Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Some thoughts about Shadow, Sword and Spell
Shadow, Sword and Spell is a fun game. Or at least I had a
fun time playing a recent two adventure mini campaign. Though I will say that I really enjoy
playing games and I find that in many instances the actual game being played is
secondary. Get some decent
players, let them do what they want and see where it goes. Generally a pretty good recipe for a
fun night. But every system
certainly brings new things to the table and enables different styles of
gaming. SS&S is designed to
emulate pulp fantasy, the world of down and out heroes and low magic. And it does those things pretty
well. Having just finished up this
short game I have some recent thoughts about everything.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Shadow, Sword and Spell character creation
A couple of years ago I discovered Shadow, Sword and Spell,
a pulp fantasy RPG from Rogue games.
I’ve only had the chance to play it once, but I am going to be running a
short, two adventure game of it this week so I thought I’d take the chance to
capture some of my thoughts on it.
Since it is only going to be a two week game I made up several
characters for the players to choose from so that we could get right down to
it, especially since none of the players have any experience with it. Character
creation is fun and all, but it can also be time consuming, especially when you
need to teach everyone an entirely new ruleset. Which SS&S has, something that only uses a d12. A d12!
The most neglected of all dice. At
first I assumed that the game would be nothing other than rolling for Barbarain
Hit Die and damage from a greataxe, but it turns out there are other things
that you can do with a d12.
I wanted to walk through character creation and sort of start
to check out the rules that way.
In general I found making a character to be pretty easy, but the
characters that you wind up with are sort of odd. There is no rolling for attributes or skills (its not
preferred for me but I am fine with it) but there is a selection of a Culture
and a Modifier which can result in some strange traits for a character. Culture gives a character a couple of
skills, usually at a high level of aptitude. The Modifier gives a bonus (and
maybe a penalty) to a couple of skills. Let’s take a look at the Assassin type
character I made up for the group.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
A Monstrous Quiz
While recently playing through the Ghost Tower of Inverness,
the brave adventurers turned a corner in the long abandoned dungeon and
encountered (rolls on the wandering monster chart)…a leucrotta! Yes, the feared
leucrotta. Bane of adventurers and haunter of nightmares. It’s description is…well, I actually don’t
know. I am going to be honest for a moment, I’ve never heard of a leucrotta. In
all of my many years of playing D&D I have somehow managed to not come
across this creature of legend. And if I had it has left absolutely zero
impression on me. I had to look it
up in the Monster Manual to learn that it is the strange cross breed of two
otherwise very normal creatures.
It got me thinking about all of the bizarre monsters out there that are
nothing other than the physical qualities of several others merged into one
very awkward beast. It strikes me as
a very Gygaxian concept, just sort of fill up the pages of the Monster Manual
by coming up with a weird name and mashing animals together. What else is out there? Is the
leucrotta the king of the haphazardly assembled jungle?
I should also note that some of these creatures may actually
stem from mythology and I’m just not familiar to them, but as the author of the
original Monster Manual I am attributing Gary Gygax with their existence.
I decided to put together this quiz of strange monsters from
the lore of D&D. Lets see how you do.
1) This chaotic evil creature has the head and antlers of a
deer atop the body of a giant eagle. And for some reason it seems to cast the
shadow of a human as opposed to that of an eagle mixed with a deer. It also requires
the heart of another creature to reproduce, which must make sex very
awkward.
2) What do you get when you mix a monkey, camel, lion and
eagle? Some sort of awkward desert dwelling, friendly creature that is known
for it’s practical jokes and good natured teasing! And who could ever forget
it’s gaze power, called sun sparkles.
Check out my boney ridges. |
3) This creature combines the body of a stag, a lion’s tail
and the fearsome head of a giant badger! Rather than teeth it has “jagged boney
ridges”. (I’m no dentist, but I’m pretty sure that’s sort of what teeth are
anyway.) They are also able to imitate the voice of a man with uncanny skill
despite living a miserable solitary life far away from the world of man.
4) Oh, those mad wizards! Always getting mixed up in secret magical
experiments that create creatures like this mix of a snapping turtle and
armadillo infused with demons’ ichor.
I wonder if the wizard’s intention was to create a constantly hungry,
fearless creature that loves to eat Halflings, or if that was just something
that sort of happened?
Demon Ichor makes me want to climb trees! |
5) This aquatic animal possesses the head and torso of a
horse and the lower half of a fish. All of it’s limbs end in fins and it’s body
is covered in scales. It is also
super lame and speaks a language that no one cares to learn.
So what are these great creatures that fit easily into any
campaign?
1)
Peryton
2)
Opinicus
3)
Leucrotta
4)
Bulette
5)
Hippocampus
Monday, May 12, 2014
1st Edition, The Ghost Tower of Inverness and premade adventures
I was feeling a bit nostalgic lately and sort of really
wanted to play some old school 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and
Dragons. There are so many retro
style D&D clones out there these days, but I don’t think that they really
interest me. Most of them are just
a stripped down easy to learn fantasy game, but lack the personality and daring
that truly define the early versions of D&D. So I decided to go back to the
source and run a one shot adventure using a module. I didn’t want to start up a
new campaign (I have a Shadowrun game going on currently and I certainly don’t
need two games a week in my life right now) and I didn’t want to spend a lot of
time writing an adventure so this seemed like a great way to dip into the game
and then jump right back out. After much searching through all of my old
modules I settled on the classic C2, The Ghost Tower of Inverness.
I’ve written before about my general dislike of dungeoncrawls so I won’t go into the reasons why, but the Ghost Tower seemed
workable. For starters, the
dungeons of the adventure are so absurd that it’s easy to throw plausibility
out the window and just accept it for what it is. I’ve seen it referred to as a “funhouse” adventure and that
makes total sense. The premise is
that the PC’s are all the prisoners of some Duke and he frees them from his
dungeons in order to have them retrieve the fabled Soul Gem and bring it to him
in exchange for freedom. The Gem
was the possession of some wizard who constructed an insane tower filled with
monsters and traps to protect the Gem. Eventually the wizard disappeared but
the Gem remains! Alright, that’s not too bad. I suppose one could ask some questions about why the Duke
(who has tons of resources at his disposal) is choosing this motley crew of
vagabonds to undertake this important quest, but whatever. If I start asking
questions now I’ll be at a million words by the time I reach the underground
chessboard that electrocutes people when they make a wrong step. Ghost Tower
was originally a tournament module run at Wintercon VIII in 1979 and featured
five characters, so I rounded up five players to fulfill the roles of Lembu,
Discinque, Hodar, Li Hon and Zinethar the Wise. And we’re off…
Monday, March 17, 2014
Call of Cthulhu and the challenge of fantasy gaming in a normal world
A couple of weeks ago I ran my first session of Call of
Cthulhu. It did not go well for a
variety of reasons. But I think that the crux of it was the inherent clash of
playing a fantasy game but one that is so firmly rooted in a real, actual
world. Cthulhu is a horror game
and a substantial portion of that horror is generated by the knowledge that you
as a normal person are pretty much entirely powerless against the strange
things in the world that you find yourself in pursuit of. That degree in Accounting? Not going to
help against one of the Elder Gods, nor is your buddy’s ability to use a
library going to fend off Dimensional Shambler. That’s a frightening thought, the notion that the closer
that you get to the thing you are seeking the more danger you are putting
yourself into. I planned on using this basic struggle of everyday normalcy
versus the unknown as the basis for the building horror that would ultimately
drive the investigators to the precipice of insanity and fear. Turns out the players preferred
normalcy in their fantasy life and I can’t say that I blame them.
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