Vargold: The Wolf-Time

Honor + Intrigue: Barbie, Daughter of D'Artagnan?!?

2012-02-10T16:29:00.001-06:00

Stop laughing, I'm serious! In 2009, Artisan Home Entertainment released the animated adventure Barbie and the Three Musketeers on DVD. As the nerd father of a young girl, I thought the movie would be a good Trojan Horse where cultivating a taste for action-adventure and swashbucklers was concerned. The movie is better than it has any right to be—which is lucky, considering the dozens of times I've had to watch it in the last three years.

In the film, Barbie plays Corinne, daughter of D'Artagnan (who is apparently dead). She leaves her mother and her Gascon home to head north to Paris; she plans to present Monsieur Treville with a letter with a letter from her mother encouraging Treville to make Corinne a Musketeer. Hijinks ensue as Corinne and her three serving maid friends struggle to defeat would-be usurper Philippe (played by Tim Curry) and the marshaled forces of oppressive patriarchy.

Needless to say, Corinne's Honor + Intrigue stats follow below.

Corinne, Daughter of D'Artagnan

Motivation
Ambition (to become a Musketeer like her father)

Qualities
Might 0
Daring 2
Savvy 1
Flair 1

Combat
Brawl 0
Melee 2
Ranged 0
Defense 2

Careers
Farmgirl 1
Acrobat 2
Duelist 1
Servant 0

Resources
Lifeblood 10
Fortune 4

Boons
Attractive (Bonus die in situations where looks matter—this is Barbie, after all)
Beast-Friend (Bonus die when dealing with animals; has animal companions—see below)
Born Athlete (Bonus die when performing athletic activities other than fighting)

Flaws
Country Bumpkin (Penalty die in situations where street smarts matter)
Hot-Headed (Penalty die when attempting to suppress anger)

Equipment
Epee (1d6 damage, +1 Parry)
Miette (Corinne's kitten . . . who apparently duels as well—don't ask!)
Alexander (Corinne's elderly horse, inherited from her father)

Honor + Intrigue: Robin Hood Redux

2012-02-08T12:28:00.000-06:00

Honor + Intrigue is now available in PDF form (with print copies to follow). After a quick read-through, I'm incredibly impressed with what Chris Rutkowski has achieved here. My favorite rule so far is the maneuver "Return Weapon": if your hero uses his minor action to return his disarmed opponent's weapon (as is so often the case in swashbuckler duels), he receives a reward of 1 Advantage over his foe as well as 1 point of Fortune.

Now that I have the rules I can update my character sheet for Errol Flynn's Robin of Locksley as follows:

Attributes

Might 0

Daring 2

Savvy 1

Flair 1

[No changes here.]

Combat

Brawl 1

Melee 1

Ranged 2

Defense 0

[No changes here.]

Careers

Noble 1

Warrior 1

Woodsman 2

Highwayman 0

[Again, no changes needed.]

Resources

Lifeblood 10

Fortune 6

Composure 3

Advancement 0

[Scores calculated now that I have the formulae for doing so.]

Equipment

Longbow (1d6+2 damage, range increments of 110')

Sparkly Lincoln green tunic and tights

Sword (1d6 damage, +1 Parry)

[The weapons listed in Honor + Intrigue are seventeenth-century weapons, so I've had to improvise here. Robin's sword in the film is closest to the game's epee, and I've therefore given his blade the epee's stats.]

Boons

Crack Shot: Longbow (Bonus die on all damage rolls w/bows, range increments increased by 10', more Fortune points required to reduce effect of Robin's successful shots)

Favored by Fortune (permanent +2 increase to Fortune)

Laugh in the Face of Danger (Bonus die to Daring rolls to resist fear/intimidation, Social Combat/Repartee rolls against Daring have a Penalty die)

[A big change here: I dropped "Knighted" since the description of the Boon describes it as more of a reward for services rendered, and Robin is a baron and knight by birth in the film. Hard choices followed, though. The other boons that were the most logical choices for Robin—Attractive, Daredevil, and Favored by Fortune—are all Beginning Boons and can only be purchased during character creation. I decided that an early Fortune boost made the most sense for Robin at this stage of his career: he's often luckier than he should be, and that gets him out of jams.

