A Role Playing Games Blog
Archive for February, 2009
My first thoughts on Goodman’s “Level Up” magazine
1February 10, 2009
I have to admit that I haven’t heard about Goodman Games’ 4E magazine “Level Up” until a few minutes ago, when I noticed that criticalhits has twittered about it. Perhaps I’ve actually read something about it before, but today was the first time it grabbed my interest.
So I’ve checked out Goodman Games’ site and checked out the “Level Up” preview page. The cover for issue #1 is looking sweet. If you would secretly replace the text “Level Up” by “Dragon” it would look exactly like our former favorite gaming magazine. And I mean that in a good way. Of course I can’t comment on the contents but at least the exterior looks sweet.
And the price of $1,99 would be incentive enough for me to walk to the nearest gaming store and pick it up as soon as it’s out. BUT there are some problems with that:
- As far as I know the last FLGS in my vicinity closed a couple of months ago
- In the good old days it was sometimes hard enough to get your hands on a copy of DUNGEON or DRAGON, I am pretty sure almost no german store will sell Goodman’s magazine
- $1,99 at the store and $4 for subscribers (or the PDF variant)??? Are you kidding me? Usually the cost for subscribers should be lower than for the people who pick it up at the store, but perhaps just me. But perhaps the $1,99 is just a reduced price for the first issue. But nevertheless, bad move, Goodman Games.
I would love to check out a 3rd party 4th Edition magazine (especially for such a low price) if it was widely available or not horribly expensive for European gamers. But usually you pay enormous amounts for shipping and handling. A PDF variant could be interesting but not at double the normal price.
Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies
0February 10, 2009
One of the RPG Blogs I’ve subscribed in Google Reader is the german blog Rollenspiel-Almanach. Today a post about Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies grabbed my attention. I actually haven’t heard of that game before but I immediately saw flying ships and sky pirates in my mind’s eye. The post linked to a post by Evil Hat Publishing’s Fred Hicks who is obviously working on the layout of this upcoming game where he showcases two fully layouted pages.
So, what’s Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies about? Here’s an excerpt from the Atomic Sock Monkey website:
Skyships ply the 7 Skies, soaring from Cloud-Island to Cloud-Island for conquest, espionage, trade, and piracy. Kingdoms clash, cultures collide, and secrets abound. Heroes and villains roam Above the Blue, seeking action, intrigue, adventure, and style. Will you be one of them?
Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies
*Written by Chad Underkoffler
*Art by Greg Holkan & Scott Kane
*Layout by Fred Hicks
Wow, that sounds really intriguing! The game is driven by the Prose Descriptive Qualities (PDQ) System Core Rules which reminded me a bit of FATE. I had to admit that I haven’t had the time to check the PDQ rules out completely but PDQ’s Qualities (or Fortes as they are called in PDQ#, the Swashbuckling version of PDQ) have a lot in common with FATE’s Aspects, but that’s perhaps just me. You can get both the PDQ and PDQ# rules as free PDF documents on the Atomic Sock Monkey website’s Freebies section.
Map for my Dungeonslayers campaign
4February 9, 2009
Since my group wants to continue playing Dungeonslayers, I’ve decided to create a small campaign world to play in. It’s nothing fancy of course but it’s just enough information to use as a nice backdrop for a dungeon delving campaign. And since we want to keep up a light-hearted approach to roleplaying, I’ve added a few eastereggs, made sure the names were at least a bit cheesy and even included hommages to Gary Gygax, the creator of DS, Christian Kennig, and D&D. Check out the map I created this morning with the simple map creation tool that came with the AD&D Core Rules CD-ROM. Although this tool is quite old and lacks a lot of features it’s still the best way to create simple campaign maps.
The map shows the kingdom of Sturmfeste (Stormhold). The town Belseburg is the place where my group fought those rats and destroyed the altar of the rat king. You will probably remember that from my last post. The world itself is of my creation but I will probably rip-off a few elements from my favorite MMO World of Warcraft. So expect some gun-wielding dwarves, tech-tinkering goblins and an army of orcs coming through some wierd portal…
Dungeonslayers: Playtest report
8February 8, 2009
Yesterday, a few friends came over to my place to play some games. One of the things I had prepared was Dungeonslayers, a free, rules-light, old-school game. The 18-page rulebook contains the rules for playing the game, a couple of monsters and an introductory adventure called “Herr der Ratten” (Lord of the Rats).
The character creation took ten minutes tops and my three players were ready to enter their first dungeon. The party consisted of a human fighter, an elven magic user (healer) and a dwarven scout. As all good old-school adventures, it started in the local inn where the inn keeper asked them to clear out a rat infestation in his wine cellar. So our three hero-wannebes entered the cellar, with sword and shield in hand. As soon as they reached the cellar they were attacked by a couple of rats.
The combat system in Dungeonslayers is pretty easy. You roll a d20. If your roll is equal or below your combat ability you have hit the opponent and your roll result is the damage you’ve dealt. So no extra damage roll (like in D&D etc.) is needed. Then the target may make a defense roll. The result of the defense roll (if successful) is substracted from the damage. It’s as easy as that. When all the enemies are killed, the GM hands out a couple of experience points.
After a couple of rooms, a lot of laughs and several killed rats my players reached an underground temple of an old rat cult. Although the temple was abandoned the evil influence of the rat gods’ altar could still be felt. In the end, they destroyed the altar, fought an animated statue of the rat god and returned to the surface with hands full of loot.
