Can it happen in the middle of an adventure, or do I have to wait for down time?

I tend to award XP in the natural lulls between sections of a campaign.  Spellcasters will acquire new spells or prayers as and when they encounter other spellcasters or find tomes containing them.  These may be of a level above that which they can cast and they will only be able to add it to their spell or prayer book, casting will have to wait until they level up.  Similar things can happen for new feats or abilities for other classes.  Fighters and rogues may meet an NPC who teaches you a new combat move or a new technique for lock picking but you want be able to take advantage of this new found knowledge until you've levelled up.

14.  What do I get experience for?

Everything you do, I believe XP should not be awarded just for killing things, in fact there are times when penalties should be awarded for this.  If the plot demands that an NPC is captured alive rather than killed, I prefer to award full XP only if they achieve this, half or no XP will be awarded if they end up killing them.  "Roleplaying" awards are generally given for interesting or successful non combat encounters or for discovering clues and progressing the plot.  Making me laugh is a sure fire way to gain XP.

15.  How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some Combination? 

PCs make spot hidden object or search rolls. PCs can suggest the type of trap they are looking for and I modify the target number if they are warm or cold.

16.  Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work?

I don't encourage or discourage them.  They tend to be expendable level 0 NPCs which I control or if every party member has one I'll make sure that each player plays someone else's retainer.  Their Morale will be based on a D20 roll under their WISDOM score.

17.  How do I identify magic items?

This largely depends on your class.  Spellcasters can obviously use Detect Magic spell but rogues can use evaluate or local knowledge or rumor to research the history of an item which may reveal that it has some additional magical aspects.  In both cases you will never truly know what an item or artifact does until you try to use it

18.  Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions?

Absolutely, if you can find Ye Olde Magick Shoppe.  I prefer that some magical things are not solely the preserve of Mages, so Scribes, Apothecaries, Priests, Monks, Druids and Alchemists may also be able to knock up potions of healing, wards, scrolls or other such items.

19.  Can I create magic items? When and how?

Yes, if creation can easily be worked into the regular game sessions, otherwise it's reserved for non-game time between campaigns.  I'm happy for a player to retire their character in the middle of a campaign if they absolutely have to but they run the risk of the party never returning to that location again.  This has not happened to me so far.

20.  What about splitting the party?

All the time, I don't try to force party cohesion, some classes work best when they are working alone.  When in cities it is often necessary for you to investigate several leads at once.  If there's going to be a big battle then try to bring everyone together for the best chance of success. 

I am often reminded of the standard Dr. Who plot exposition which goes like this: Tardis lands on planet, Doctor and assistant get split up and each find a group of protagonists.  An event occurs and the Doctor and Assistant swap groups of protagonists.  Doctor reunites with assistant and they determine which group of protagonists are Good or Evil.  Doctor and Assistant side with Good protagonists and defeat evil or unite protagonist groups.

Roleplay Geek Publishing - New Product - Sci-Fi Scenics Set 1 - Hover Taxi and Hover Car

RGP is proud to announce the first in a new line of Paper Miniatures with the release of RGP011 - Sci-Fi Scenics Set 1: Hover Taxi and Hover Car.

Populate your street scene and spice up your firefight with this papercraft hovercar suitable for any sci-fi roleplaying game such as Cyberpunk, Traveller or Judge Dredd.  8 different colour variants available (1 vehicle per sheet) including:

• Yellow Taxi Cab
• Orange
• Red
• Green
• Blue
• Purple
• Grey
• White

all for the low, low price of only $1 dollar!! (that's 63p in old money)

Fantasy Mass Transit - A Technology Too Far?

A warforged hangs from the gondola of an airship as a
Lightning Rail loco passes below (artist unknown)

In his recent article, The Architect DM: Seven Wonders of Your World, Danny Rupp highlights the Lightning Rail from the Eberron setting as an example of a World Wonder.  As I was largely ignorant of the detail of the Eberron setting I did a little more research and was both intrigued and horrified in equal measure by this concept.

As I've written before, in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting personal mobility is generally restricted to a couple of days walk and even those who own horses don't tend to travel long distances unless they have a pressing need.    Long arduous journeys or quests to find this artifact or that magical location are the stock-in-trade of the fantasy novel and it is often the journey itself, not the final destination that defines the hero.

