If you speak Polish or if you are not afraid of using translation software you can find a whole plethora of great adventures, adventure ideas and other material for your roleplaying game there. Robert is currently trying to raise money on IndieGoGo to make the switch to English.

Without further ado, here’s “Hunters in the Dark”, a scenario idea written by Robert Oglodzinksi:

Hunters in the Dark

modern warfare horror adventure idea

Somewhere in North Africa. Present Day. The players are soldiers or combatants in a modern day civil war. It does not matter which side of conflict they support. Their mission is to intercept enemy reconnaissance.

Setting

A medium-sized village on the front line. There is an old, destroyed (probably by bombs) school in the village.

Problems

1. A large unit of enemy troops has it camp near the village (around 10 times bigger than players party).
2. There is a cease-fire in effect, and the players have to be very discreet.
3. The villagers are tired of the war. They don’t support either side, but they may cause problems for the players if encountered.

Game

On the way to the village, the players find a mutilated human body. After a short investigation they are pretty sure, that the victim was killed by some large predator. Big, strong and hungry.

The players arrive at the village during the night, probably looking for shelter in the ruined school. They are unaware of the enemies’ patrol routes.

During the night they hear strange screams from the enemy encampment. Tortures? Execution?

On the next day a boy from the village visits the school. If the players catch him, he tells the legend of an old beast wandering the area. It’s said that every several dozen years the beast strikes, it kills people and animals for some time, then disappears without a trace.

What’s next?

• The players may try to hunt the beast.
• They may try to get in contact with their enemies to cooperate
• They may also ignore the ”beast story”, and try to accomplish their mission.
• There is only one issue: in the total darkness of the night, who is sneaking towards the players: enemy scouts or the mysterious predator?

Please post your feedback on the adventure idea in the comments below. Any comment is highly appreciated.

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I took my quest to the next level. I pored through just about every single RPG book and PDF I have collected in the last three years since I got into table top RPGs. It’s a shockingly large amount of material I have collected. I focusing my time on reading how each different RPG handles character creation and game mechanics as those are the areas I have issues with in the RPGs I have played.

The truth is, I didn’t know what to look for, but I will know it when I see it. I wanted simple character creation with lots of choices for races and classes. Something that would fit on one piece of notebook paper old school style. You should not need several sheets of paper and index cards to build your character and track all of their powers. To me that is no longer a pen and paper RPG. It’s something else that I don’t think the hobby has developed a name for.

I also want simple gaming mechanics. When I first started playing RPGs with my friends it was, for me and everyone else at the table, all about rolling dice. We all eagerly awaited our turn to roll dice. Now that our dice addiction has subsided we have all learned that the story is the most important part of any RPG. I would like to find a game where the conflict resolution, from jumping over a pit to slaying a dragon, to intimidating a Non Player Character (NPC), is solved quickly by a dice roll. Where I don’t have to memorize or keep large tables of numbers.

As I near the end of my quest. As I finish up reading through the last few RPGs left on my book shelf, I have resolved to the fact that I will not find this perfect game. I don’t think it exists.

I don’t view my quest for the perfect RPG as a total failure either. With each RPG I read through I gain knowledge about RPGs in general. I learned that even though not one RPG fit 100% into what I was looking for I did find a handful or so that appear to be very close. Of these books I am going to go back and dig deeper into them before settling on one that will be my gaming groups next RPG.

The games I found to be top contenders for my group are:

• Old School Reference and Index Compilation (OSRIC) [FREE]
• The red and blue box original Dungeons & Dragons.
• Castles & Crusades
• Serenity
• GURPS

My game plan is to stick with a medieval fantasy game (OSRIC, Dungeons & Dragons, or Castles & Crusades) as my group’s main game while tossing in the occasional one-off of something like ‘Serenity’or ‘Ghostbusters’ to just give me as game master a change of pace and a chance to recharge.

I wrote this post to not only share my experience with you, but to hopefully start some good conversation in the comments section. I would love to hear what anyone has to say about finding the best RPG out there.

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3. Fighting the good fight…

It’s good. You should get it.

Now, with my review out of the way, I would like to discuss the reason we are all here: Oghma’s Faithful.

Oghma’s Faithful is one of thirteen new themes presented in the book. Each theme ties into the setting in a far deeper way than its predecessors in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting. These are not simply occupations or random circumstances; they are reasons to be involved in the story at hand. In addition, each theme provides a power, item, or other benefit at 1st level, with a handful of other boons rolling in at 2nd, 6th, and 10th level.

At 1st level, Oghma’s Faithful gains the encounter power understand language.

Choose a language you have heard or seen within the past 24 hours. Until the end of the encounter, you can read and understand that language.

If you had chosen to make your character a Harper Agent, he would receive a magical pin with the blessing of one of three goddesses. An Iliyanbruen Guardian can drag a friend along when she uses fey step. The Pack Outcast can turn into a wolf.

The 1st-level feature of Oghma’s Faithful is not only substandard when compared to the other themes but also when taken on its own. As I have previously mentioned, language is a tricky business in RPGs. Any fantasy game worth its salt tries to have at least half a dozen, yet few if any provide a sensible, meaningful implementation of the difference between languages. Typically, languages in role-playing games offer an additional level of complication for a minimal return in entertainment.

Oghma’s Faithful manages to be useless on two levels. If the gaming group does not deal with the different languages in the game, then the theme’s ability is pointless. If the group does care about having Elven, Giant, and Supernal exist, then Oghma’s Faithful pulls a fast one and renders those differences null and void. Naturally, the DM can always construct a horribly contrived encounter where the character is faced with several languages at once, but it will quickly become old hat if repeated.

It breaks my heart to read the two-page spread of the theme. My dark secret is that I love Oghma’s Faithful. It is without a doubt the theme I find most appealing. I would like to think… no, I really do believe that whoever designed it put a lot of heart into it and shares my own love of learning and language. He wanted to say “See, here is a theme for those of you who want to play a badass scholar driven by divine visions.”

Unfortunately the horrible truth is that it just doesn’t work, because languages in RPGs don’t work. Oghma’s Faithful is just another heart-wrenching reminder.

Related posts:

1. “Spanish, Spanish, Spanish saving throw, Spanish”: Role-Playing in different languages
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3. Gears: Skills

Links:

GreenRonin Publishing

DC Adventures RPG

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I will say this about M&M/DCA, my party has never laughed so much during a single gaming session and I think that says something about the game itself. From my first attempt at running this kind of game it is clear that it is not as rules heavy as Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is. My players where able to focus more on the story and worry far less about dice rolls. They all loved it.

As my gaming party showed up for our weekly game night know one knew which RPG we would be playing. No one had any prep and no one had any character sheets. I thought it might make for a better surprise if we just jumped in and I think that worked.

I was going to use official DC comic book characters that everyone would recognized for the very first game. I wanted to introduce people one-at-a-time and give them all a chance to shine. I felt the best way to do this was have them all fight a generic crime and partake in general acts of heroism that made superheros so popular in the first place. So many superhero movies now a days just show superheros fighting huge battles. What happened to their simple acts of heroism that made them popular int he first place? Like stopping a old lady from having her purse snatched or helping a little girl rescue a kitten from a tree. I wanted to bring back that feeling of awe and wonder that we all had as children towards superheros.

So, we all gathered around our gaming table when I looked over at one of our players. “Henrik”, I said “You find yourself in Berlin, sitting on a bench outside a monorail station just about to eat a croissant. Something zips past you so fast that the force pulls the croissant out of your hand and it lands on the ground several feet away. People on the platform are scratching their heads not sure what is going on, but you realize that the monorail train is speeding out of control. You are a superhero. What do you do next?”

My friend Henrik said that his character walks into the monorail station and into the men’s bathroom to change into his superhero costume. It was at that point I handed him his character sheet for The Flash! It did not take long for Henrik to get into the swing of things, he described his character racing after the train and jumping up onto the back of it. He ran across the top of the cars and to the front of the train where he bent down and looked inside to find the conductor of the train passed out on the controls. He leapt and kicked through the front windshield and remove the conductor from his seat and preceded to bring the speeding bullet train to a stop. The people in the cars behind the front of the train started to cheer. Just then The Flash’s JLA wrist watch started beeping. His presents was requested at JLA headquarters.

