What's worse than getting hit with a mace?

well, getting hit with a mace that looks like this.  is this a flail? the difference always eluded me. either way - the reverend christopher r. conklin just placed this in my inbox. should i be worried?

DUNGEON STRIKE - ART UPDATE

well, i've been hard at work for the last few days laying the game out. so far, so good. i've shown a few people what i've done and the response has been positive.

like i said the other day - the success of our kickstarter granted me a slight art budget.  i put out some feelers towards some artists whose work i enjoy - and what do you know, they got back to me and HEY NOW - i'm suddenly assembling a real game.  who are these artists, you ask...?

one is SATINE PHOENIX - i first saw her artwork when i stumbled across the indiegogo for MACHINATIONS OF THE SPACE PRINCESS.  check out her site here.  i just got her pieces today and they're awesome. these are my two favorites:

apparently all the pictures she made for us are based on real people (except for the female minotaur warrior).  the lady here is based on ULORIN VEX.  the wizard is apparently based on ALLAN AMATO...? i could be wrong on that one.

next up we have KELVIN GREEN. i first came across his stuff over on the GROGNARDIA blog. this is the picture that got me searching him out:

when i found his website (click here to see it) i saw this picture - the lich with the laser pistol - and it stuck with me.  a few months later i got in touch with him and asked him to design the logo for our company (LEGENDARY REALMS TERRAIN).  when i sat down to start designing DUNGEON STRIKE i wanted him on board - he got back to me today and it seems like he's in...so i'm stoked on that.  i'm also dying to run his LAMENTATIONS OF THE FLAME PRINCESS one page adventure...so good. it's called "A ROUGH NIGHT AT THE DOG AND BASTARD". you should look it up.

that brings us to the shadowy underworld figure known as christopher conklin.  i've been gaming with this dude since 1981 or 1982. we were in the same kindergarten class and all that jazz.  whenever i fell out of roleplaying he was there to pull me back in.  chris drew up our other logo - seen here (the lettering was designed by kelvin).  this is the logo we've been using on the back of our t-shirts (which, by the way - if you backed the kickstarter you're getting - even if you only pledged a dollar. we're cool like that).  chris also just won the online voting aspect of that contest WoTC was running - so expect to see some of his work in the upcoming reprinting of the AGAINST THE SLAVE LORDS modules.

now, while i await all the incoming artwork i've been messing around with the layout of the game and the whatnot.  there's a surprising amount of stock artwork floating around out there that's pretty good...so i've been using some of that to play around.  this is my current cover idea:

these are the current mock-ups for the monster cards, treasure cards and character cards.

  ok dudes...that's it. let me know what you think. 

DUNGEON STRIKE - UPDATE

as you may or may not know, the company that i co-own with my gaming friends (LEGENDARY REALMS TERRAIN) just finished up a successful kickstarter.  you can check it out here.  this thing was way more successful than any of us thought - and for that i'd be remiss if i didn't acknowledge brian berg and TPK games, who ran this thing for us. well done, dudes.

now, one of the stretch goals was that every person who pledged would get a brand spanking new copy of the FEAR NO DARKNESS: DUNGEON STRIKE miniature skirmish game i wrote over the summer. so...let's talk about that for a bit.

the playtest pdf has been online since august and its been downloaded a few hundred times - whether anyone has actually played it...? that i can't know unless you sound off. we've played it a bunch of times at some conventions and everyone has always had a good time - lots of laughing and cheering and the whatnot as their characters fall victim to traps, trigger monster encounters, get cut down and (sometimes...though rarely) get all the way to the end.  that's what games are all about, right? having fun? ok...so from what i've seen it seems to be working in that regard.  this is the first game i've ever made, so i was nervous about the first people who played just going "wow, this sucks".

michael curtis (of dungeon alphabet/OSR fame) and george strayton (of the secret fire/star wars d6/countless other rpg related things) played it with us over the summer and they had a blast - mike even blogged about it - and they're dudes who know something or two about game design. that gave me some hope that i had made something fun that people could/would enjoy.  my initial goal in making the game was to basically have something quick and fun that could be played on our terrain at conventions. then people started asking when the game was "coming out" and that they'd want a copy, so i decided to just give away the rules for free.  it's not something that's super-serious - i wanted it to be the opposite of 4E (short and fun with character death likely) while allowing people to basically accomplish the same thing they would in 4E (killing monsters and taking their stuff). it's also an homage to the 1E megadungeon crawls i enjoyed as a kid.  as of right now, it doesn't support sustained campaign play, although that may change in the near future (more on that at a later date, though).

