First off let me tell you how the group has decided to do our campaigns. As it stands we lost 1 person from D&D and 2 from BESM but we got someone new for D&D. Since everyone in the BESM game is in the D&D game we have decided that whenever the odd man out who is only in the D&D game is present we will be playing my campaign. I of course was totally unprepared to DM today so it went quite well except for the first little bit.
We had a little problem to begin with as one person did not have a character yet and another person did not bring theirs but the one borrowed a character someone else had on them and the other knew enough to put theirs onto paper quickly so that worked out. This of course means that next week instead of a fighter there will be a ninja but whatever. Once the game actually started they went to town and sold stuff then a 3 of them loaned money to another so they could have plate. This of course managed to split the party. The rock goblin to start with did not even go to town, the guy getting plate needed time to have it fitted and the cleric turtle did not want to go to a tavern so went with him. The last 2 decided a tavern was a good place to go. Predictably one of them got totally wasted. This of course means I ended up with only one person doing something interactive with me. He benefited quite a bit from this though I won't say more as I don't know if any of them will be reading this or not. Anyway he got the quest for them. A goblin who was horribly disfigured told them where to find some treasure he hid and said they could have 10% of it if they get it for him as he could not leave the town because of something.
They decide this sounded grand so they went home first then onto the cave. Not much to say about the cave. It was one of the small maps I think I posted here at some point and there was not really anything to it except a hidden area. What I decided they would fight is 10 wolves but I could not just throw all of them at the party at once so I did something slightly different. I decided they could handle 4 wolves at a time so whenever they killed one I would have another wolf join the fray after the last wolf moved. This of course was interesting as the first time it caught the players off guard and the wolf was able to get right at the sorcerer. After that when they kept coming the party really got worried. Even though in the end they killed them all easily enough the worry that they would keep coming was quite strong until they finish exploring the dungeon. I was also able to easily explain why the wolves would have treasure. They did not have any, the treasure that go rolled was the 10% they where allowed to keep though I made sure to ask if they wanted to try to keep more. Overall it was a good session and I hope that I can keep it up.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
Labyrinth Lord Cover to Cover: Part 21, pages 123 to 126
For this series of posts I will be using the free PDF of the
Labyrinth Lord rules that can be found Here at Goblinoid Games
This is the twenty-first part of a series, here are the links to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th,
6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th parts
6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th parts
Labyrinth Lord Lore
This part goes over the basics of dungeon creation. Things like making levels equating to character level so that first level characters are fine on dungeon level one but not so much on level two and other similar basics that if you have not done such things before are quite useful to start with. A real handy piece is that it has some reason for the party to be in said dungeon. There is only seven given but they cover most of the bases and one of them I had not even thought of myself so it is definitely worth a look.
After the more squishy non-rule help it gets into the more concrete things. First off it gives the suggestion for mapping the dungeon on graph paper and have each square equal to ten feet. The next part, stocking said dungeon, uses a simple percentage based way of seeing what goes in a room. 30% of the rooms are empty with 15% of those having treasure, 30% have monsters in them of which half will have treasure in the room, 15% will contain traps of which 30% also have treasure, and finally 25% have "unique" content and no set percentage for treasure. The unique rooms are basically DM choices though it does say they should stand out. Also of not is that when a room has a monster result and a treasure indicated you use either the monsters hoard class or roll on the unprotected treasure table not both. To finish up the dungeon creation there is actually some rules for encountering other adventurers and how to roll up a group of NPC's for such an occasion. Very interesting as most later editions of D&D forsake any consideration of this beyond a few scripted adventure meet ups.
After the more squishy non-rule help it gets into the more concrete things. First off it gives the suggestion for mapping the dungeon on graph paper and have each square equal to ten feet. The next part, stocking said dungeon, uses a simple percentage based way of seeing what goes in a room. 30% of the rooms are empty with 15% of those having treasure, 30% have monsters in them of which half will have treasure in the room, 15% will contain traps of which 30% also have treasure, and finally 25% have "unique" content and no set percentage for treasure. The unique rooms are basically DM choices though it does say they should stand out. Also of not is that when a room has a monster result and a treasure indicated you use either the monsters hoard class or roll on the unprotected treasure table not both. To finish up the dungeon creation there is actually some rules for encountering other adventurers and how to roll up a group of NPC's for such an occasion. Very interesting as most later editions of D&D forsake any consideration of this beyond a few scripted adventure meet ups.