That is how much of the game went. After the Flash’s adventure I focused on another player, and than another until all had completed their acts of heroism and met up at JLA headquarters where The Martian Manhunter gave them an assignment to prevent Cheetah from robbing Gotham City Museum.

At the end of the game my party was given the homework assignment to build their own characters.

The thing that was clear right from the get-go with this game was that everyone was having a great time. Every single player was engaged. Everyone was cracking jokes and having a good time with it. It was effortless fun. I think that speaks volumes about a game. I just can’t wait to play it again.

I went to the effort of recording our first game. Please feel free to download it and give it a listen. Let me know in the comments section below if you would like to hear more podcasts like these. My group and I are more then happy to record them.

Download audio file (SGW_DCAMnM3rd_01.mp3)

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The above video and this post are a follow up to a post I wrote titled: Castles & Crusades Unboxing. It was particularly about the shipping and the conditions of the Castles & Crusades books when I received them.
I am going to take some time here to clarify my thoughts and opinion on a couple of other issues I had with the Castles & Crusades books that I did not bring up in the video due to time.

PRINTING

I am not particularly upset that all the Castles & Crusades books are printed in black and white. I just was not expecting that and felt others might like to know this as well. It seems like most modern day produced RPG books are in color. I own several modern day RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, Mutants & Masterminds, DC Adventures, MouseGuard and Dresden Files. They are all in color. I just had the expectation that Castles & Crusades would also be in color.

When I go to used book stores seeking out older RPGs I fully expect them all to cost more and be in black and white. I have paid a pretty penny for some older pre-made adventures. Sometimes you stumble into a used book store or a garage sale that has RPG books for sale very cheap, but that seems to be getting more and more rare.

My comment was not a slam on the art in the books themselves. Just that I expected the books to be in color and for me it was a surprise to find it was all in black and white.

PDF

To me, it seems ridiculous, that in this day an age PDF downloads (or any electronically form for that matter) are not an option (or should I say affordable option?) to those buying books from RPG companies. There seems to be a divide between RPG companies that offer PDF downloads at a reduced price and those who may not even offer them at all. In the case of Castles and Crusades you can get the PDF copies of the books for just a bit under retail cost of the actual books.

I personally am far more likely to invest in a new RPG if I have the option to buy the books and the PDFs of those books at a reduced price. It’s also better for my gaming group because I am far less anal retentive about my RPG books in their hands when they are eating over them and spilling things on the gaming table because I know I have a PDF backup of the game.

For me the reason that I ended up buying Castles and Crusades as the direct result of a couple of friends who said the game is worth it. I believe my friends that this game is going to be great. But if I had just read a couple of good reviews and went over to the Troll Lord Games website and saw the overpriced PDFs I never would have bought the game.

It seems like my experience has been that most companies offering PDF copies of gaming books sell them for between five and ten dollars. To me this is a perfectly acceptable cost to someone who is also buying the books at the same time.

Now one may argue that PDFs are not the best format for gamers to download their books in. This may be the case, but until that perfect format comes around you should still offer the PDFs. Every modern day Operating system can handle them and will for quite some time. Hell, offering any kind of digital option for gamers would be nice. Text, PDF, ePub, just give us something so we don’t have to worry so much about our physical copies!
Just like I said in the video. With all the fuss my original post made regarding Castles and Crusades I am excited to play this game and give it a sold review here on Stargazer’s World.

Related posts:

1. Castles & Crusades Unboxing
2. Follow-up on my Warhammer FRP 3rd Edition rant
3. Star Without Number POD Unboxing!

Two weeks later the game found its way to my hands. That’s a little more time than most RPG orders I make but, not a big deal to me. Like I said, I wanted the game ready for when my party was ready to try something new.

I picked up the C&C package from my post office yesterday and was a little worried because the box that the books where shipped in was looking a little beaten up. I tried not to let this bother me. In the past I have ordered RPG books from other companies that have come to me in beat up boxes, but the books where perfectly fine. My luck must have run out however, because these books where not in what I would call new condition.

When I got home I opened the box to discover that the packing used to protect the books – wads of brown paper – was only covering one side of the books as you can see in the picture below. The other side was resting against the box. So any bumps, dings, or bangs that the box encounter on this ride to Alaska would effect at least one of the book’s hard covers. Compared to my experience of ordering the Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition book and Gamemaster’s Kit from Green Ronin, it seems like Troll Lord Games must have a troll in some dark and dusty basement doing all the packaging and mail orders. Green Ronin really set the bar high for how products should be shipped. Amazon.com does not even do it as good as them.

Removing the books from the box they where shipped in only increased my disappointment. One of the three book I ordered was shrink-wrapped. That did not help anything because the shrink wrapped book was the one that was against the box. It took the dings and blows from shipping. The other two books where not shrink-wrapped. I removed them from the box to find they where both dusty and scuffed. The dust was not from the shipping either. All three books had ding marks and scratches. It really looked like these where display books at one time or just miss handled from the get go.

When I opened the books I was disappointed to learn that none of the art was in color. The art is nice. It just was not in color. As much as these books cost me I would have expected things to be in color at the very least. But nope, just the cover is in color.

Upon closer examination I found the books to not be as well constructed as Green Ronin’s DC Universe book or any of the Wizards of the Cost 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons books. Again, the Castles & Crusades books where not cheap books by any stretch of the imagination. I am left feeling that the printers of these books cut every corner they could. It’s not that I think pages are going to start to fall out after extended use. It’s just clear the construction is not on par with the other products I have mentioned. That along with black and white printing left me feeling disappointed and not like I got my monies worth at all.

I have one last disappointment with my order of Castles & Crusades. That is a complete lack of digital downloads with their books. You can buy PDFs of Castles & Crusades for not much of a discount at all. Other RPG companies will offer you the PDF of the book you are buying for an extra five bucks. Something like that is very reasonable. In this day and age where everything is going increasingly digital, to not have a digital download option for a small fee is ridiculous. Troll Lord Games is not the only company guilty of this lack digital downloads. The big kid on the block, Wizards of the Cost with Dungeons & Dragons, is also guilty of this.

I am glad to have these books on my shelf. The main reason for buying them was a direct result of hearing so much overwhelming advice from friends and reviews other sites  that Castles & Crusades is a great game. I am sure it will be. I am still looking forward to playing it with my gaming group. The books and the shipping are the let down for me.

Pros:

• umm… It’s an RPG?

Cons:

• Price $$$
• Lack of Digital Download Option.
• Shipping
• Packaging
• Low Quality Book Binding
• Black and White Art Only

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Back in 1998 I was just beginning high school (my apologies to any of you who now feel particularly old), and a friend of mine introduced me to this crazy little CCG called Middle Earth: The Wizards by the sadly fading Iron Crown Enterprises. I was well-versed in collectible card games at this point in time; I’d been playing Magic: The Gathering since the Revised Edition, played Netrunner whenever I could find someone with cards, and—though I am loathe to admit it—even spent some time attempting to convince a few friends to get into the ill-fated Sim City CCG.

MECCG was rather different from these, as I recall. You had a deck, sure, but from it you would assemble parties of characters, and they would travel to various locations around Middle Earth, collecting artifacts and attempting to find allies that would assist them in the eventual battle against Sauron. It was pretty epic stuff.

Unfortunately the game ceased production not long after I started playing. I had a reasonable collection of cards, but I’m uncertain what happened to them. I very well may have thrown them away when I moved to college. File that under Things I Greatly Regret.

I skipped The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game released by Decipher. Art has always been a major factor for me in CCGs, and photos from the movies just don’t cut it.

