Rogue Games Tabbloid -- August 19, 2009 Edition

19 August 2009

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

ROGUE FEED

value and replay it I did. Other games in the series included Vampyre, a horror survival game based on Dracula, Saga, based on Norse mythology, and They’ve Invaded Pleasantville, about an alien invasion of Middle America.

Retrospective: TSR Mini-Games AUG 19, 2009 12:01A.M.

What I most enjoyed about all these games was that their rules were short and easy to learn and thus easy to modify through house rules. I remember that my friends and I created additional chits for use in some of the games, as well as expansions to the tables of random events. These games weren’t intimidating to us the way that “real” wargames were and so we allowed our imaginations free rein when it came to altering them. They were great “time filler” games for when we were waiting to start roleplaying or when we didn’t have enough time to run an RPG adventure, since most of the games lasted 45 minutes to an hour, which is about the right length for me then and now. I think I gave away my copies of these games long ago and I regret that now. I’d love to re-acquire them without spending ridiculous amounts of money, especially Revolt on Antares. These may not have been classics of game design, but I enjoyed playing them. In my book, that’s the true measure of a game’s goodness and these were some good games indeed.

I’m not a wargamer and have never claimed to be otherwise. I’ve known many wargamers throughout my life and some, like my friend’s father and brother, were among those who first introduced me to the hobby of roleplaying. I’ve played wargames, of course, and even enjoyed the experience from time to time, but, on the whole, I don’t have the patience or attention to detail necessary to be a proper wargamer. Likewise, while I have an interest in military history, my interest is insufficiently obsessive to want to recreate famous battles on my dining room table.

ROGUE FEED

Dwimmermount, Session 18

I like the idea of wargaming and I often feel like I ought to be kicked out of the old school clubhouse for not having played a lot of ASL or Third Reich back in the day. This applies equally to miniatures wargaming, which I find even more attractive than hex and chit wargaming, but, despite my best efforts to muster some enthusiasm for these foundations of our hobby, I just can’t do it. Something about the reality of wargaming is at odds with my expectations about it, which is why I’ve never managed to get into anything more wargame-like than Axis & Allies and even that pushed the limits of my mental endurance.

AUG 18, 2009 07:41P.M. Last Sunday’s Dwimmermount session went well and accomplished much. Unlike most sessions, Session 17 didn’t end with the PCs leaving the dungeon and heading back to Muntburg. Instead, they decided to remain within the dungeon, which threw off my timekeeping records a bit, but I didn’t mind, since it saved us a lot of time when it came to kicking off Session 18. The room they entered immediately after we started contained a locked strongbox guarded by three shadows. Brother Candor was unhappy to learn that, in OD&D, shadows aren’t undead — they’re raw Chaos given malevolent intelligence as I explained them — and so can’t be turned. They’re also immune to normal weapons and most of the party still lacks magic items. This meant that only a few of the characters (and henchmen/hirelings) were able to engage the shadows in combat. The strength-draining ability of the creatures also reminded me that we hadn’t established an exact ability scores of some of the NPCs, which we rectified on the fly, as needed.

On the other hand, I was a huge fan of the mini-games produced by a number of companies in the early 80s. Not all of these little games could be described as wargames, but some of them were and I found them to be just the right level of complexity for my feeble mind to grasp. TSR published a number of these and I devoured them as a kid. My favorite was Revolt on Antares, which was a science fiction game designed by Tom Moldvay. Two to four players took on the roles of various factions to take control of the planet Imhirrhos in the Antares system. It was a very simple game but not so simple that it didn’t provide plenty of replay

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

19 August 2009

out a vale for Dordagdonar’s eventual stronghold. The shadows, as it turned out, were guarding what was probably the biggest stash of loot on the sub-level, necessitating that the party return to the surface and then make the three-day journey to Adamas to get gems/jewelry appraised and to unload some of their haul. While there, they also stocked up on various supplies and tried to find ways to dispose of their excess coinage. As I’ve mentioned before, I only give XP for gold that’s spent. The intention is to keep the character poor but living high on the hog, in true Howardian/Leiberian fashion. The problem my players have discovered is that, after a certain point, it’s very hard to find things to spend their money on. Since the highest level character — Brother Candor — only just turned 5th-level, strongholds aren’t really an option. Or are they? Dordagdonar’s player stated outright that he intends to find a secluded vale near Dwimmermount and begin to build a home for himself and, he hopes, other elves fed up with with having to live with “ephemerals.” Interestingly, the other players were quite enthusiastic about this plan and we’ve decided that our next session will be a wilderness adventure, seeking out such a vale in the area around Dwimmermount.