Dungeonslayers is a fun game that takes only minutes to get into. Although we are all veteran roleplayers we enjoyed the light-hearted nature of the game. We decided to continue playing DS next week. I am pretty sure that I can come up with a fun adventure on my own during the coming days or I will just adapt a D&D adventure to Dungeonslayers.
If you can read German, you really should check out Dungeonslayers ASAP. For everyone else, Christian Kennig (the creator of DS) and a few fans (including me) are going to translate the rules to english, so that more people can experience this fun game!
Short list of RPGs released under CC
9February 6, 2009
In a couple of posts I wrote about copyright, Creative Commons, OGL and related topics. Today, I searched the internet for some roleplaying games that actually have been released under a CC license. The list is probably far from complete, so if you know any other games that should be on that list, please let me know!
- The Shadow of Yesterday by Clinton R. Nixon
- Violence: the RPG of egregious and repulsive bloodshed by Greg Costikyan
- Dungeonslayers by Christian Kennig
- YAGS by Samuel Penn (the game uses the GNU GPL, but it’s close enough)
Please note: Dungeonslayers is currently available in German language only.
My thoughts on OGL, GSL and beyond
13February 5, 2009
When Wizards of the Coast decided to release the 3.0 (and the following 3.5) Edition of their popular roleplaying game D&D we saw a lot of 3rd party supplements and OGL games. Of course not every book released was of the same quality. And it was appearent that Wizards’ control over what their competitors released using the OGL or the d20 System License was limited at best. So they decided to discontinue the d20 System License with the release of the 4th edition.
The new GSL (Game System License) prohibits anyone from using the OGL at the same time, so if you want to release a book for 3.5 D&D, you can’t release anything for 4th Edition as well. There are of course a few loopholes. You can of course found a new company that handles the 4th Edition stuff while your original company sticks to 3.5 Edition or vice versa. But only a few publishers jumped onto the 4th Edition bandwagon. Paizo Publishing also decided to release an updated version of the 3.5 edition under the name “Pathfinder Roleplaying Game” that should be almost 100% compatible to every other OGL material.
One thing is clear: the OGL has brought us a lot of great games and supplements (and quite a few very bad ones), it’s much easier now for us fans (and bloggers) to write up some new class, race, rule etc. without being in a legal grey area all the time. But the 4th Edition changed all that. When a blogger now posts his homebrew 4E campaign, some rules he came up with etc., he or she is in a legal grey area all the time. Wizards has promised us a fan site policy but it hasn’t been released yet.
In my opinion the OGL was a step in the right direction, but it has not gone far enough. What the community needs is a popular game backed by a large company (or several smaller ones) that is released under Creative Commons preferably of the Attribution-Share Alike (see license here) variety. We all have witnessed how Open Source Software has enriched our daily internet lives. If you need a good browser software, office package, blogging software, etc. you can get it on the net for free and if you are technically-adapt you can even give something back by contributing to the code.
I am sure something like this could work in the RPG business too. And I am sure it would help to bring more people to the hobby than ever before. When D&D 3.0 was still young I noticed that a lot of people started to use it just to be able to play in all that cool and new settings released by 3rd party publishers. Or they used the SRD to play it totally for free using their homebrew settings. OGL is there too stay but having a set of rules with a less limiting license would benefit us all.
Some companies have made steps in the right direction, FUDGE and FATE used the OGL, Savage Worlds has a pretty nice Fan Works Policy and in the last years a few people have decided to release their games under the CC. But those are mostly games written by fans and they are not as popular as D&D, Savage Worlds and some others. And in my opinion having a almost totally free system for all of us to play with would be a great boon. I am still hoping for an Open D6 System (the one WEG hinted at) released under CC…
What are your thoughts on the subject? Would you be interested in a truely free game system? Or are you happy with the several OGL games and fan site policies?
Roleplaying music: Elyrion – Call of the Titans
2February 4, 2009
In October I promised you a proper review of Erdenstern’s new CD “Elyrion – Call of Titans“. Their last work is not part of their usual “Into the …” line but it’s a soundtrack created for the rather new roleplaying game “Elyrion – Call of Titans” by Prometheus Games. Elyrion is a game that combines elements of Steampunk with Fantasy and is currently only available in German.
The CD contains 19 tracks and has a total play time of 74:32 min. Although you can easily recognize the Erdenstern style, Elyrion sounds quite different from their other CDs. It’s quite appearent that Erdenstern has tried out new styles on this album.
The first track “Der Kontinent Audakia” (The Continent Audakia) could be easily sneaked into a “Into the Green” playlist. It’s a very melodic piece reminiscent of their “Library of Fantastic Music” albums.
Other tracks are less melodic but more rythmic in nature like “Krieger aus Stahl” (Warriors of Steel) or “Wolfsland” (Land of the Wolves). I’ve to admit that I haven’t checked out the Elyrion roleplaying game yet but the soundtrack does a good job of taking the listener on a journey to the continent of Audakia.
The album comes in a custom jewel case with a printed booklet (german only). Like with all Erdenstern CDs every track is described with three adjectives in the booklet, so that you can easily choose with music you use in a given roleplaying situation. For example “Die Schänke” (The Tavern) is described as merry, folkloristic, strange while “Berge und Ebenen” (Mountains and Plains) is calm, wide, expectant.
The albums sets you back €14.99 (or $21 or £14.49) and can be ordered directly from Erdenstern. For a list of other retailers, check out this site. I enjoyed “Elyrion – Call of the Titans – Soundtrack” very much and you should check it out if you have the opportunity. You won’t regret it especially if you like to use music in your roleplaying sessions.
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