On April 20th, Fantasy Flight Games released the fourth game in their Living Card Game format: The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. I am a big fan of the LCG format, where each month a small, fixed set of cards is released as opposed to large sets in random booster packs. I’m also fond of FFG’s board games, which are pretty high-quality productions and good for many distracting evenings. Given these factors, I eagerly picked up the core set.

Treasures of Middle Earth

If you’ve played any of the other LCGs by Fantasy Flight, the production values are rather similar. You get excellent painted art work on glossy cards and an easy-to-interpret layout. There are four 30-card decks for the players, along with 84 Encounter cards that will be combined according to the demands of each of the game’s three scenarios.

To quote a mermaid I once knew, you also get whosits and whatsits galore. There are three types of cardboard counters you will spend fifteen minutes gleefully poking out of their sheets, and two “Threat Trackers,” which are basically spinning life counters that you assemble from cardboard circles and little plastic bits. They are pretty neat.

The rulebook is big, too. Most CCG rulebooks fit in a deck box, but this one is on full-sized glossy paper, complete with full-color illustrated diagrams and examples that will make learning the rules a very straightforward process. As much as I did love Middle Earth: The Wizards, I swear the tiny card-sized rulebook it came with was thicker than the deck of cards you got, and a contributing factor to why I must now wear corrective lenses. You will not experience similar problems with The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game.

Mortal Men Doomed To Die

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is a cooperative game, which is a huge departure from most (well, all) other collectible card games I’ve played. Each of the four decks that come with the game contain 30 cards, and ultimately you will want to increase this to the “tournament” size of 50 as more expansions become available. You can also distill the four decks down to two with a little work, though for the time being it helps to acquire an extra set if you’re the deck-building type.

Interestingly, you can also fly solo. The solitaire version of the game is exactly the same as the multiplayer version, but your strategy will be a bit different and the difficulty ramps up a fair amount.

So there are four decks, and each is built around a “sphere.” You have Leadership (purple), Lore (green), Spirit (blue), and Tactics (red). Each sphere has its own particular strengths and weaknesses, and in order to conquer the scenarios of the game you will want to have a good blend.

You will recognize several familiar faces among the initial heroes that come with the game: Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas. There are also other important characters from the books like Éowyn and Glorfindel. Finally, Fantasy Flight Games even has a few characters of their own, like Eleanor and Beravor, which I am led to understand made an appearance in the Middle Earth Quest board game.

The Quest

The goal of the game is to work your way through a number of quest cards, which is usually three. There are three scenarios included with the core set, and each offers unique challenges. You want to reach your goal before all of your heroes die, or all of the players reach 50 “Threat,” which represents how aware of your efforts the forces of shadow are.

All of the encounter cards have a symbol on them, and based on the scenario you choose, you form the encounter deck by using all the cards that share a symbol with the ones on the quest cards.

The encounter cards represent the threats of Middle Earth. Vicious enemies, dangerous  or mysterious places, and chance occurrences that befall your party. Each round you will reveal cards from the top of this deck, and the rules of the game govern what you do with them. Locations must be explored, enemies will attack players whose threat is high enough, and bad things… well those just tend to happen

I could try to explain the rules here, but let’s face it, that would bore you to tears. Instead  I recommend you check out the much more engaging gameplay videos released by Fantasy Flight Games.

Managing your resources is key. You must exhaust characters in order to quest, defend, and attack, so by committing them to one action you are effectively barring them from performing another later in the turn. Sometimes you must be willing to make sacrifices. While you are doing this, you are hopefully accumulating progress tokens on the quest cards. When you reach a certain amount, you go to the next card. Get to the final card and complete its requirements and you win! Sounds easy, right?

Hahahaha. One thing I really like about the game is that it is a challenge.

The Forces of Shadow

The game is great fun, and I am a-twitter with anticipation for the first Adventure Pack due for release in a month or so. That said, all that is gold does not glitter. There are some issues with the game at the moment. A few of the card interactions are not exactly clear from the rules or the card text, which is being discussed on the game’s forums, and while FFG is pretty good about releasing clarifications no such exist at the time of this writing.

Also, for you venturous deck-builders out there, it is currently difficult to make a viable deck that does not involve the Leadership sphere. In order to play a card from a given sphere, you must spend resources from a hero of that sphere to pay for its costs. If you have multiple heroes of that sphere, you can split the cost between them. But if you only have, say, one Spirit hero, you normally only get one Spirit resource per turn, so playing a 3 or 4-cost Spirit card becomes much more difficult. Leadership has the ability to accelerate this, and thus at the moment is absolutely vital. No doubt as the card pool increases we will see more solutions to this problem, but it is what it is.

Despite that, I highly recommend picking up the game. The box says 1 to 2 players, but if you are willing to use the 30-card decks as-is and use two 10-sided dice for the other two players instead of the Threat Trackers, you can get a full 4 players worth of fun from the core set by itself. In the coming months I fully expect to see the game become much more dynamic, and there will be organized play opportunities if you are in to that kind of thing.

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Alternity, by Bill Slavicsek and Richard Baker, is a science-fiction role-playing game released in 1998 by TSR (now Wizards of the Coast). It bills itself as “a framework for all kinds of contemporary to far-future science fiction adventures.” Indeed, its two original settings are Star*Drive, a far-future space-opera, and Dark•Matter, which is a modern-day game drawing much of its inspiration from conspiracy theories and the X-Files. It was also the game that was home to the fifth edition of Gamma World, and the Starcraft Adventures setting, which was a toned-down version of the system used for an RPG based on Blizzard Entertainment’s well-loved RTS.

I consider Alternity the greatest RPG I have never played.

Frankly I’m a little afraid to play it at this point. It has taken on an almost mythic significance in my mind.

I got my hands on the Player’s Handbook back in ’98, but in typical D&D-like fashion it also required the Gamemaster Guide, which I wouldn’t pick up until some time in 2005 along with most of the other supplements from a used RPG bookshelf at my FLGS of the day.

Anyway, let’s get to the heart of the matter.

Opening File…

In order to play Alternity, you will need at least two hardcover books: the Player’s Handbook and the Gamemaster Guide as I mentioned above. If this setup sounds familiar, well, it has been a staple formula of Dungeons & Dragons and its clones for years. Once upon a time they retailed at $29.95 each, these days you can find them for a little less than that on Ebay when you can find them.

The full-color interior artwork features many excellent pieces by rk post, Todd Lockwood, and maps by Rob Lazzaretti. Although the game is intended to be capable of handling a range of times from the present to the distant star-faring future, much of the art is clearly futuristic, and the implied setting of the books as a whole was released as the Star*Drive campaign setting.

rk post’s illustrations of the alien races in the character creation chapter have stuck with me throughout the years, and probably done more to keep Alternity in my mind than anything else. There are the fraal: the classic, lanky gray aliens with big black eyes and psychic powers. You’ve got the mechalus, who are essentially humanoid circuitboards with thick strands of cable-like hair. Calling the weren “wookies with tusks” doesn’t really do justice to the sheer brutal presence that post’s art conveys on the page.

Then there are my two favorites: the bizarre, eight-eyed, bat-winged, lanky sesheyans, who vaguely resemble stealth bombers; and the t’sa, who are basically caffine-powered tech-obsessed lizardmen with impressive head frills.

But this is an RPG, not an art class!

Downloading System Data…

One thing I will never forget about Alternity is the dice. Most rolls in Alternity use two dice: a d20 called the “control die” and either a d4, d6, d8, d12, or d20 as the “situation die.” Oddly the 10-sided die is absent from the lineup. I suppose on Alternity gaming nights you could have loaned all your d10s to your friend who plays Vampire: The Masquerade.

You want to roll low. Most basic actions involve rolling d20+d4, but there can be a “step modifier” depending on the difficulty of the task at hand.

Think of the dice as a continuum, with -d20 being the easiest, and the most difficult being +Xd20, although the book suggests that more than +3d20 is so difficult you may just want to rule it as impossible.

A step modifier slides the situation die along this continuum to determine what you should roll. There’s even a d0, which is really just a placeholder to say you should roll the control die by itself. It occupies a comfortable little spot between -d4 and +d4.