anyway - we hit the stretch goal for DUNGEON STRIKE and now everyone who pledged support will be getting the full on "published" pdf version of the game.  what does that mean? well, i'd like to tighten the rules up a bit if possible - so if anyone has played it and has a suggestion now would be the time to let me know in the comments. i'm also going to spruce up the rules sheet and make it more interesting to look at.  finally, i'm going to include some printable cards with the game - the monster cards will (obviously) have the monster information for the referee, while the treasure cards and the character cards will have information for the players.  last thing - all the cards will be fully illustrated - yep, our successful kickstarter left me with an art budget. i've reached out to a few artists already and two of them are on board...i'm just waiting to hear back from a third and i'll make the final announcements as to who they are - but don't worry - they ain't no slouches.  

now, when this bad boy is finished it'll go out to our kickstarter backers first...i'm not sure exactly how we'll handle distributing it afterwards.  

ok - opinions welcome below: 

RUNNERS, X-PLORERS & YOU

one wednesday back in '06 i was in my local comics shop - heavily engaged in a STAR WARS conversation/argument.  i had just read the book STAR WARS ON TRIAL so of course we were discussing the prequels.  i'll spare you what was said - if you're reading this you've heard variations of this conversation more times than you probably care to admit. the kid working the counter asked us if we'd ever heard of a comic called RUNNERS. none of us had. he brought a few copies up to the register and said that this was the best STAR WARS type story he had seen in a long time. anyways, i wound up buying the book (titled BAD GOODS) and loved every page of  it.

i started following sean wang (the artist/writer) over on his page...and i was excited when he began posting the follow-up to BAD GOODS (called THE BIG SNOW JOB) on his site for free (and in color). i was bummed, though, about the lack of a physical graphic novel.

two summers ago i wound up re-reading BAD GOODS so i could dive into the completed (but web only) BIG SNOW JOB...which is what triggered my search for a RPG that sort of mirrored the action seen in the series. that led me to X-PLORERS.

anyway, sean wang has recently launched a kickstarter to fund a printing of THE BIG SNOW JOB (and it funded inside of 24 hours!). still, if you want a great space-opera story with some awesome artwork (and perhaps some inspiration for your sci-fi gaming) i can't recommend these books enough. and it's totally DIY, so RESPECT.  the kickstarter has all kinds of cool rewards - so c'mon - support the man! 

OD&D MAKES ITS SYSTEM SHOCK SURVIVAL CHECK

so, apparently this is happening.

new cover art...same insides.  OD&D is a disaster in terms of organization, but this just looks awesome. $150 grabs you all of this in november.  hey WoTC...PLEASE REPRINT THE B/X BOOKS!!!! that's all for now.

CHARACTER GENERATION

ever since we started playing B/X (supplemented by LABYRINTH LORD) a few years ago, i've been instituting a pretty hardline stance on using 3d6 in order for character generation. at first, mostly everyone complained - but when they learned they could fiddle around with the prime requisite stats the grumbling sort of came to an end...except for one player.

now, before i go on - why do i like 3d6 in order? well, flat out - i think it makes more interesting characters. no one WANTS low stats, but when you have a character with a 5 DEX or 6 CON - it forces you to create an interesting reason as to WHY their stats are so low. where they sick as a kid? are they missing an eye? are they crippled? it helps flavor the character. i'd rather take a chance when making a character and perhaps play a tyrion lannister or a raistlin majere - it's more interesting. to me, at least.

one you move away from 3d6 in order you are running the risk of the players having some generic and/or min/maxed characters. awesome, it's another dumb and uncharismatic fighter with a high STR/CON score. hey, it's a physically weak but genius magic user. oh, it's a fast yet fragile thief. there's no variety. most of the older editions of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS allow you to succeed with low stats. your abilities are actually built into your classes. sure, it's still a deadly game at low levels - but it's rewarding to get a character up to 2nd level who is less than optimal.

just to prove the point to myself that 3d6 in order was viable, i generated a ton of characters for use at cons with that method. players chose from that pool of characters for about a year (and the players of later editions openly wondered how they would survive the adventure with such low stats and HP). guess what? at every single con game we ran the PC's won the day. sure, some of them died...but the adventure was completed - every single time. 

now, i do like the 3.X rule of improving stats every so often - i'm about to institute a house rule in our B/X games of stat improvement every few levels. the characters that survive adventures should be getting stronger as they gain power.

anyway, one of our players has railed against 3d6 in order since we implemented it, and made it a point to show me the 1st edition DMG rules where there are alternate methods for rolling stats: 4d6 in order while dropping the lowest die, 3d6 and roll 12 times (picking the best 6 and assigning them), roll 3d6 6 times per ability (!!!) and take the highest roll, and finally, roll 12 characters and choose the best one.

obviously, characters generated in those ways will be light years better than the ones made according to the OD&D or B/X rules. but the fact that those rules are even in the DMG got me thinking - have people been complaining about weak characters since OD&D?!?! is that why those alternate methods are in the DMG? my first few characters were created with the 3d6 in order method. what got us off that track?  when i was a kid playing D&D in the very early '80's (i was in elementary school from '80-'86)...well, of course i wanted high stats. my friends and i NEVER created characters in front of each other, as that would expose the fraudulent way we actually "rolled" stats. but why were high stats impressed upon us? why do many players and game designers feel that high stats are necessary? what happened that somewhere along the line players decided that their characters were too weak?

