Arrowflight character creation steps ...

1. Choose race.
2. Point buy attributes.
3. Randomly roll your social class (which can do anything from triple or halve your starting gold), whether you're from a rural or urban environment, and what your apprenticeship was. This will determine your background skills.

Huh.

Fortunately, step 4 gives you discretionary points to assign to your skills, so if you want to play say a stalwart fighter-type, then you don't have to worry too much about rolling a background as domestic help ... but wow, nice way to undermine the level playing field of point buy, folks.

And let's not forget the poor player who had this awesome idea for a knightly character, only to discover that his lot in life is as a scullion. I mean, sure, a case can be made that these rolls might inspire some cool character ideas as you struggle to match your idea of a knight with your background as a potato-peeling indentured servant, but I'd argue that that ought to be something a player chooses to explore, rather than having it thrust upon them, when really what they wanted to do was play Sir Shiny McMetalpants, blue-blooded courtly knight.

(Haven't got to the meat of the actual system, yet, but am also very bemused that the "evil" country that is the bane of the PCs homeland is not actually on the setting map in the book.)

Edit: just noticed that there is an option for the GM to choose the character's social class, and the player to choose their environment and apprenticeship. Which is a big improvement, though it still doesn't answer the question of why characters with a noble background get 3 more skills and 6 times the gold as those from an indentured background. I'd want to alter that, myself, if I were running the game.

I finally made a start on reading my copy.

We really need to do a 'Weird Game Wednesday' of this, some time, even if only so I can make people flip out at the screamingly sexist gender-based stat modifications. And because I want to make people calculate their "Cling to Life SR". And their "A/A Modifier" (not, apparently, anything to do with aerial opponents). And to force them to abbreviate "Armor Class" as "AMC" instead of "AC", because that proves that we're totally not ripping off AD&D, even if our system works the same way.

To be fair, some of the things the game gets criticised for are a function of it being intended as a toolbox, not a complete game-with-setting ... on the other hand, more than once I've thought "OK, you say this is setting-specific, but would it have killed you to include an example?". And some of the criticisms - such as the woeful organisation - are entirely justified.

But yeah, this could be even more fun than Fringeworthy was. And we all know special that experience proved to be.

Look, I get that the Gencon Oz scheduling/rego system is different to that of standard Australian cons. But you know what? It's really not that difficult. In fact, some ridiculous number of people manage to use exactly the same system, with something on the order of a hundred times as many events to look at, every year for Gencon Indy.

There are sound reasons on the con-org side why this is the way Gencon Oz does rego. It's very unlikely to change. Spend a few minutes learning the system and you'll find it works perfectly well.

The RPG: Age of Ruin
What it is: A pretty gonzo, small press, post-apocalyptic RPG published in 1990
What I saw: A race of psionic bad guys whose advanced mental mutation has caused the frontal lobes of their brains to grow, such that (and I quote) "their forehead looks like a butt".
And yes, they are listed in the game's bestiary under the title "Buttheads".

On Thursday, I took the bus up to Noosa to spend a couple of days with my sister and her fiance. En route, I ploughed my way through Bad Monkeys, which had an interesting premise and a sparkling beginning, but to my mind went off the rails in the last 50 pages or so.

While in Noosa, I introduced my sister to Dexter, which she seemed to like, even though she kept covering her eyes. :)

On the way home, I read Dead Air, which like many novels by Iain Banks is more about the characters and their reactions to the situations of their lives than being heavily plot-driven. This one suffers a bit from the protaganist's voice often sounding too much like Banks's own (Banks is a well-known leftie, and so is the central character of this book). Still, it has plenty of Banks's dry wit, and a reasonably upbeat if somewhat disreputable tone, so I enjoyed it.

Saturday night, I went out to dinner at Grub Street Cafe, with bens_manifesto, novaness, and others. It was my second visit to the restaurant, and on both occasions the food has been excellent. It's available for private bookings of 10+ people, with a 4-course meal and coffee running to about $80, and it's certainly worth a look.

In other news, I purchased Fallout 3. And then a video card so I could run it. I foresee many lost hours in my future :)

Been playing a fair bit of Doom 2 lately (I blame Kikoskia's Doom 3 Let's Play on Youtube). Have even dusted off the old level-making skills.