You typically want to roll under your skill level. Skills are a combination of ranks and your ability score, so for instance if you have a 10 in Personality and 3 ranks in Seduce, you will want to roll under a 13.

Alternity also represents degrees of success. Each skill has thresholds. Above, your Seduce skill would look something like “Seduce 3 (13/6/3).” Rolling under a 13 means you have achieved an Ordinary success. Under 6 (one-half your score rounded down) is a Good success, and 3 (one-quarter) is Amazing. The most prevalent use of this is weapon damage, which increases in severity depending on your success, but it also matters in time-sensitive challenges and other circumstances where it’s important to know not just if someone completed a task, but how well they completed it.

This particular mechanic has always fascinated me. In the late 90s TSR was competing (though I use the term loosely) with White Wolf’s World of Darkness games, which used pools of 10-sided dice and had degrees of success based on how many successes you accumulated in a roll. I like the combination of variability and shades of performance Alternity is able to offer with only two dice.

Processing…

In 1998 the announcement of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition was about to dawn. Alternity’s system greatly resembles a transition between 2nd Edition AD&D and 3E D&D mechanics, and contains the best of both worlds in a lot of ways.

It probably isn’t a coincidence that the Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Saga Edition, which came out on the eve of 3.5 and represents a phase between that and 4th Edition, was also designed by Bill Slavicsek.

It’s been 13 years, and I still haven’t played the damn thing. Part of me is afraid that after all this time the game just won’t be how I’ve envisioned it. Part of the problem is finding people who want to play something other than Dungeons & Dragons (and don’t get me wrong, I love playing D&D 4th Edition). I could sit here making excuses all day long, but I won’t. Instead I shall challenge myself: by the end of this year, I will have played at least three sessions of Alternity with friends, even if I have to drag them kicking and screaming to the table.

How about you? Will you join me? Grab the books however you can get your hands on them, and start up a game. You can find additional resources and information over at the official group, AlternityRPG.net.

Then meet me back here, and we’ll see what nostalgia has wrought.

Logging out…

Related posts:

1. A word on our Alternity April Fool’s post
2. Exciting Alternity news!
3. Alternity memories…

Hello, I’m Shaun. I live in Maryland, on the east coast of the United States, and I’ve been playing roleplaying games for almost 19 years now. For the first half of that, I never really had a regular group. I was lucky if I could get two people together to game. I played a lot of regular one-on-one sessions with a few friends, and it definitely left its mark on the way I run games and the way I play them.

I enjoy Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition a great deal, as it renewed my interest in the game after I became pretty jaded with 3E/3.5. In the interim I spent a lot of time with World of Darkness, and found out about the Forge. I appreciate the work they do over there, and love a lot of the games such as Polaris, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Donjon to name a few. These games have really changed the way I look at what is possible in the hobby.

I have a blog, Gnoll’s Den, though it isn’t anything special. I also work as an associate editor and content developer over at Nevermet Press. I’ve had a few conversations with Stargazer over on Twitter, where you can find me @HyenaSpotz. I recently started a Tumblr account for non-RP-related art stuff, but be warned: I’m hardly a great artist.

I play a lot of board games, like vinyl toys such as the ones made by Kid Robot, and enjoy foreign languages. I know reasonably good amounts of German and Japanese.

So, that’s me in a nutshell. You’ll likely learn more by reading my posts. I look forward to writing them. They’ll be pretty awesome.

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Over the past few weeks, on my blog, The Dump Stat, I have been taking a look at the Campaign Setting, Amethyst: Foundations, a new supplement produced by Dias Ex Machina and Goodman Games.  Now, that I have had a chance to really look into this product a lot deeper, I would like to give it a full review. If you have already read my review of this product, over at my site, some of this might feel a bit familiar.

Amethyst is a game setting that takes what we have always come to accept about the Fantastic world of D&D and blends it with a futuristic, post-apocolyptic version of the earth we know so well. The lore of the world, is both complex and fascinating, deftly mixing two worlds, the magical world of the Echan, what we see in classic fantasy, with the technological world of the Techan humans, a futurisitc version of us earthlings. However, the game is not about these two worlds living peacefully in perfect harmony, but rather about the disruption that magic has on the technological world and vice versa.

But, enough with the summary, I want to get into what I liked and disliked about this setting, and the book itself. The book itself is a glorious hard cover volume that fits perfectly on my shelf beside all of my other 4e books. The Cover art is really good, as you can see above , but the back cover is just as appealing. The book is about 300 B&W pages, and contains a Character sheet and a full map of the North America region in the back of the book.

The cover art is a very good example of what you will find inside.  The book’s art is of incredibly good quality and takes a much more realistic tone than that of what we usually see in products put out by Wizards of the Coast. I found that the images in the book  helped to add to the tone of the setting; rather than playing in a Fantasy world, we are playing in a different version of ours, so having more realistic imagery makes a big difference. My only complaint is that I would have liked to see more artwork. There were some sections of the book that were virtually void of pretty picutures. For example, the powers section in each class entry had very little art to break up what I would consider to be a very mechanics heavy part of the book. I would have liked a couple of images in that section to help illustrate some of the powers, or even just to provide something gorgeous to look at. The full page image on page 4 and all of the chapter heading art is just amazing. When you compare that with the lack of artwork in some of the sections, the book has a bit of a balance issue in this respect.

The writing in this book is excellent and absorbing. I found myself getting sucked into the book pretty easily. I have very few negative things to say about the writing here. Chris Dias and his team of writers did a great job.

Let’s take a look at these sections one by one.

Chapter 1: The Choice

This section provides an introduction to the world and outlines what the world is really about. I found the writing here to be some of the best in the book. It clearly states exactly the kind of game you are going to be getting into when you play a game of Amethyst. Also, the Glossary section in Chapter 1 proved very useful in providing a quick place to look up important terms that are presented later in the chapters detailing the world of Amethyst.

Chapter 2: Races in Amethyst

This section made it very clear to me, when reading, that we were not going to be dealing with classic fantasy when it comes to Amethyst. One of the decisions that the designers made when writing this campaign setting was that they were not going to be using any of the traditional races that are presented in WotC material; you won’t be seeing any Dragonborn here. In my opinion, this section was a big plus. It takes a lot of work to imagine an entire world and the designers could have taken the easy way out and used the races that already exist in 4e, but instead, they developed their own races, each of which has its own unique area of focus. I liked the fact, although the races may be familiar, they are still different and separate from what we have seen so far. Rather than use the existing 4e races in conjunction with Amethyst, I have been thinking more along the lines of how I could use the races in Amethyst in my more traditional fantasy style setting. The one critique that I had of this setting was that some of the images didn’t fit the image I had in my head for the race presented.

The Organizations section in this chapter, though very short, was excellent and I wanted more. I did a full post on The Dump Stat already about this section, but I really, really liked the idea of giving the player group a thematic and mechanical boost for tying their origins together. I know how many times I have had problems with players taking drastically different backgrounds and then trying to make the party fit, but this mechanic gives them a reason to all know each other from the beginning.

Chapter 3: Lifepath

Amethyst did something similar to Dark Sun did; they present an additional template, which you can add to your character, during creation, that gives some mechanical benefits, but also add a lot of flavor to the character. I liked these life paths a lot. Though many of them were very setting specific, I found that I could probably use a few of them as stand-alone templates in a game based in a different world.

Chapter 4: Classes

Amethyst presents several new classes for Techan characters, those that wield technology rather than magic. These classes, again, take what we know about the mechanics of 4e and twist them into something different. I really liked the multiple roles element of these classes; rather than simply assigning a single combat role, and pigeon holing a character into one specific combat style, they give them multiple roles, which to me, is how 4e should have been from the start. Good stuff here. I could see myself playing any one of these classes when I get a round of Amethyst with my players.

Chapter 5: Paragon Paths

I found this section lacking. With 4 new classes and a huge world to game in, I expected to see more Paragon Paths than that which was presented here. All of them seemed pretty solid; they gave some good Echan paths, as well as some good Techan paths too, but I wanted more of them, which, as I understand it, will be coming in the second book that is in the works now.