DEITIES AND DEMIGODS and its predecessor GODS, GODDESSES and HEROES. they're the reason. now, before you spit out your drink and go "no wonder - you were comparing your characters to GODS and GODDESSES"...no, we weren't. look at the stats in those books for the heroes of  literature and myths.

in the early '80's i was too young to have read things like CONAN, LotR, jack vance or whatever...but i had read PLENTY of greek mythology. i was also pretty familiar with king arthur and robin hood.  i had always envisioned our PC's as the main characters in the myths and legends that i read - y'know, heroes. when we got our hands on DEITIES AND DEMIGODS and we saw the stats in that book for guys like perseus, odysseus, theseus, and the knights of the round table we thought we were doing something wrong in having such "poor" characters - and our characters began to emulate the stats we were seeing in that book. i mean, look at these stats:

PERSEUS (STR 18/89, INT 14 WIS 12, DEX 18, CON 18, CHA 18),
ODYSSEUS (STR 18/00 INT 18, WIS 10, DEX 16, CON 17, CHA 18),
THESEUS (STR 18/76, INT 18, WIS 17, DEX 18, CON 18, CHA 18)
SIR GALAHAD (STR 18/00, INT 15, WIS 18, DEX 18, CON 18, CHA 18)
SIR LAUNCELOT: STR 19, INT 14, WIS 13, DEX 18, CON 18, CHA 18)

even your average arthurian knight of renown had no stat less than a 10 while "averaging 15" in all 6 attributes. knights of quality? nothing less than 13 and an average of 16. 

after we all saw the conan movie in 1982 we wondered what he would be like as a D&D character - i mean, if odysseus had an 18/00 STR, conan must have had like a 22! in a pile of old DRAGON magazines we found an article that statted out CONAN (from the novels) and we sure weren't disappointed!

CONAN (at age 25): STR: 18/00, INT 15 (18), WIS 10, DEX 20, CON 18, CHA 15 (18)

conan was originally statted out in GODS, GODDESSES and HEROES and his stats were very similar to the ones presented in DRAGON (Strength: 18; Exceptional Strength: 100%; Intelligence: 16; Wisdom: 10; Constitution: 17; Dexterity:18; Charisma: 15).  in OD&D terms this was a pretty amazing character...so i can imagine what people felt like in 1977 when they compared their PC's to CONAN.

as originally written, the rules of the game COULD NOT create characters like this...unless you used the last couple of methods from the DMG (or the sugesstions in UNEARTHED ARCANA, which we'll ignore for now). these books set the standard (in D&D terms) for the heroes the PC's were supposed to be emulating, so OF COURSE people started to want more powerful characters.  the game becomes less challenging when 18 is your average stat, obviously...but i feel like it was too late - the standard had been set: any stat that didn't deliver a bonus sucked and a stat that penalized you was grounds for not playing the character.
  
i imagine that some groups (like us) eventually got bored with boring, superhuman characters (who had at least 4 18's and possibly some higher stats) and went back to a more sensible way of generating characters. oddly, what snapped us back into that mode was the DRAGONLANCE source book. i was convinced that raistlin was going to have a 25 INT or something - and to see that it was "only" a 17 at first was a let-down.  RASITLIN (STR 10, INT 17, WIS 14, DEX 16, CON 10, CHA 15) had challenged a goddess and had her on the ropes...how could he have done so with such "regular" stats? that got us thinking.  by this point, my friends and i were in 7th grade...and we finally realized that maybe the people who had statted out all these characters had just done it wrong and (weirdly) DRAGONLANCE had done it right. 

obviously, though - not everyone thought the way we did, as high stats have become the norm in D&D.  i can't speak for 2nd edition since i hardly played it (though all the generation methods from the 1e DMG are in the 2e PHB). the 3E PHB flat out tells you to scrap characters whose highest stat is a 13.  that's wise, since unless you have a 17 or 18 in your primary stats, early level skill checks, attacks and saving throws will be impossible*.  great game design.   i'd tell you what was in 4E but i threw the books out a while back.