Glad to say that they seem to have held up OK :)

An unusually abbreviated con report:

Went to Canberra for Phenomenon 2009. Con seemed well-organised. Plenty of restaurants, shops and accommodation nearby. Canteen at the con was limited to junk food, but looked reasonably priced, and the large numbers of nearby food places and a supermarket made this a minor issue, at best.

Played 8 games. The stand-out was "Poppa", a game of sibling rivalry in the mob. Much fun. Several others were 80-90% of the way to being solid games, but possessed significant flaws of one kind or another, particularly in their endings (too many "find the magic bullet" scenarios), and in their characters (I played in one game where, after delivering some exposition at the start, my character possessed no useful function for the rest of the three hours. In "outcome oriented" games, as most of these were, that's a major flaw.

Despite this, I had a good time, and will be attending Pheno again next year (hopefully with a full team, instead of a partial one).

Saturday afternoon I caught up with mobdrazhar, who was visiting Brisbane. We had lunch, and I introduced him to Ring of Honor.

Saturday night was the Deus sandpit game. We fought zombies, mostly, with a dash of bickering amongst ourselves to break things up. Elite zombies are a tad tiresome to fight. Spectres that cause our Necromancer to nearly drown himself, on the other hand, are quite amusing :)

Sunday afternoon was the Pathfinder game. To my utter lack of surprise, half the players forgot to show up. We played anyway. There was a fight with Dire Rats (a 1st level Rite of Passage, so I was pleased) and some fun creepiness as we explored a farm where things had gone horribly, horribly wrong. I've set up a wiki for the campaign.

The rest of the weekend, I caught up with or checked out TV shows: Primeval had a so-so start to season 3, I thought, but has really raised the ante in the last two episodes. Castle is an amusing murder mystery / comedy series starring Nathan Fillion. Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire is an awesomely silly fantasy spoof ... far more satisfying than the recent Red Dwarf not-so-special. The Unusuals, on which spyscribe worked, is a cop show drama/comedy with some fun characters and entertaining writing. Good stuff, all of them. In particular, I encourage people to check out The Unusuals, since spyscribe is awesome-on-toast. Definitely not just ordinary toast, either, but the good stuff, like Turkish bread or ciabatta.

I went to Melbourne for Conquest – the Easter Games Convention. Much fun (and some pain) ensued.

( Don't read behind the cut if you don't want spoilers, or if you ran one of the games and don't like criticism. We didn't enjoy everything we played, and I'm not going to pretend we did. Also, this is LONG. You have been warned. )

All in all, it was a great weekend. Looking forward to Pheno in June!

Intended as a "impromptu" or "pick-up" game, when other plans fall through. Examples below are for a fantasy setting, but could be used for SF, horror, supers, etc.

Universal Mechanic: Only PCs roll dice. Whenever a PC wants to achieve something, or avoid something bad happening to them, the player rolls a GM-specified number of d6. As long as the player doesn't roll any 1s, they succeed.

Standard Checks
No roll - Routine – no significant change of failure.
1d6 - Easy – straightforward, but a measurable chance of failure exists
3d6 - Challenging - chances of success and failure are roughly equal
6d6 - Difficult – only a trained practitioner is likely to succeed
10d6 - Spectacular – only one of the best in the world could succeed
15d6 - Crazy – you want to do what?


PCs
Have a Role: describes how they do things (a 'wizard' uses magic, for example). PCs should describe their actions in a suitable manner for their Role.
Have multiple Traits: PCs start with 5 points of traits. They can have multiple points in a trait (e.g. "Berserk Rage 2"). You can 'spend' a trait after a failed check, so long as the trait seems relevant to the test (GM's call). Each point in a trait lets you re-roll one die that came up with a '1'. However, you have to use all your points in a trait at once (so if you rolled only one '1', and spent a 3 point trait, 2 of those points would be 'lost'). You can only use one trait per check.
Traits reset after each session. You can also reset a trait by good role-playing, or by introducing a cool complication for the PCs. (GM's call)
PCs generally earn 1 extra trait point per session.
All traits are subject to GM approval.


Monsters
Have 4 stats:
Attack – number of dice PC must roll not to be hurt, methods of attack
Defence – number of dice PC must roll to hurt it, defence methods
Hits – how many successful attacks are needed to defeat it
Specials – special attack options in place of normal attack

Example monsters:

Goblin
Attack – 1 (crude weapon)
Defence – 2 (shield, armor scraps, nimble)
Hits – 1
Specials – none

Dragon
Attack – 6 (teeth, claws, tail)
Defence – 8 (scales, size)
Hits – 10
Specials – breathe fire: Attack 4, affects 1d6 targets

Traps are effectively monsters that attack once and then vanish.