Flaws

Hot-Headed (Penalty die when trying to suppress anger; whenever anger gets Robin into trouble, he gains 1 Fortune point)

Hunted (whenever Robin faces off with the followers of Prince John, Guy of Gisborne, or the Sheriff of Nottingham, he gains 1 Fortune point)

[Another change here: "Obligation" is more of a specific debt or responsibility than a generic devotion to Saxon welfare. (Robin is also free of anti-Norman bigotry even as he opposes Norman tyranny: his battle for justice reflects a devotion to the virtue in general rather than to a specific ethnicity.) I therefore decided that Robin's in-play story begins after he escapes from Nottingham Castle and flees to Sherwood Forest; this gives him "Hunted."]

Vargold Turns Two

2012-02-08T09:27:00.004-06:00

OK, the venomous pao's Strange Stones was two years old on Friday, February 3rd, and now it's Vargold's turn to be the birthday blog. What was going on back in May 2009 to give birth to these blogs in February 2010?

(Seriously, though, thanks to everyone who's followed the blog, commented on it, and/or added it to their blog roll—I appreciate it very much!)

Honor + Intrigue: Robin of Locksley

2012-02-06T13:32:00.000-06:00

Basic Action Games is getting close to a release date for its swashbuckling RPG Honor + Intrigue. While the game will have rules for those who wish to mix some magic in with their derring-do, it's largely a historical RPG. Nonetheless, it has a place on this blog if only for its clever use of Simon Washbourne's Barbarians of Lemuria ruleset (one of my favorites and a mainstay of Vargold posts).

Basic Action Games owner and designer Chris Rutkowski has put copies of both a character sheet and a quick reference sheet on the company's Facebook page and challenged fans to start creating characters for the game. (The reference sheet includes a list of all Honor + Intrigue careers, boons, and flaws.) I obliged him by putting together this version of Errol Flynn's Robin Hood (from the 1938 Adventures of Robin Hood). Once I get my copy of the actual rules, I may have to emend some of my choices (and finish stats I don't yet know how to calculate), but I think these stats do a good job of representing Robin of Locksley as he appears in his first scene in the film.

Attributes

Might 0

Daring 2

Savvy 1

Flair 1

Combat

Brawl 1

Melee 1

Ranged 2

Defense 0

Careers

Noble 1

Warrior 1

Woodsman 2

Highwayman 0

Resources

Lifeblood

Fortune

Composure

Advancement

Equipment

Longbow

Longsword

Dagger

Sparkly Lincoln green tunic and tights

Boons

Crack Shot, Knighted, Laugh in the Face of Danger

Flaws

Hot-Headed

Obligation (to protect all Saxons, high or low)

BFRPG: Starting at Third Level

2012-01-27T16:28:00.000-06:00

Although I've played D&D on and off since 1980, I have never been a fan of the "harsh reality" approach to first-level characters. None of my groups pre-Fourth Edition ever rolled 3d6 six times in a row for attributes, nor did they go by the rules-as-written when rolling hit points. Returning to Old School D&D with BFRPG has meant that I'm confronting these issues again. What I have in mind for the kids' first characters is the following:

1. For attributes, roll 4d6 six times, dropping the lowest die in each roll. Then assign the totals to attributes in whatever order is desired.

2. At first level, hit points equal the maximum result possible for the character's class hit die. CON bonuses still apply.

I'm also considering starting the characters off at 5000 xp, the minimum amount for a Magic-User to hit third level. I wanted any boys playing Magic-Users to have multiple spells to cast per day instead of being reduced to throwing daggers after using up their one first-level spell in the initial encounter. Third level gives any Magic-User a pair of first-level spells as well as a second-level spell.