This was a very satisfying session and one that saw the players start to think a bit more about their characters’ futures, at least in general terms. They also began to ask questions about the world outside of Dwimmermount, Muntburg, and Adamas. I was pleased by this, not because I’m tiring of the dungeon — I’m not — but because it gave me a chance to use a slightly larger canvas than I’ve used in the last five months of weekly play. I don’t anticipate any world-spanning adventures any time (if at all), but I’ve laid the groundwork for expanding the scope of the campaign should the players ever wish to pursue it. Next session should be interesting, since it’ll be our first fully-fledged wilderness adventure and I am intensely curious to see what happens.

ROGUE FEED

Presenting a Monster

With that decided, they returned to Dwimmermount for further explorations. The section they were exploring was, as they’d noticed previously, one that had been shut off from the rest of the dungeon — from the inside. Consequently, most of the rooms were empty, except for a strange phosphorescent fungi that they avoided, for fear that it might be deadly. They did find a room that contained a chute down to a black pit, but none dared venture downward at this time. A room with a couple of giant spiders did cause them some concern, but they eventually dealt with the foul arachnids handily. Several more rooms were discovered and their dangers, such as stirges, were avoided in the interests of journeying downward to the next level.

AUG 18, 2009 10:21A.M.

The next level — roughly the fourth, by most reckonings — seemed subtly different than the rest of Dwimmermount. There was less evidence of regular traffic and the architecture looked both older and creepier. The first room they entered had a statue of a robed figure with a stern face, holding a upward-pointing sword in one hand and an open book in the other. Brother Candor thought it might be another aspect of Turms Termax, the Thulian god of magic to whom much of the dungeon is dedicated, but he had no proof of his theory. The same room contained the mummified head of a frog-like creature — like those seen earlier in the dungeon — which bellowed a warning to the PCs, when they approached it, claiming that death awaited those who ventured any farther.

If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’ll have noticed that I’ve never been very consistent in the way I present monsters. That’s because I’m constantly experimenting with different formats and I haven’t yet managed to find a perfect one — “perfect” being that combination of exhaustive yet succinct that quickly gives me everything I need to know when using a monster in a game.

Naturally, the characters ignored the severed frogman’s head and sallied forth into a maze-like series of corridors. Brother Candor was suspicious and used find traps to avoid a couple of pit traps placed within these corridors. He also began to think that, in future, he would take speak with animals as his 3rd-level spell, since he figured he could use it to communicate with the rats the characters have started to bring with them as lures and “trap finders” when the spell isn’t available. A well placed web spell cast by Iriadessa allowed the party to quickly dispatch a group of frogmen they encountered along the way, before they decided to retreat and head back to Muntburg, with the goal of preparing to seek

When I was a kid, I was very fond of the AD&D Monster Manual presentation, but, as I get older, I find I like it less. I feel it gives too much information to be useful in play. As a reference, it has value, particularly if you’re of the Gygaxian naturalist persuasion. I myself have definite sympathies for that approach, but there is, I think, a danger in the way that the extensive Monster Manual descriptions, especially those of the 2e era, set details in stone and implicitly establish an “official” interpretation of a creature. The “Ecology of ...” series is the natural evolution of this style of presentation and not one I much admire these

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

19 August 2009

days. For my money, the Moldvay/Cook presentation of monsters comes closest to perfect, although it has a few flaws. The biggest is that it doesn’t include “% in Lair,” which is essential in a sandbox campaign or indeed in dealing with randomly-rolled wilderness encounters. I also think the inclusion of the XP value of each monster would make these entries more immediately useful. Of course, in the end, the form of the monster listings themselves is less important than the short form used in modules. Nowadays, the term for this is a “stat block” and, if I had to point to a single thing that drove me screaming away from 3e, it was the ridiculous lengths of its stat blocks. In the old days, most modules used a very abbreviated listing for monster statistics, with the inclusion of individual hit points being the only constant. I think that’s probably too little information unless you’re running a LBB-only OD&D game, which is why, again, I prefer the Moldvay/Cook short form for most of my purposes. It’s very usable, sacrificing neither speed nor clarity, and, most importantly, it doesn’t take up half a page even when describing extremely powerful creatures — a huge improvement over the WotC editions. I’m going to be posting some sword-and-planet monsters over the next few days and I’ll likely be using my latest ideas about the “perfect” presentation of monsters for old school D&D. Like everything here, I’m always open to suggestions on how to refine my raw ideas. As much as the monsters themselves, I’ll be looking for thoughts on their presentation, since I’d like to come up with a consistent way to present them that I can use from now on.

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