Pit Trap
Attack - 3 (fall)
Specials - affects every PC in the front row of the party


Other Challenges
PCs go first, in clockwise order, starting from the GM's chair.
Monsters then go, in descending order of Attack score.


Other Challenges
The GM assigns the difficulty to overcome the task (in terms of dice).
e.g. "Getting past the locked door is a 3d6 check".
PCs then describe a Role-appropriate means of accomplishing the task.
A "Thief" might pick the lock.
A "Barbarian" might smash the door.
A "Wizard" might turn into gas and seep through the crack at the bottom of the door, then open it from the other side.


Damage to PCs
If a PC fails a check against a monster's attack, they suffer 1 point of damage for every '1' they rolled.
The PC must then make a choice: they can collapse unconscious, in which case they are out of this fight but not in danger of dying, or they can try to remain fighting.
If the PC chooses the latter option, they must roll a number of d6 equal to their current damage level. If they succeed, they continue to fight, unimpaired. If they fail (roll any 1s), they are dying and collapse unconscious immediately. They must make the same roll again each round thereafter. If they fail, they die.
Another PC can stabilise a dying PC by spending their action to tend the injured character and making a successful test using the same number of d6 as the dying character's wound level. A stabilised PC need
e.g. Boffit the Fighter rolls three 1s on a defence roll. He had already suffered 1 damage, so this brings his damage to 4. He must roll a 4d6 test to keep fighting. If he fails, he is dying, and must roll a successful 4d6 check each round to stay alive. Anyone trying to stabilise Boffit must make a successful 4d6 check to do so.
All unconscious (but not dead) characters regain consciousness at the end of the fight.


Healing
Rate of healing depends on the tone of the game and the genre being played. "Whatever seems appropriate", in other words. Yes, that's vague, but this is supposed to be a pick-up game anyway :)

Played the Arkham Horror boardgame for the first time last night. I enjoyed it, though I am not sure how much longevity it would have. On the plus side, it's a co-operative game, which can make it a relaxed thing to participate in, and it's physically gorgeous. On the negative side, the game-play seems like it would get pretty repetitive, and it's got a lot of interlinking subsystems that cause a cascade of 'fiddly bits' in the rules.

An example of the fiddliness:

Each turn, you draw a card to see where the next gate (to the Dreamlands, or Leng, or wherever) is going to open. You then place a gate and 1 monster there. So far, so good. Unless there's already a gate there, in which case you have a 'monster surge', and have to place on the map a number of monsters equal to the greater of the number of players, and the number of gates in play. But there's a limit to the number of monsters allowed on the map (the limit varies based on the number of players). If the new monsters would take you over that limit, the extra monsters go to the 'Outskirts'. If the number of monsters on the Outskirts exceeds a certain limit (again, based on the number of players, but different from the number of monsters allowed on the map), then you have to raise the terror track by one. Raising the terror track clears the Outskirts of monsters, and may have specific effects on the map (based on how high it is). It also forces you to remove one random Ally from the Ally deck. There may also be other effects I am forgetting ... in any case, all this can be traced back to drawing one card, and determining one of the five different impacts that card will have on play.

So yeah, the game screeched to a halt a few times last night, as we had to look up rules.

On the plus side, Ithaqua got his Great Old One Butt handed to him in the end game. So we saved the world, and stuff. Go us! :)

Session A: Bohemian Rhapsody
Session B: Deadlock
Session D: The Clean Up Squad
Session E: Ghostbusters - The Deep
Session F: Mind The Bollocks
Session H: Spaghetti
Session I: Two Minutes To Midnight
Session J: Trolz In Da Hood
Session L: The Lord of Gorburn

If you're reading this and planning to play any of those games, feel free to add yourself to the 'Henchmen' team in the appropriate slot.

The announcement that Dragon Warriors is being updated and re-released? Makes me geek the hell out. :)


(news of the relaunch discovered on tcpip's journal)

Leaving Brisbane 23 Jan 2009 - QF611 - 7:55am
Leaving Melbourne 26 Jan 2009 - QF636 - 8:05pm

I may also be going to Melbourne for work sometime in the next week or two.