5000 xp means that any Thieves will begin the game at fourth level, no problem since that starting point doesn't make using their thieving skills a cake-walk. Clerics will be 1000 xp shy of fourth level (and will have two first-level spells), while Fighters will be 3000 xp shy of fourth level as well. Elf Fighter/Magic-Users will begin the game as second-level Fighters with 500 extra xp and as newly-minted second-level Magic Users.

There won't be any "in-game" rationale for a third-level start. I.e., the characters will be fresh off the farm. The two extra levels (three in the case of any Thieves) are essentially a narrative convention granting the PCs protagonist status (and decreasing the likelihood of an early TPK).

Two additional house rules follow from these decisions:

1. When rolling hit points for second and third level, all results of 1 will be rerolled. Once play begins, though, hit points gained through level advancement will be generated by the rules (and thus results of 1 will be possible). Enhanced survivability remains the guiding principle here.

2. Should a player's character expire, his new character will enter play at third level as well. None of my old groups were ever great fans of the "return to play at first level, even if the rest of the party is eighth level" approach to the game. We always felt that it was strange for experienced heroes to suddenly adopt a neophyte in the midst of their travails. At the same time, I want to use the differentiated experience tables of BFRPG, so a Fourth Edition approach would be cumbersome. (I assume that averaging party levels would be the likely option here, but I'll pass on it.)

Have others made similar decisions when starting campaigns at third level? Also: what are good "first modules" for third level characters, preferably adventures that wouldn't require much work to fit into a forest setting?

This Week on a Very Special D&Dawson's Creek . . .

2012-01-26T12:15:00.001-06:00

Last night at D&D Encounters, my satyr bard taunted a fae giant by calling him "James Van Verbeeg." That is all.

My Character Got Stoned Last Night

2012-01-19T14:12:00.002-06:00

The last few sessions have not gone well for my Fourth Edition mage Enric Crocker ("the Apprentice Who Lived"). Two weeks ago, he was down to his last death save courtesy of this recurring villain:

Yes, that's Loomis the Rat King, crazed rodent lord and plague of the Duchy of Boswin. He hit Enric with his "ratapult" (a slingshot that shoots rodents), knocking him down to -9 hit points. The timely arrival of reinforcements allowed the party's druid to stabilize Enric.

This week, the threat of death, while less embarrassing, was equally puissant. After tracking down a crazed peasant sculptor with a perhaps too uncanny skill at statuary, Enric was left alone by his compatriots to face this beast:

Alpha-striking with various dazing powers and action points was not enough to keep Enric from being bitten by Alis the Cockatrice. Even worse were his pitiful saving throws. In spite of a potential +2 bonus from his Delver's Leather Armor +1, Enric could not manage to roll higher than a 5. So "slowed" became "immobilized," and then, in a final indignity, a natural 1 meant "petrified." Dave the DM tried to console me with the information that Enric was now Resist 20 Damage and immortal, but I rejected his false sympathy—he's been trying to kill one of the party for weeks. Again the party druid saved the day, making his Nature roll with massive overkill to remember the bit of lore explaining how to cure cockatrice petrification. Unfortunately, the party now has a wagon-full of villagers in need of a Restoration ritual from Boswin's head cleric.

In the meantime, Enric has decided to hire a meatshield, er, henchman to guard his flank.

Run Away, We Are No Match for Sting!

2012-01-14T12:34:00.000-06:00

I'm guessing that this image from today's LA Times Hero Complex post on Peter Jackson's version of The Hobbit is the moment that Bilbo names his Gondolin dagger: "I will give you a name . . . and I shall call you Sting." An awesome picture of one of my favorite moments featuring my favorite sword in all of fiction!

Dungeon Alphabet: Why Did No One Tell Me?

2012-01-13T15:09:00.000-06:00

So my hardcopy of Dungeon Alphabet arrives today from Goodman Games, and I discover for the first time (having only owned the PDF version before) that Peter Mullen's stunning endpapers are in AD&D module-map blue! Frabjous day, calloo callay! Why is Peter Mullen not selling prints of his work? Or am I just too lame to find the place where he is selling prints?