Chapter 6: Skills and Feats

This section presents a host of new options for Characters in Amethyst. 4 new Skills are outlined – Demolitions, Engineer, Sciences, Vehicle Operations and a new use of the Athletics skill, which seemed to be a bit out of place. The Feats in this section were great, especially all of the ones which are keyed off of the Lifepaths presented in Chapter 3.  It is worth noting that the Feats for weapons and tech are great.  If you want to put guns into your D&D, using the tech in this book, in conjunction with the feats and classes, is a great place to start.

Chapter 7: Equipment

Of all the things that attracted me to Amethyst, technology had to be number one. Being able to run a D&D game with high-tech guns has always been something that I wanted to do. So, when I heard about Amethyst, I knew I needed to do a review of this game. The equipment section in this book is everything that I hoped it would be. You get a grand host of new toys to play with, including a range of firearms which not only covers simple, traditional guns, but also includes Vapor Rifles, Pulse weapons, Rail Guns, and all kinds of other goodies from grenades to Gaus repeaters. I could not have asked for more. The way that weapons are broken up and divided by level is also extremely well done. I loved it. Not only equipment, but vehicles are also presented here, lots of them, and they are awesome. The crunch on all of it seems very well balanced, though I admit that I haven’t had a chance to playtest it yet, but from my number crunching, it seems perfectly within the already established ranges for damage and proficiency.

Oh. Did I forget to mention power armor. They did exactly what I would have done. Things like mechanical armor, take up multiple equipment slots and cost more based on the number of effects that they tie into one piece of gear. Great stuff.

Chapter 8: Expanding Your Character

This section fell flat to me. I felt like it could have easily been rolled into other sections of the book. Although the presentation of new rituals is great and dandy, I think organizationally, that this section could have been totally broken up separated. Though the section was very short, it does present some valuable information to support the setting.

Chapter 9: the World that changed and Chapter 10: The Look of the World

These two chapters cover all that you need to know about the world of Amethyst and there is a lot of world to learn about. I particularly liked the descriptions of all of the Bastions that are described here. I don’t want to get into summary here, but I will say that these sections give you everything you need to know in order to run a great sandbox game. I wanted NPC’s though. There were not a lot of big names provided to match all of the big story presented here. It would have been nice to have some figures, names, etc. to go with the giant world that is Amethyst.

Chapter 11: Monster

The problem that I had here is that with rejecting a lot of the traditional races and monsters in 4e, Amethyst rejects a lot of the current beasties available; this section was just not long enough. The choices in creatures in Amethyst are very limited, which means that you are going to have to go into the other 4e books to find creatures to put up against the players, if you intend to have creatures in combat, without getting too repetitive. I had no problems with the creatures that were in the book. Cancer Dragons?! Awesome. But, I wanted more in this case as well.

Chapter 12: Adventures

The adventure ideas here were great. This wasn’t a long section, but it was a good one. However, my caveat to this is a matter of priority. I think a few hooks in this section would have been enough for me. I don’t think this section needed to be quite this long and with areas, like that on Monsters, and the section on Organizations being pretty small, I think emphasis could have been put on those areas and this section could have been skipped. It wasn’t bad, I just think that it could have been better suited elsewhere.

Wrapping things up, I think Amethyst is a really great product. I would buy this book just for all the rules on guns and equipment. The book is priced right alongside all the other products for 4e that are out there and this book is a lot more content heavy than most. But, the book does have a few minor issues. Several sections seemed to be a bit long and over-specific, while others seemed to be a bit short. I would have loved to see more monsters in this book and maybe a little bit less about adventures, but these minor complaints are exactly that, minor, I give this book a 5 out of 5. I look forward to the next one, which I think will solve a lot of the issues that I found with Foundations… i.e. wanting more and more of it.

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This got me thinking, what happens when those ideas dry up? Even the best of us go through patches where we are sitting in front of the screen or holding a pen poised above our note pads and you get nothing but net. As you try harder to think of things it seems to become more difficult to draw out any ideas and your mind runs a blank.  So where do you go from here how do you get into the grove and make the flow of creativity happen again, the pressure is on as your scheduled weekly or monthly game session is looming and you know as a GM that you need to produce something for the players to do, go or see.

So what I’ve listed below are a few ideas that have helped me to find my way out of limbo and back onto the path of creation.

• This is the one I use the most as often writers block is generated through a lack of knowledge of the setting or the situation, this in turn brings on a bit of anxiety or frustration which compounds the problem. My advice first up is to take a deep breath or two and stretch your fingers, particularly if you are typing as opposed to writing. Then look to describe the broader setting of the situation do not focus exactly on what the players will be confronted with instead look at the surroundings or a much broader landscape. This will let you fill in gaps as you gradually narrow your focus, for example instead of cutting right to trying to work on a tense exchange of magical items that the players are negotiating with local underworld figures, start to describe in your mind or note down why they are looking to exchange the magical items. Was it an earlier quest line, was it through the request of one of the players or maybe you read about the concept in a magazine and thought it may be a good encounter for your players to experience.  Then look to think about the setting, will it be in a warehouse, in a sewer lair or through a magical portal? When you’ve got that ask why is it located there and so on.  I’m sure by now you get the idea but take the focus back as far as you need to start asking some questions of the situation you eventually want to get to and then drill down.  You’ll find this will not only get you out of writers block but also a more in-depth encounter for your players to experience.
• This next one I love. Find things that remind you of what you are wanting to write about, for example to me when Dwarves aren’t drinking ale or whiskey they are drinking hot teas as their environments tend to be cooler climate mountainous regions so whenever I’m needing to write about Dwarves there is always a hot cup of tea beside me to sip away at. If you’re really keen then different clans might prefer different flavours but that’s a personal choice to go with.
• Roleplay.  This is almost a strange thing to say as this concept should really come naturally to us all, but get into the spirit of the situation.  So if all you know is that the players meet a character who wears a cowled cloak, then go grab a cowled cloak from the cupboard and put it on.  For those who do not own a cloak then a throw rug does the job just fine. This type of improvisation and character affiliation works wonders to get into the persona of the NPC that your players will interact with and in a few minutes of putting on a voice and wearing your cloak/rug your mind will start to unlock and your back into the rhythm.
• Go with your flow and your feel. A number of times I know I should really be working on a particular part of my project and products but my heart isn’t into that section and when I try to force myself to do that part I come up struggling. In these cases I simply go with what I feel like doing not what I really have to be doing and that way I circumvent the block after half an hour or so my mind has warmed up to what I need to be focusing on and I change to do that.

I hope you guys find some of these techniques useful; they are all things that I use whenever I get stuck with that most dreaded of enemies, writers block.

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My D&D game has been my first real experience with any kind of role-playing game. Before I bought my first 4th Edition book I did a lot of reading about Dungeons & Dragons. Older versions of D&D and on the current version. One thing that did not become apparent to me until my party and I sat down and started playing D&D was how hard it is to threaten a player character with death. With all the healing surges and death saving throws a player has available to them the odds are in the favor of the player that he or she will not die. This fact has been the hardest for me to learn it seem.

I have been reading a lot lately about how other DMs handle this issue and there seems to be a wide array of acceptable answers out their.

(I owe a big thanks to Save VS. Death and the DM hot-line for my recent epiphany about the how to implement and handle death in an RPG game.)

Today however, I had an epiphany about this whole subject of death and I want to share it with all of you. Those of us who run RPG games, the DMs, the Game Masters (GM) out their, first and foremost we are ENTERTAINERS! That is our job. We are entertainers. We need to make sure that the quietest person at our table is having as much fun as the most outlandish and out spoken person at the table. If this is not happening then you’re doing it wrong!

I have realized that if I plan my next game to kill a player character, no one at the table is going to have a good time. It has to happen organically. Players have to make mistakes and you as a DM or GM have to be at the ready to take advantage of their mistakes.