Will be held in Melbourne from Friday January 23rd - Monday January 26th, 2009.

That's four months away, which means cheap flights are still available.

Anyone up for it?

I'm travelling via train to York from Reading. There aren't any direct trains, so I'm going via Manchester (it was $45AU cheaper than going via London). Of course, right now I am stuck in Wolverhampton, waiting for them to clear a broken-down train off the line ahead of us, so who knows when I will get to Mancunian parts, let alone Yorkshire. They're only talking about a 45 minute delay, right now, which wouldn't be too bad, if it turns out to be accurate.

I spent the last three days at Gencon UK. This is a much smaller show than Gencon Oz ... probably about 1/4 the size, I'd guess, though I never saw the wargamers so I don't know how many people they had doing that. The 'feel' of the con is much more like that of a large Arcanacon or TBW than of either Gencon Oz or Indy. Most gaming is done in one of three pre-defined slots (9am-2pm, 2pm-7pm, 8pm-1am), with the last hour of each session being 'overrun time'.

I ran Blood & Money, an investigative scenario, three times over the course of the con. I wrote this game as part of the Dragonmouth living campaign, which runs here in the UK using the Iron Heroes rules-set. I had a great time in all three sessions. My bull rush specialist NPC only got to push one hero into the offal and ordure-filled canal behind the slaughterhouses, but it was a sweet, sweet moment when it happened :-)

It was also good to meet the committee who runs Dragonmouth, and the people who play in the campaign. A lot of them were also trying 4e for the first time as part of the convention. Reception for the new edition was fairly negative, though I think this reflects the player-base in Dragonmouth and the focus of the Living Forgotten Realms, rather than necessarily anything to do with the 4e rules themselves. Most people playing Dragonmouth are looking for a more roleplaying-focused game than the Living Forgotten Realms adventures tend to be.

Player comments on Blood & Money were very positive, which was nice. It was also a good change of pace for me from the combat-heavy game I ran at Gencon Indy. That game was about 3 hours of combat in the 4 hours of play (with the final battle being a shade over two hours long in most cases). By contrast, only about an hour of Blood & Money was combat time, leaving 3-4 hours for roleplaying.

As a venue, Reading University seems pretty good. It's quite accessible from most of the south and midlands of the UK, and there are plenty of inexpensive lodging options. It does seem a bit limited in terms of dinner options, though. Canteen food is about the best you'll manage (though there was a good, cooked breakfast included where I was staying. Mmmm, cooked breakfast).

Since Gencon Indy, I've had the chance to look over Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition and start reading Pathfinder. Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition (hereafter "SWEE") is the not-quite pocket-sized version of the Savage Worlds rules. It looks like a pretty functional system, good for fast'n'loose settings like Deadlands, or the 1930s Singapore game we recently played back home. I'd be interested to see SWEE in action, sometime. Maybe we'll play a short campaign using the rules some time. It'd work well for something with pirates, cannibals and voodoo, I think (and in fact, the sample adventure in the book uses two of those three things).

Reading Pathfinder makes me want to grab some people and start rolling up characters, a desire that was sadly lacking when I read over the 4e core books. I had a chance to talk to Erik Mona at the con, which was cool, and I also got Jason Buhlman's card, so I can keep in touch with them about their compatibility licensing plans.

So all in all, a good three days (even if book-ended on both sides by travel issues).

---------

A later update: we were delayed on hour on the train. Which when it means a 5pm arrival instead of 4pm (as it did in this case) is not really a big deal. My hotel here in York is very nice. And I'm not just saying that because of the flirty German bird working in the restaurant :-) It's a complex consisting of seven heritage-listed buildings. To get to my room from reception, you go through the conservatory. Pretty cool.

The weather, alas, is grey and wet, and forecast to stay that way for as long as I'm here. Oh well, that's always a risk when coming to the UK!

As noted in the last post, day three of the con was to include two sessions of gaming. In both cases, the objective was to try out a game system I'd never played before. Both were productive sessions, in the sense that I played one game I thought was very interesting and well-designed, and one game I now know I want nothing more to do with.

The first session was actually the latter game, above. The session was a chance to try out Aces & Eights - KenzerCo's Wild West RPG - by creating characters and then running them through a shootout with each other. It's one of those games with a horrifically over-complicated, fiddly character creation system. There are flowcharts, for goodness sake. With decision diamonds and process boxes, and so on. It's also one of those systems where if you roll good stats, you then get even more good stuff in the later steps of character creation. Like reduced costs on your skills, or extra points with which to buy skills and talents. And let's not forget the (apparently serious) recommendation that you spend 15 minutes "clearing your mind so you'll be in the right mood to create your character. Some people like to meditate".