Another Interview with Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan

2012-01-13T13:04:00.002-06:00

Robot 6 has a new interview up with Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, the writer-artist team on Dark Horse Comics' relaunch of Conan. There are some nice sample pages included with the interview. The first installment of "Queen of the Black Coast" hits next month.

BFRPG Setting: Three Moon Forest

2012-01-11T15:21:00.000-06:00

The setting I'm going to use for the boys' BFRPG game is Three Moon Forest, a setting originally developed for a 4E game that never came off. As its name suggests, Three Moon Forest is a massive woodland region. It may not literally take three moons' worth of time to cross from one end to another, but it sure feels like it. At the current moment, I have the following elements in mind for the setting:

1. Seven Forges - A dwarven settlement at the foot of the Kalderstones, a mountain range rising up out of the forest. The dwarves of Seven Forges ship their ore south, but lack easy access to river transport. So they move the ore overland to . . .

2. Last Landing - A human-dominated settlement at the highest navigable point on the Rusty River, a river flowing down out of the Kalderstones. Halfling-crewed barges take the dwarves' ore down river to other settlements while returning goods from the outside world up river.

3. Naddersfork - The next human settlement down river, located at the point where the Snake River flows into the Rusty. A stopping-over point for the barge crews.

4. The Hobshaws - The Rusty flows past this forested upland en route to Naddersfork. Since the Hobshaws are inhabited by numerous goblin tribes, that's a problem for trade. The goblins closest to the river have learned that toll-taking is a more profitable venture than outright raids, but there are always tribes further back in the hills looking for a piece of the action or trying to sneak a raid in when the river tribes aren't looking.

5. The Song Stones - Scattered across Three Moon Forest, these clearings contain ancient menhirs and serve as meeting sites for the elves of the wood—a more or less dispersed population with no fixed settlements of notable size.

What I'm missing is an adventure site. In the 4E version of the setting, there's an eladrin city that world-fell into the forest: its shattered remains are full of nasty fae creatures. Not sure how well that works as a mega-dungeon (or if I want to do the work of mapping it out). I'm not adverse to dropping in an established dungeon, but I would prefer one that isn't a meat-grinder for PCs: that's a portion of the Old School experience that I didn't care for as a teen and don't want to inflict on the boys. Thoughts?

(The image for this post is a shot of New Zealand's Pureora Forest.)

I Look Forward . . .

2012-01-09T10:40:00.001-06:00

. . . to reading all of the various Dungeons & Dragons-related blogs and web fora over the next few months.

NOT.

Dipping a Toe in the Old School Pool

2012-01-05T14:53:00.000-06:00

Since 2008, I've run a number of RPG sessions for the children of friends. Most of these sessions have been Fourth Edition D&D games: the boys have proven quite capable of handling that level of character detail without too much handholding. As a DM, though, I'm a bit worn out. I'd also like to move away from the battle mat and the token management that goes along with it. (When I put on my playing hat, though, I continue to love the tactical combat of the current edition.)

So I looked into the various retro-clones and simulacra of D&D for a game to run in place of Fourth Edition. I came into the hobby in 1980, receiving a copy of the Holmes Basic boxed set from my grandparents for my eleventh birthday. OD&D clones were therefore a non-starter: I had no real interest in attempts to replicate a game I never played. My background with AD&D prior to Second Edition was minimal, so I passed over those games as well.

In the end, my choice was always going to come down to one of the games based on Moldvay's B/X and/or Metzner's BECMI—the flavors of D&D that I played the most as a lad. There are some excellent BECMI clones out there, but I never really liked where Metzner took the game after level 14. Labyrinth Lord is a wonderful take on B/X, especially when Steve Zieser's atmospheric art is factored into the equation. But LL still preserves too many of the features that drove me away from D&D as a teen: level limits, race-as-class, energy drain, descending AC, and so on.

The last game standing was Chris Gonnerman's Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game, a simulacrum preserving what I liked in B/X while jettisoning most of what I didn't like. I've put in an order for the hardcover edition of the book and am actively looking for a good low-level module that isn't a dungeon-crawl. Suggestions?