So go about planning your next game like you normally would. Focus on making a great adventure and a great story. One that involves every player at your table. Personally, I have started added way more traps to my adventures. Deadly, painful, scary traps that take away lots of hit points. Lots of times my player characters avoid these traps. Other times they hit a trap head on and proceed the rest of the game with extreme caution. This is all ok. That is what your players are supposed to do. If your players by pass or avoid or just plan miss traps you have hidden, this is all a positive thing. That’s less planning for traps you have to do for your next game. Just take the unused traps and apply them to your next game.

Having learned how to make a deadlier game by using traps, my need to kill a player at my table has subsided quite a bit. This is because I know I am eventually going to kill one. I know it’s only one mistake away. Perhaps a trap is going to take away so many HP for a player to recover from. Perhaps the monster they battle next will be just a little to strong for one of them. However it happens, it will happen organically and it wont feel forced.

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1. Free Stuff Friday: A Death Certificate
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3. Letting go of that NPC

This week’s Free Stuff is: DinoPirates of Ninja Island

Need a game? Need a free game? That what Free Shit Stuff Friday is all about! I got your back. Why not give DinoPirates of Ninja Island a shot?

On DinoPirates of Ninja Island website they wrote this stuff up: Ninjas, pirates, and dinosaurs. A fantasy Asia, filled with warring island nations. Samurai mounted on domesticated raptors. Bigger dinosaurs hunted by quasi-Polynesian tribesmen. Dueling factions of shadow warriors. Privateers and buccaneers battling the servants of the Imperial Navy. Fallen kingdoms deep in forgotten jungles. And we call it DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND

So check out this free game today! Just don’t forget to thank them for the free stuff!

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This week’s Free Stuff is: Mad Irishman Productions – Character Sheets

Good Gravy this site has a lot of character sheets available for download as PDFs. Character sheets for Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, True 20, Warhammer, D20 Modern, Arcana Evolved, Lord of the Rings and many more.

On The Mad Irishman Productions’s website they wrote this stuff up: Mad Irishman Productions, where we specialize in quality role-playing products, particularly character sheets for your favorite games. Here you will find many free goodies in Adobe PDF format — allowing you to print out sheets or maps at will using Acrobat Reader — and the occasional PDF Form which you can type on directly.

So download some Character Sheets from The Mad Irishman today! Just don’t forget to thank them for the free stuff!

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3. Free Stuff Friday: Dragon Avenue

This easy to learn card game was a lot of fun.

Game play, for two to five players, takes approximately 30 minutes. Game equipment consists of two decks of cards, “Nobles” and “Actions”, and a small cardboard structure representing the guillotine itself. This is mostly symbolic, though it can serve as a convenient indicator of the direction of the “line” of face-up Noble cards played on the game table representing condemned persons waiting to be guillotined. The Nobles cards carry points values and are collected by players after execution, while Action cards allow the player to perform various acts including rearranging the order of Nobles approaching the guillotine, steal Nobles or Action cards from other players, enhance the point values of certain categories of Nobles (see “Noble Types” below) and so forth.

I could not help but think of the card game Munchkin while we played this. I hate Munchkin, but I really liked Guillotine. Some of the cards in the Action deck of Guillotine are pretty crazy and can change the game around at any moment. For a quick need-a-game-in-a-pinch, Guillotine with it’s easy to learn quick to play rules fits the bill perfectly.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqXqK3ZlqWI

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This week’s Free Stuff is: A Death Certificate

I think we can all agree that when a player characters dies in an RPG it is sad. It’s sad for the game master and it’s sad for the player. So why not give them a little something for their death. Something like, oh I don’t know, a really cool death certificate! I don’t know about you but if I die in an RPG I sure would like to have a little something for my effort, and for the GM it’s official.

Here is your certificate of death. You are dead and no backing out of it buddy. Now go roll a new character!

On Ben’s RPG Pile website Ben wrote this stuff up: Remember all those silly paper awards you got in grade school (outstanding reader, math magician, etc)? Here’s a chance to use them in your own game but with some real flair and style. As Rob puts it, “Hey I respect your character, but man, he got jacked up!”

For DM prep, you simply have to fill in the gritty details on the template and print it out. If possible, stay classy and do it in color. Then take it to your next game session to award in a mini ceremony of sorts. If you’re feeling especially funny, don’t hesitate to get all munchkin on his ass as you hand it out.
So download the Death Certificate template today. Just don’t forget to thank Ben for the free stuff!

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Just from my personal observation of the different lines I had waited in the three most popular games played in line where Pokémon on the Nintendo DS, the Magic the Gathering card game and Zombie Dice.

Zombie Dice was the one that Hannah and I talked about the most when we saw other people playing it. We could not figure out just from watching other people play how the multi-colored dice game worked. Which was driving us a little crazy because it was clear from watching others play that it that this was not a complex game.

Some point late in our PAX adventure we decided we would buy the Zombie Dice game and learn how to play it. Unfortunately it would not be till after PAX that we would get our hands on a copy of Zombie Dice for the first time.

I am happy to report that Zombie dice is a fun, easy and quick game to play. The perfect game for waiting in a line with friends. The game comes with 13 dice. 3 Red, 4 Yellow, 6 Green and a dice cup. The dice have three possible faces. Shotgun blast, Feet and Brains. In Zombie Dice you play a zombie trying to collect 13 brains before you get 3 shotgun blast. The green dice are the least likely to land on a shogun blast where the red dice are most likely. You put all 13 dice in the dice cup and shake them up.

Rather then having me write out how this game works step by step take a moment and check out this Zombie Dice demo up at Steve Jackon Games website. They also have an unboxing video.

I do have a question for all the readers out their. This game is easy and fun and clearly as a bit of a cult following. Those of you who play Zombie Dice, do you play with any kind of modified rules? It seems like a game like this is very adaptable to home-brew rules. I am just curious if other players play with modified rules or not. Let me know!

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To me there are two angles of research that you need to invest time in, firstly is what type of product do people want, this includes aspects such as content, format, accessibility, look & feel, design and after sales service. Secondly are aspects such as how will you look to distribute your product, how will people find you, what brand image you are looking to provide to the community, what position your product will have and who your competition is. Now both points one and two aren’t comprehensive they are just a small list of aspects that you can look at if you are interested in conducting some market research for producing a product.

Now I do recommend doing research prior to production if you are actually looking to make your product at the very least break even or preferably profitable, and I provide this information happily as from my career and educational background I have seen too many businesses, products and friends fail from ignoring this crucial aspect of product development.

In this instance a great deal of my research was done with a program called Market Samurai, which is an internet market research program. Through this I was able to identify keywords that people used to search for fantasy and RPG related topics. It tells you how many searches there are on each of the keywords and allows you to look up the top 10 ranking sites for each keyword as well as being able to compare your own site against your competitors if you have one. Through this I was able to see what people were looking for and talking about. In addition this program also lets you look up content that people have written regarding your topic of interest. This is a great starting point to develop your research strategy with.

From here I also searched on bloggers networks, RPG forums and google groups; these are invaluable as they represent the forefront of the community’s opinions good and bad. The added advantage of these is that they will invariably have RSS feeds to subscribe to so that any updates on the topics that you believe are relevant come straight into your reader for you to peruse. A note on forums and user groups I found I got a better response from just looking at what people said about products and design options as opposed to just asking for info, but that’s not to say openly asking those users questions to gain direct answers is something to be avoided, far from it.

In conjunction to this buy a few competitor products or download samples of them, read reviews on them and perform a competitor evaluation, a great diagram that you can produce is called a perceptual map, this will allow you to make sure you are hitting an area where there is little or preferably no competition. Places like RPG Now show you what types of products are out there, it will also show you what the quality and price point of your competition is, as well as what  information they provide in the products.

Also consider where you are wanting to sell your products, thus picking a market will help narrow down your alternatives, for example where I live there isn’t a huge RPG community and the local games stores in my city tend to be geared towards either card games or miniatures, which incidentally could be an avenue I could have looked at but chose not to at present, and I realised I needed to hit the American market, thus I needed to find out what floats the boat of the American gamers and integrate that into what I was looking to produce.