Wilderness Design
It gives some very basic lines on which to start making a world and has the advise to use hex paper to draw it on. Nothing new there though it should probably worded it to be less of a "you should use this" and more of a "its easier to use this" as while I like hex paper it can be hard for some people to wrap their heads around and the coordinate system for such graphs is not the easiest to follow.
Next if gives some guidelines for how many people will live in a few types of settlements such as a village having from 30 to 800 people in it. Finally to warp this up it talks some about wandering monsters in the wild, nothing much new here though it does give a little table for what roll on a d6 means there is an encounter it basically just boils down to going to the tables for wilderness encounters at the end of section 6.
Labyrinth Lord rules that can be found Here at Goblinoid Games
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Splitting the party
Literally splitting the party in this case. We just have too many people playing and too many who want to play. I will be taking the group who is mostly the experienced players as I am a new DM so its not going to affect me that much. The other DM is going to be the original guy who has mostly DMed up until now. I don't really know what this will end up doing to the group but since we will be playing on the same day and time I don't think it will break us up and honestly unless the new people stick with it we will probably shrink back down to the old group plus maybe one or two people.
Speaking of losing players we lost the girl from the BESM campaign as life got too busy recently. I don't know if this means the end of the BESM game because she was the reason for it or if it just means well I don't know what else if might mean. I like BESM and had finally figured out what I wanted my character to specialize in but I won't be that sad to see it go and if it does that will probably mean my game will be every week instead of every other week. Ah well, life goes on.
Speaking of losing players we lost the girl from the BESM campaign as life got too busy recently. I don't know if this means the end of the BESM game because she was the reason for it or if it just means well I don't know what else if might mean. I like BESM and had finally figured out what I wanted my character to specialize in but I won't be that sad to see it go and if it does that will probably mean my game will be every week instead of every other week. Ah well, life goes on.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Lets Play OpenTTD part 3) Rebooted for your pleasure
Well I have managed to get another OpenTTD video up and here it is. Hope you enjoy it and if you don't please tell me why.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Labyrinth Lord Cover to Cover: Part 20, pages 121 to 122
For this series of posts I will be using the free PDF of the
Labyrinth Lord rules that can be found Here at Goblinoid Games
This is the twentieth part of a series, here are the links to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th,
6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th parts
6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th parts
Sapient Swords
Thats the heading of where I am starting in the page and boy does it make me smile. The first step to making one of these brilliant blades is rolling its intelligence. A simple roll of a 1d6 decides how smart it is from 7 to 12 or basically 1d6+6. The most basic thing this score decides is how it communicates with the world and more specifically the players. If 7 to 9 then the knowledgeable knife can only commune with its wielder. More interestingly at 10 to 12 it can communicate verbally and knows its alignment language plus a number of other languages determined by the roll of a d20. Also along with just being able to talk at 11 and 12 it can Read Magic and because of this can read any of its known languages.
Next up is to figure out the alignment for your clever cutlass. This is perticuarly important as a person can only wield one with the same alignment as themselves or they take damage every turn they hold it depending on how big the difference is. While the alignment is determined randomly there is a 70% chance of it ending up lawful, 20% neutral, and thus only 1 in ten will be chaotic so most parties will be able to use one when they find it.
Now to decide the Psyche and Willpower of the enlightened epee or basically how easily it is for the sword to take over a player. The Psyche is 1d12 and Willpower is just that added to Intelligence with a bonus of +1 for each spell like power the smart scimitar happens to have. Simple right? Anyway on to the fun part. Every time a few circumstances happen the sword will attempt to take control of its wielder and this is called an influence check. They happen the first time a wielder touches it, when the swords motivation comes into play, someone of differing alignment touches it, another shrewd saber is found, and finally the wielder has lost 50% of their HP. The check itself is just comparing the its Willpower with the wielders which is determined by adding their Strength to their Wisdom and subtracting 1d4 if they are wounded but greater then 50% HP or 2d4 if equal to or lower then 50% HP. The sword also gets a bonus 1d10 if the person wielding it is of a different alignment. If the wielder loses then the foxy foil gets control of the character for an amount of time determined by the DM and will cause them to do something related to its goals such as ignoring the new shiny or go into combat. The control will generally only last a couple rounds but that should be enough to get what is needed done like causing the party to fight a group of orcs instead of just hiding from them.