Preview Pages Up for Wood and Cloonan's "Queen of the Black Coast"

2011-11-29T13:19:00.001-06:00

Comics Alliance has just posted a six-page preview of the first issue of Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan's adaptation of "Queen of the Black Coast" for Dark Horse Comics. Cloonan's slimmer Conan is on display; I especially like the panel layout of p. 5. One question, though: why do Cimmerians talk in pointy word balloons when everyone else uses regular round word balloons? :)

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-30T20:43:00.000-05:00

One More Interview with Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan

2011-10-20T09:26:00.001-05:00

Sci-fi site io9 has now posted an interview with both Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan about (among other things) their plans for their Dark Horse Comics adaptation of "Queen of the Black Coast." In the interview, they humorously address the sad sack issue of how to depict Bêlit's nudity. (Seriously, just put some clothes on the woman--she doesn't need to be nude all the time for the adaptation to be good. Who cares if the same fanboys who had a snit about Dejah Thoris wearing clothes in the John Carter trailer are upset?) Cloonan also responds to the charge that her Conan is "Emo Conan."

Cloonan's Conan and Bêlit Sketches

2011-10-15T11:24:00.002-05:00

A follow-up to yesterday's post: Comics Alliance has posted a series of Becky Cloonan's sketches of Conan and Bêlit that just whet my appetite for her upcoming Conan comic even more. I love this younger, thinner, more expressive Conan. As for Bêlit, well, let's just say that there's a rather nice but rather NSFW at the link that displays Cloonan's superior grasp of female anatomy. I think Cloonan has captured the essence of the Queen of the Black Coast as well.

An Indie Comics Take on Conan the Cimmerian

2011-10-14T15:00:00.000-05:00

Awesome news from the New York City Comic Convention today: Dark Horse has confirmed rumors that Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, co-creators of the acclaimed indie-comic Demo, will be collaborating on a new Conan the Barbarian series beginning February 8th. As Wood reveals in an interview with Comic Book Resources, the duo have signed up for a 25 issue adaptation of Howard's classic story "Queen of the Black Coast"--two years' worth of issues that cover not only the events of the story but the two years in-between those events that Conan sails alongside Bêlit. When I was a kid, Roy Thomas had a similar run of stories in Marvel's Conan the Barbarian. I'm looking forward to Wood and Cloonan's take. (Pictured above is Cloonan's version of Bêlit, and it's already my favorite rendition of the character ever.)

Terry Pratchett's Carrot Ironfoundersson

2011-10-04T14:00:00.000-05:00

It's been some time since my last Barbarians of Lemuria character conversion. Since I'm currently rereading my way back through the Watch sequence of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, I thought I'd take a shot at converting Constable Carrot Ironfoundersson, honorary dwarf and king-in-waiting of Ankh-Morpork (not that he wants anything to do with the crown). As I've done throughout this series, I've opted to convert Carrot as he is at the moment of his first appearance in Guards! Guards!—beginning Barbarians of Lemuria characters are generally quite robust, effectively emulating most sword-and-sorcery protagonists. (After all, like Conan, Fafhrd, and the Mouser, Carrot has gone from zero to hero long before he makes his initial entrance into the narrative.)

Carrot is not just too big for a dwarf; he's also bigger than your average human. I've therefore given him Strength 2 to reflect his size. I could have added a point of Agility by dropping Carrot's Mind to -1, but—as those who oppose him soon realize—simple doesn't mean stupid in Carrot's case. Appeal is set at 2; Carrot's just that likable. Combat scores are all set at 1, reflecting Carrot's rational, measured approach to policing. As for careers, an initial career of Noble represents Carrot's birthright as the last heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork—but is set at 0 to reflect Carrot's initial ignorance of his heritage (and probably stays there even as he comes to learn of his ancestors). Miner 1 is a variant of Laborer; it has a score because Carrot does know quite a lot about mining and dwarven battle bread. (It might even be possible to convince me to rename the career "Dwarf.") Scholar 1 is there for Carrot's memorization of the Morporkian legal code and his pleasure reading of tax codes, while Guard 2 is a non-brainer.