In Charlie Jane Ander's round-up of the 10 worst mistakes that Alternate History Authors Make, author Terry Bisson states that "if you don't bring your alternate history up to the reader's present, then you leave out half the fun".  Whilst I agree that this often the case with Sci-Fi and especially with the alternate history subgenre, it is not the case with fantasy literature.  In fact introducing some relatively mudane modern day solutions into a medieval setting can have disastrous effects.  

Although attractive as both a plot generator and as a mechanism for swiftly moving PCs from one location to the next, a system like The Lightning Rail (even if access to it is heavily controlled) opens up a whole new can of worms in that it also ushers in an age of mass transit in the same way that the real railways did in the 1830s.  With mass transit comes huge socio-economic upheaval as people inevitably migrate towards cities and goods suddenly become cheaper as transport costs are reduced.  Consequently cities will gradually expand in size, usurping nearby land which no longer needs to be used as farm land because produce can be brought in just as cheaply from further afield.  This is just the start. 


As always there is the "exception that proves the rule" and in this case it would be a setting which has suffered some form of technological regression.  There are often pieces of working ancient technology to which access is heavily controlled and the knowledge of its operation is usually forbidden by some form of techno-priesthood and the population will often rationalise this as being magical or divine.

A couple of good examples of this being:

Orson Scott Card's Memory of Earth features an Artificial Intelligence (which the population call the Oversoul) which uses mind control to prohibit access to ideas which will ultimately lead to the development of self destructive technologies.  In this way he allows access to things like electricity and magnetism but avoids the wheel and the industrial revolution arguing that they ultimately lead to the development of war machines.

In his novel Cat Karina, Michael G Coney uses a sail driven monorail concept, which utilises the remnants of technology left behind by a previous human civilisation.  A religious belief system prohibits the use of manufacturing and power systems which would ultimately lead to the development of faster, better "trains" and stems the onset of any transport revolution that might ensue.

RPG Papercraft: Judge Dredd H Wagon and Riot Tank

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted anything as I've been busy papercrafting again.  In honour of the 35th Anniversary of Judge Dredd, here's some photos of the prototype H-Wagon (and Riot Tank variant) I've designed for my upcoming Judge Dredd game.

UPDATE:  I've now created a 3D printable H-Wagon for use with 15mm sci-fi miniatures.

H-Wagon configuration - Front Quarter(The interior floorpan measures 3" x 2")

H-Wagon configuration - Rear Quarter
(The model will come with six detail boxes
which can be glued anywhere you like)

H-Wagon configuration - Underside (showing off the grav plates detail)

Riot Tank Configuration  (the tank "lid" just slots in place, so you get 2 models for the price of one)
 

The Ages of D&D: A Timeline v3

By popular demand version 3

Click on the image to embiggen

You can also download a really big version from 4shared.

So what's the point? I hear you ask.  Well, I just wanted to see where I fitted into this whole D&D universe and I have so far come to the conclusions that:

I am definitely of the 2nd Age of D&D, I cut my teeth on 2nd Edition AD&D and my favourite campaign setting is Al-Quadim (precisely because it is the most alien campaign world to most players).  I was a late adopter of 3/3.5 and for me it didn't have the same hold on me as 2nd Edition (for all its failings).  I have played a demo of 4e and am unlikely to buy it given that D&D Next is on the horizon.

The lifespans of D&D editions have become shorter, whether or not this is as a result of commercial pressure, is hard to say as there is evidence to suggest that D&D has always had more editions with shorter lifespans than AD&D and that it has only become noticeable since the 3/3.5 reformation.  In fact I was mostly ignorant of the "Basic" D&D versions for many of my formative years, as my go-to game was AD&D.

More new campaign settings were published during the Second Age than any other and this may account for the slightly longer timescales between editions but also coincides with the Golden Age of Roleplaying, the 1980s. Dragon and Dungeon Magazine have been my stalwart companions along this journey, more so than any "edition" of D&D, and I have taken ideas from their pages and converted them to work in many systems and genres over the years.

D&D as a brand has been "managed" for a longer period of time than it was by its creators.  It is bigger than any one person or team and it will most likely outlive us all (in some form).  I wish Mike Mearls, Monte Cooke and all the other people at WotC the best of luck in what is arguably a truly Sisyphean task and I can say I am excited about the future of D&D under their guardianship.

The Ages of D&D: A Timeline v2

Version 2 of my Ages of D&D timeline.

Click on the image to embiggen

You can also download a really big version from 4shared

The Ages of D&D: A Timeline

When you can't google an image sometimes you have to make it.

Click on the image to embiggen