Now for motivations to be decided. there is only a 5% chance that there is a specific motivation and if the witty weapon has one its intilligence is boosted to 12 right away. You roll a 1d6 to determine the motivation, all of which are to destroy a certain type of creature. The above example where the party is forced to fight orcs could occur on a roll of 6 which is to destroy a certain monster type which in the example would be orcs. There are also a few added quirks depending on the alignment itself. If its lawful and is used to fight something in its target group that is chaotic it will stun the oppenent while the reverse situation will actually stone the opponent though they do get a saving throw versus spells. The neutral side is most interesting as it provides a bonus of +1 to all saving throws for its wielder when combating opponents of its motivation type.
Last but not least are the fun goodies. There is the choice of detection powers and spell-like abilities. The detection powers can only be used once a round and vary from simple things like detecting good in a 20' area to detecting sloping passages though I am slightly disappointed at the available variety as it is clearly missing the detect meal and what kind power which was present in OD&D and is the power I would want because of all the interesting uses it has. Now to segue into the spell-like abilities I will mention that on a roll of 98 to 100 on the detection table you get a spell-like abilities instead. Abilities of which only a bright brand with an intelligence of 12 will always have are usable 3 times a day and go from a simple double damage for 1d10 rounds to Teleportation. All of the abilities barring the double damage and regeneration are based straight off of something else, most generally a Magic User spell though a few are from magic items. This mostly wraps up this scintillating post though I would like to mention that by the book it is slightly more "broken" then in OD&D as you can get all the detection powers and all the spell-like abilities as many times as you like because the rolls that let you roll on the tables again are not restricted though as the DM is the person that should be rolling these up it should not be any problem at all.
Next up is to figure out the alignment for your clever cutlass. This is perticuarly important as a person can only wield one with the same alignment as themselves or they take damage every turn they hold it depending on how big the difference is. While the alignment is determined randomly there is a 70% chance of it ending up lawful, 20% neutral, and thus only 1 in ten will be chaotic so most parties will be able to use one when they find it.
Now to decide the Psyche and Willpower of the enlightened epee or basically how easily it is for the sword to take over a player. The Psyche is 1d12 and Willpower is just that added to Intelligence with a bonus of +1 for each spell like power the smart scimitar happens to have. Simple right? Anyway on to the fun part. Every time a few circumstances happen the sword will attempt to take control of its wielder and this is called an influence check. They happen the first time a wielder touches it, when the swords motivation comes into play, someone of differing alignment touches it, another shrewd saber is found, and finally the wielder has lost 50% of their HP. The check itself is just comparing the its Willpower with the wielders which is determined by adding their Strength to their Wisdom and subtracting 1d4 if they are wounded but greater then 50% HP or 2d4 if equal to or lower then 50% HP. The sword also gets a bonus 1d10 if the person wielding it is of a different alignment. If the wielder loses then the foxy foil gets control of the character for an amount of time determined by the DM and will cause them to do something related to its goals such as ignoring the new shiny or go into combat. The control will generally only last a couple rounds but that should be enough to get what is needed done like causing the party to fight a group of orcs instead of just hiding from them.
Now for motivations to be decided. there is only a 5% chance that there is a specific motivation and if the witty weapon has one its intilligence is boosted to 12 right away. You roll a 1d6 to determine the motivation, all of which are to destroy a certain type of creature. The above example where the party is forced to fight orcs could occur on a roll of 6 which is to destroy a certain monster type which in the example would be orcs. There are also a few added quirks depending on the alignment itself. If its lawful and is used to fight something in its target group that is chaotic it will stun the oppenent while the reverse situation will actually stone the opponent though they do get a saving throw versus spells. The neutral side is most interesting as it provides a bonus of +1 to all saving throws for its wielder when combating opponents of its motivation type.
Last but not least are the fun goodies. There is the choice of detection powers and spell-like abilities. The detection powers can only be used once a round and vary from simple things like detecting good in a 20' area to detecting sloping passages though I am slightly disappointed at the available variety as it is clearly missing the detect meal and what kind power which was present in OD&D and is the power I would want because of all the interesting uses it has. Now to segue into the spell-like abilities I will mention that on a roll of 98 to 100 on the detection table you get a spell-like abilities instead. Abilities of which only a bright brand with an intelligence of 12 will always have are usable 3 times a day and go from a simple double damage for 1d10 rounds to Teleportation. All of the abilities barring the double damage and regeneration are based straight off of something else, most generally a Magic User spell though a few are from magic items. This mostly wraps up this scintillating post though I would like to mention that by the book it is slightly more "broken" then in OD&D as you can get all the detection powers and all the spell-like abilities as many times as you like because the rolls that let you roll on the tables again are not restricted though as the DM is the person that should be rolling these up it should not be any problem at all.
Labyrinth Lord rules that can be found Here at Goblinoid Games
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