Of course, it's also one of those systems where, after you spend more than an hour of book-keeping to create a character, it's fairly likely to be killed within five minutes. Well, it would if combat wasn't so darn slooooooooooooooooooooooow. We played the shootout for about two hours (which was less than one round) and had three characters killed, one KO'd, and two seriously injured.

The second session was the game that impressed me. Black Cadillacs is an indie game that is designed to tell stories set in war zones (though really, any conflict-heavy environment should work). It features a pretty cool system, with lots of tactical nuances, that really help feed into the narrative and the tension. I can see the system presenting a bit of a learning curve for some players, but I think it would be effort well-spent. In this game, we played Chinese soldiers just after the fall of Shanghai. What started out as a mission to retrieve explosives from the local crime syndicate turned into a quest of vengeance and family loyalties. Much fun was had, and there was even a warm, tender moment when we helped two non-combatants escape the horrors of the frontlines. We, of course, weren't so lucky (though we managed to avoid having anyone killed).

Interesting mechanics, a fun setting (which we chose together with the GM) and lots of in-built collaborative story telling elements, made this game a blast to play. I plan to buy the book tomorrow, before leaving the con.

Well, for all the good news in the Qantas part of the journey, there was only bad in the American Airlines part. My first flight with them (LA-Dallas) was delayed 40 minutes, so I literally made it to my connecting flight just as they were closing it up.

Then we sat on the tarmac for an hour. Which meant that I missed the final connection by about 3 minutes.

Which meant I had to take the flight 80 minutes later, and wouldn't get in until 11pm (and which was the last flight of the night).

"What will happen with my luggage?" I asked.

"Oh, it'll be put on that flight too." They lied.

So I filled in a missing luggage notification and they said "it'll be delivered about noon tomorrow". Which wasn't actually a problem, since I wasn't planning on leaving until 2-3pm, but still ... it would have been nice if one flight had gone right once I got to the US.

Headed over to Indy after the bags arrived and got settled into the hotel. Huzzah, free wireless internet!

Day 1 of the con. I catch up with the Fiery Dragon guys (who handle the publishing for IH) and run a session of The Headhunters' Drums, which the players seem to enjoy. I have a second session scheduled for the evening, but 4 of the registered players don't show up, so it doesn't run. Have a good chat with the two players who do turn up, though.

Day 2 of the con. Breakfast with kabael. Buy three copies of Pathfinder and have a very quick chat to Jason Buhlmann, the lead designer. Also buy the entire Warlords of the Accordlands series for $10. It'll cost me three times that to mail them home, probably. These are big books (too big to fit in my bags, I think, which is why I will need to mail them). Get Wolfgang Baur to sign my copy of Kingdom of the Ghouls. Run another session of The Headhunters' Drums. Players really enthused with the sprawling final battle, and the "Iron Heroes with a bone in its nose" savage setting. So that was good. Then it's time for the annual Fiery Dragon Gencon Dinner, which proved to be a fine time for all involved. Much laughter and fine food.

Tomorrow, I'll try a couple of games I've never played before, and then I have dinner with the fine folks from Monte Cook's messageboards. Should be fun.

... decapitating the boss bad guy at just the right angle that the blood from his severed neck fountains over his cohorts, giving your buddy +2 dice to his subsequent intimidate check.

Just finished a new Iron Heroes book – a 16 page mini-setting guide. I don't consider it my most polished work ever, but it's pretty solid. It's intended for FreeRPG Day. The plan is to do a series of adventure modules using the setting. Those will not be free :-)

I also need to get to work on next week's game (which should have been last week's game, but I forgot to prep). At least I have a pretty firm idea of what is going to happen, now. That always helps :-)

After that, I need to get stuck into writing the characters for The Headhunters' Drums, the IH adventure I will be running at Gencon Oz and Gencon Indy. And of course once the characters are done I will need to get stuck into the adventure itself. But really, how hard can it be to write a fun scenario about headhunters? Especially when they are the good guys.

I have a couple of other "just for fun" writing projects going on, too, so I certainly have plenty on my page ... uh, plate, right now.