So when you’ve melded all of that together the last point is to remember that this entire process is actually a loop it doesn’t go from point A to point B and end there. The last part of the loop is feedback, recognise feedback and take it into consideration, then alter what you have if needed. At a variety of stages through the development of The Bloodsoaked Lands I had feedback from people and each time I took a step back and the majority of cases I would end up saying ‘yea your right it’s missing this’, or ‘true it does focus too much on that’ as a result of the feedback and then set about rectifying the issues to create a better product.

Well that’s a brief look at market research, feel free to make a comment on anything that you’ve read or if you’d like me to cover some other areas in more detail then leave a message below.

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This week’s Free Stuff is: Dungeons & Dragons Essentials Character Sheets!!!

Wizards of the cost Coast has created a slimed down character sheet for characters created using the Essentials books. These character sheets are fully compatible 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons a finally available for download. Prior to this they where only available with the Dungeons & Dragons Red Box Essentials starter set.

On The Dungeons & Dragons website they wrote this stuff up: This page contains download links to  D&D character sheets. These files are zipped pdfs. They require Adobe Reader to open and print. You may print and photocopy them for your own personal use.

So download the new Character sheets today and start playing some Dungeons & Dragons. Just don’t forget to thank the kind folks at Wizards of the Coast for the free stuff!

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Today Hannah, Lyle and myself planned to meet up and spend most of the day in the Expo Hall checking out all the games we didn’t have a chance to check out before. The highlight for me was playing the new Mortal Kombat. Granted, I did not get a chance to see every game in the hall or play every game in the hall but out of the ones I did, Mortal Kombat stuck out as a favorite for me. This game feels more like MK 1 and MK 2 in it’s play and brutality. I understand it is also going to have a mature rating which will make fans of the game think that the game developers are finally starting to listen after 10 years.

Another game I was excited to see was Portal 2. The game was closed off behind walls and the only way to play it was to wait in an hour and a half. So though I did not get to play it I was excited to see that the game had a presence their.

I was so excited to try the demo for Duke Nukem forever. I quickly learned however, that the line for the demo was 2 hours long. I had waited in lines the last two days and I was done with it. So I did not wait to play the Duke Nukem Demo. I texted my friend Alex about this when I learned how long the line was.

Youseph: The line for Duke Nukem is 2 hours long.

Alex: It could be argued that, that line is 15 years long

Youseph: Haha, to true!

Hannah found ‘Kirby’s Epic Yarn’ and played the demo for a while. Lyle enjoyed several Lord of the Rings game demos going on and all of us played a hand full of indie games. Hannah really enjoyed one that will be coming out soon called Swarm.

Not to think we where all about computer and console games on our last day at PAX we spent some time at the Chessex booth buying dice (where the frack where you GAME SCIENCE!) and visiting the hand full of venders that had RPG merchandise to offer.

We ended the day and PAX by attending Omegathon at Benaroya Hall. Omegathong is a weekend long tournament of randomly selected attendees competing for a grand prize. The final round makes up the show’s closing ceremony, past games for the final round have included Tetris, Pong, Halo 3, and Skee ball. This years final round was the OmegaClaw. You should have heard the audience explode when this thing was reveled on stage. At the end of the Omegathon the three of us had dinner one last time. We said our guy byes to Lyle suggested we do this again next year.

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2. PAX Prime 2010 – Day 2
3. PAX Prime 2010 – Day 0

Hannah and I grabbed a quick bite to eat as we made our way back to Benaroya Hall to attend the “Penny Arcade Make a Strip” panel. Lyle joined us in line shortly after we arrived. When the doors to Benaroya Hall finally opened that morning everyone in line poured into the great hall and made their way to the seating area. Once everyone was seated The song “Hustling” by Rick Ross started blasting from speakers all around us as Gabe and Tycho entered the stage to a roaring applause. The two proceeded to create a comic strip for their website right before us all while they worked they also took questions from the audience. It was really funny and very entertaining and something we will do again for sure if we are lucky enough to attend PAX Prime in 2011.

After the “Make a Strip” panel finished we headed over to the Sheraton and got inline for “Acquisitions Incorporated: D&D Live”. This was a longer wait for us but the PAX Enforces did a decent job keeping everyone in line entertained as we waited to take our seats. Everyone in line seemed really nice. People in line where again either talking, Playing on their Nintendo DS’s or playing Zombie Dice. The three of us grabbed some carpet and talked about life, the universe and everything.

The doors eventually did open and we made our way inside and found good seating up close to the action. A large projector screen was center stage so even the people in the back of the room would be able to see the Dungeons & Dragons action going on. Chris Perkins from Wizards of the Coast and the DM of this game was already on stage making the final adjustments to his to props and miniatures.

Eventually everyone did get seated and cameras that would be projecting on to the screen in front of us where correctly setup. Then the players were introduced to great applause. Scott Kurtz as Binwin Bronzebottom, Wil Wheaton as Aeofel (Al), Gabe as Jim DarkMagic of the New Hampshire Darkmagics, and Tycho Omin Dran CEO of Acquisitions Incorporated. The object of this Acquisitions Incorporated Dungeons & Dragons game was to bring Wil Wheaton’s Character Aeofel, back from the dead if possible. It was an awesome game and I laughed pretty hard throughout the whole thing. I am sure that Wizards of the Coast will eventually post an official video/podcast of the game. When they do I will update this post with the link.

After the good time we had at the Acquisitions Incorporated game we all got right back in line for Wil Wheaton’s Awesome Hour that was also taking place in the Sheraton. Wil talk a bit about his life and then left the rest of the hour open to a Q and A session.

Day 2 at PAX was pretty much lines and panels. After Wil Wheaton’s talk the three of us got dinner. Again Lyle headed back home and Hannah and myself proceeded to walk around the open game rooms and look over the shoulders of other gamers till we where ready to head back to the hotel.

Related posts:

1. PAX Prime 2010 – Day 3
2. PAX Prime 2010 – Day 1
3. PAX Prime 2010 – Day 0

When Warren Spector finished with his entertaining keynote presentation, Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade took the stage of the great hall for a Question and Answer period. It was a funny and informative Q&A session as the two answer questions about Penny Arcade, PAX, and games in general. At one point an older gentleman came up to the Q&A mic and politely asked if either Gabe or Tycho had any bubblegum. Gabe and Tycho kind of looked at each other funny and then finally said “no”. Then in the iconic Duke Nukem voice the man said “Well, I am here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I am all out of bubble gum”. I remember the reaction to everyone in Benaroya Hall just being “That was really cool”. It would not be till later in the day that I would realize why that gentleman was even there.

At the end of Gabe and Tycho’s Q&A we made our way back out to the streets of Seattle and to the convention center where we went right to the exhibit hall. The first time you walk into the main exhibit hall you’re flooded with flashing lights and random sounds that are quite overwhelming at first. It takes a moment to process what is going on and where it’s happening. There was just so much at first it was almost like sensory overload, but in a good way.

Walking through the convention center’s main gaming exhibit hall you find yourself surrounded by games. Mostly computer or condole games, but the occasional and refreshing table top game is on display as well. Some of the game titles that jump out at you when you’re walking around are ‘Little Big Planet 2’, ‘Portal 2’ ‘Mortal Kombat’, ‘Swarm’, ‘Halo Reach’, ‘Infamous 2’, and ‘Duke Nukem Forever’. When I saw the Duke Nukem Forever sign I understood that the guy at Gabe and Tycho’s Q&A panel was the voice actor for the new Duke Nukem Forever video game.

Feeling somewhat overwhelmed, Hannah, Lyle and I slowly walked through the entire exhibit hall and gravitated to the Wizards of the Coast booth. The booth was awesome with a little more than half dedicated to Magic the Gathering and the rest dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons. A wall was setup to show off unreleased products like Magic cards and new D&D miniatures. On the Magic side of the booth two tables where setup to teach people who to play Magic and two computer/gaming stations where setup to show of the Magic The Gathering video game. The other side of the booth was setup with an area for live action D&D to teach people how to play.