*funny aside - a few players who ran through my sessions last year made this one fighter character talk like GRIMLOCK from the TRANSFORMERS. when i asked why they were doing that they all responded "dude, he has a 10 INT". all of them were regular 3.5/pathfinder players. when i pointed out that a 10 INT was normal they more often than not said that anything lower than a 14 was crap.  thanks, 3.5.

some people like playing with superhuman hero characters ala DEITIES & DEMIGODS. i think it's boring, but obviously i'm in the minority.  i'm still enforcing 3d6 in order, though.

Hurricanes, Giant Robots & Graphic Novels

whew! it's been a while, huh? well, i live on long island...and as you may have heard, we got hit pretty hard by hurricane sandy. where i live wasn't so bad - i lost power for a few days but that was about it. many of my friends and co-workers weren't as fortunate as i was, however. some of them lost their houses, some are just now returning to them, and most of us are just now returning to our regular routines. the community that i teach in was devastated.  i have many students that were displaced and are now living all over the place, having lost everything that they owned. it's been rough. last wednesday i drove around LI with the social worker from my school delivering thanksgiving food to many of the displaced families...and seeing some of the conditions they're currently living in...well, blogging about games and stuff was the last thing on my mind.

anyway - being stuck in my apartment for a week back in october (and not having work for close to 2 weeks) led to me reading a whole lot. i've had stacks of graphic novels building up for a while, and not having power for a bit was the excuse i needed to tear into them. now, i've read most of these as they were coming out in issue form, but i find that i get so much more out of them when i read them as one continuous story arc.  so...my hurricane reading list looked like this: MORNING GLORIES, EX MACHINA, DEAD @ 17, ASTOUNDING WOLF-MAN, PLANETARY, DEADENDERS, and DMZ (which i'm re-reading now).  before i touch on that, though...i want to discuss what i did BEFORE i read all those funny books: i sat down (with my fully charged iPad) and re-watched an awesome cartoon from start to finish...

SYM-BIONIC TITAN:  ok, so this is a cartoon by genndy tartakovsky. i've noticed that many people have never even heard of this show, which is weird since tartakovsky is a pretty well known creator (samurai jack, dexter's laboratory, powerpuff girls, clone wars, hotel transylvania).  it was on cartoon network but was unceremoniously cancelled at the end of  its first season under suspect circumstances.  recently, it's been back on saturday nights during toonami - which is basically the only way you'll see it for free since it was never released on dvd or bluray (it IS on itunes...and i recommend you get it that way).

it's about two human-looking aliens (lance and illana) and a robot (octus) who are hiding out on earth.  illana is the princess of a planet called galaluna - whose government was overthrown in a violent coup by race known as the mutraddi. the mutraddi are being led by a former galalunian general named modula. he's taken illana's father (known only as the king) hostage and enslaved the planet...but not before the king secretly sent illana away to earth...with two loyal and trusted allies to protect her. lance is a hotshot mech pilot and octus is a prototype robot (with many functions that are unknown to him until he finds himself in certain situations). the trio land on earth, where their entry into our solar system (through something called a rift gate) is detected by the military. after a brief skirmish (illana and lance have battlesuits that they can summon out of subspace) with the US army...

...they're able to escape into a nearby town.  octus taps into the internet and learns and great deal about the culture here, and discovers that kids illana and lance's age go to something called "high school". using a hologram projector, octus manages to make himself look like their father and enrolls all three of them at the local high school (octus has another hologram he uses for his student alter ego, which he calls "newton").  he also manages to procure a house for them to live in, where they attempt to assimilate earth culture.  illana winds up trying too hard to fit in with her "peers" at the school and is soon seen as a weirdo. lance, by virtue of not caring about their disguises (which he views as stupid) becomes a local heart-throb. octus, however, proves to be the true stud - attracting the attention of their hyper-annoying neighbor barb with his "dad" hologram, and successfully wooing the head cheerleader kimmie as "newton". this is them buying the house and meeting barb...

eventually, modula learns of their location on earth and begins to send a variety of gigantic monsters through the rift gate to kill illana. see, her death will extinguish the royal bloodline and crush the hope the galalunians have of being freed from modula's despotic rule. plus, word has gotten out on galaluna of her escape, and her survival has inspired a fierce resistance movement.

during their initial encounter with one of these mutraddi superbeasts, illana and lance learn that they have the ability to combine their suits with octus to form a huge supermech...which the people of earth soon begin to call TITAN:

 inject into all this their interactions with the neighbors and the kids at the high school, the US military looking to take TITAN down, and a secretive spy agency with galalunian tech and you have a very interesting show indeed - it's kind of like the BREAKFAST CLUB/CAN'T HARDLY WAIT meets ROBOTECH/VOLTRON/old GODZILLA movies meets a super hero series. i can't recommend it enough. supposedly, if enough people watch on toonami new eps may be ordered...which, y'know, would be a good thing.