I was supposed to meet with some people with Wizards of the Coast on this day for some interviews and a demo of the Red Box. With some time to kill before I was to meet  Hannah, Lyle, and myself decided to try out the live action D&D training. We got in line and quickly made our way to the front where a Gentleman presented us with pre generated character options. The character options were laid out on a table before us in the form of two-sided laminated cards that would hang around your neck from a lanyard. The characters were simplified for the purposes of training, but that did not mean you where going to win the demo. The two groups that went before Hannah, Lyle and myself where both slain by the dragon!

When the three of us walked onto the life-sized battlemat to fight the dragon we didn’t know what would happen. We each took our turn and we each managed to deal a blow to the beast. Some of us got really lucky and rolled some critical hits. In my case I rolled two crits in a row for my Rouge and we where able to vanquish the dragon. The three of us got a button to pin on to ourselves that said “Monster Slyer”. For our critical hits we also got tokens that allowed us to claim other prizes.

From the Wizards of the Coast booth we made our way down stairs to an area called the Hidden Level which housed the a large area for Magic the gathering and Dungeons & Dragons play. D&D players where able to join a random dungeon delves or partake in A dark sun arena battle. Magic the Gathering players where able to just play or partake in a “buy-in” game. Hannah found this useful for learning how to play magic for the first time.

After exploring the hidden level we made our way back upstairs to meet with some people from Wizards of the Coast. I had the chance to speak with a D&D game designer and play a game out of the Red Box with one of the game developers by the Dungeons & Dragons bus! I will be writing more on this experience in a future post.

As morning turned to afternoon, and afternoon turned to evening Lyle, Hannah and myself found a place to eat dinner. It gave us a chance to talk about the days events and do a little planning about for the next day.

After finishing dinner we headed back to the expo hall to attend the play “Of Dice and Men”. We where lucky to even be able to attend this play. We gave ourselves a good hour, hour and a half to get in line. When we got in line however, we learned their where only 40 spots left in line. We waited in line while Hannah played Pokémon Silver on her Nintendo DS and traded Pokémon items with other poke ball wearers in line.

The doors finally opened for the play and the long line of people waiting to attended made their way in through the doors and found their seats. The play was really good and put on by some really great actors. You would be cheering one moment and gripping the edge of our seat just waiting to see what happens next.

When the play was finished we headed outside. Lyle caught the bus to go home for the night and we made plans to meet the next day. Hannah and I dropped some stuff off at our hotel room and then headed right back to the convention center. By this time the expo hall was closed, but that did not mean people where still not having fun and playing games. As we walked back to the convention center we found people in line to play Rock Band 2. I have to admit that some of the performances were rather good. The two floors of the expo hall that still had activity were dedicated to board gaming and make shift stores selling everything from board games to t-shirts. One room would be filled with people playing games like Carcassonne and Axis & Allis, while another room would be filled with people playing Magic the Gathering, Zombie Dice and Munchkin. They even had a room to check out games to play. Pretty much anything you could think of was available for check out.

Still another room was filled with bean bag chairs where people could talk, play games, check their e-mail, etc. It was a very relaxed and fun feeling everyone had. It was at this point however that I wish I had brought some of my Dungeons & Dragons material to run a game with. Hannah had some pre made characters all ready to go and I was in a mood to observe other Dungeons Masters, but no one was really playing Dungeons & Dragons in these rooms. It was a this point that I made a mental note that If I attend PAX next year I was going be prepared to run my own D&D game.

Hannah and I spent the next few hours walking around and just taking in all the gaming awesomeness that was around us before we headed back to our hotel to call it a night.

Related posts:

1. PAX Prime 2010 – Day 3
2. PAX Prime 2010 – Day 2
3. PAX Prime 2010 – Day 0

So we’ve got our idea, done some market research, and worked out who we are looking to target with our product and now in steps the search for format. In my case it wasn’t viable to look at hard copy products at this stage as being an indie author I believe I can get more bang for my indie budget buck by producing electronic products and in this instance a pdf was my preferred option. This not only gave me a realistic product type but a product that will be able to be viewed pretty ubiquitously and across different formats from computers to phones. So a big win there. As a side note my yearn for accessibility was driven by feedback from a survey I took about e-products, the results of which can be found here.

Next was the hurdle of making my game world actually attractive to people to purchase as there are some big issues with this type of product due to a large aversion for change. Realistically my total market will be small in comparison to other segments such as adventures however I see it as also being the most rewarding. So in my mind some of the greatest hurdles come from loss of knowledge, the GM now has to pretty much throw away everything that they knew about their current or previous world and learn mine, players on the other hand don’t have this as much of an issue as part of being a player is discovering the lands and surroundings so if it’s all new then there is more opportunity, scope and excitement. So with much of my work I’ve tried to provide player opportunities associated with societies, classes and areas as well as adventure hooks to help highlight possible ways in which players can interact with aspects of the world or how those aspects and organisations would influence the player’s progress. I think that this is important as it helps to bring about some engagement for GM’s and players alike as they read through my products.

So who is my game world aimed at, essentially people who are just starting up with fantasy role playing or coming from a different genre into fantasy, GM’s tired of their old world and looking for something new to challenge their players with and GM’s who are looking to switch campaigns and looking for a new setting.

With all of these aspects understood and worked out I set to writing and after a metric ton of writing and typing I had a proof of my product, then set about doing three things simultaneously. Firstly was to organise and send my product to three separate editors. As an impoverished indie writer I had to rely upon friends and family as opposed to a professional editor so I had to choose who edited my work very carefully and found a group of people who would look at the work from different angles and who actually knew how to edit properly. Secondly was to organise artwork. For this I decided that I would put all my cash into the cover art for the initial release and use the funds generated from ‘early adopter’ sales to build in artwork throughout it at a later stage, and as a reward for those who did purchase early in the piece I do thank you and when The Blood Soaked Lands is updated I will be sending you a free upgrade for your support. Thirdly was to learn some software that would allow me to design my product, in the end I went with Scribus and am very happy with how it turned out, its relatively easy to use and gave me the functionality such as embedded hyperlinks and display options that suited the look and feel that I was going for.

So several weeks later when all the editing was collated, the cover art and map work done, I put it all together and produced The Bloodsoaked Lands. A piece that I am proud of and a work that I hope you will consider if you are looking at a new world setting or just a new setting to be placed within your current world.

As a sneak preview of my second work I have provided below an excerpt, this is a small section that details the mindset of one of the people within it, a nation of tribes known as Gracia.

“I place the soles of my warm deer skin boot softly upon the ground; their supple hide base makes little noise upon the ground cover.  My shins part the leaves of the ferns that make a green blanket for the forest, covering it a foot and a half above the soil. The air is still damp from the night time rains and all around me I can hear the dripping of water from the leaves as the last of the rain drains from the canopy above to the forest floor.  There is little breeze this morning and my warm breath clouds in the chill air as I exhale. The forest is clear now, the fog of the morning has lifted and it has been cleaned from the previous rain. I have marked my body with woad to signify my intent to others, now it is time to hunt.

Looking to my left I can see my uncle, he is crouched against the trunk of a large tree, his bear skin cloak wrapped around him as he waits patiently, in his hands is a fine bow and although I cannot see it I know that he has an arrow knocked ready to release at a moment’s notice, he is a skilled hunter and in the absence of my father he has taught me all that I know.

I take a few steps forward and like my Uncle I rest my back against a nearby tree and search for my brother.

It is not long before he reveals himself and with a hand motion he signals for us to move. He has spotted our game and now it is time to make a kill and then it will be time to feast.

This is our world and this is my part in it.”

Related posts:

1. Designs from the Mind – product development part 1
2. Market Research for RPG Product Development
3. Warrior, Rogue & Mage is “Free Product of the Week” at DriveThruRPG and other updates