In addition to his sword, Carrot carries the crossbow and truncheon assigned to every Watchman. Even though Watchmen are provided with helmets, chain mail, and breastplates, I've only given Carrot light armor: Barbarians of Lemuria punishes heavier types of armor with Agility penalties, and that's not something I see affecting Carrot. In fact, Carrot's armor is more of a character device (i.e., the extent to which he keeps it polished reflecting his worrisome devotion to duty) than an actual means of protection.

The Boon "King in (Voluntary) Hiding" is a Discworld variant of "Marked by the Gods," giving Carrot an extra Hero Point. I thought briefly about giving Carrot a variant of "Valgardian Blade" since he does carry the sword of the ancient kings of Ankh-Morpork, but then I decided against this: Carrot's sword is one of the most resolutely ordinary objects in all of Discworld. I'd prefer to let the character use Hero Points to achieve some of the special effects he achieves with the blade in the novels. The Flaw "Country Bumpkin" is, well, definitional: Carrot is one of the bumpkiniest bumpkins in all of fantasy literature, believing that "seamstresses" really are just women who sew. So the Flaw is exactly right for him at this point in his career. (Later on, I suspect he buys it off with AP even as he continues to pretend that he's a clueless hick.)

Attributes

Strength 2

Agility 0

Mind 0

Appeal 2

Combat

Brawl 2

Melee 1

Ranged 0

Defense 1

Careers

Noble 0

Dwarf 1

Scholar 1

Guard 2

Resources

Lifeblood 14

Hero Points 6

Gear

Light armor (protection d6-2)

Crossbow (d6+1, 2 rounds to load, range 80')

Sword (damage d6)

Truncheon (damage d6-1, range 10')

Boons

King in (Voluntary) Hiding

Hard-to-Kill

Flaws

Country Bumpkin

Go East, Young Hobbit

2011-08-22T14:22:00.002-05:00

Name: Hugo Hornblower

Culture: Hobbit of the Shire

Cultural Blessing: Hobbit-sense (counts twice when calculating company Fellowship rating; when making a Wisdom roll, rolls Feat die twice and keeps best result)

Background: Restless Farmer

Calling: Wanderer

Basic Attributes: Body 3 (5), Heart 6 (7), Wits 5 (8)

Common Skills: Awe 0, Inspire 0, Persuade 3 (personality); Athletics 1, Travel 2, Stealth 3 (movement); Awareness 2, Insight 2, Search 2 (perception);Explore 1, Healing 0, Hunting 0 (survival); Song 2, Courtesy 3, Riddle 2 (custom); Craft 1, Battle 0, Lore 0 (vocation)

Weapon Skills: Bow 2, Short Sword 1, Dagger 1

Endurance: 22 (Fatigue 13)
Hope: 18 (Shadow 0)

Damage: 3
Parry: 6 (9 when fighting larger foes)
Armor: 2d+1

Valour: 1
Wisdom: 2 (Virtue: Small Folk)

Specialities: Folk-lore, Herb-lore, Small, Story-telling
Distinctive Features: Eager, Trusty

Shadow Weakness: Wandering-madness

Equipment: Short sword, bow, dagger, leather corslet, cap of iron and leather, buckler, traveling gear, pipe-weed samples

A descendent of Old Toby himself, Hugo Hornblower has traveled to Wilderland from the Shire in search, not of adventure, but of new markets for his family's pipe-weed products. He's a particularly tiny hobbit, and his ill-fitting protective gear (bought on sale from a desperate Dwarf smith) makes him look a bit ridiculous. But if you let him talk to you, you may find yourself placing a rather larger pipe-weed order in no time at all.

(Essentially, Hugo is the Middle-earth equivalent of a whiskey drummer.)

Vargold Baby Birthday

2011-08-14T23:00:00.000-05:00

Regular readers will remember that Vargold went on a bit of a hiatus after my second child (a son) was born on 14 August 2010. Well, here we are a year later, and the little barbarian is now one!

Here he plays with the shaker eggs from his brand new birthday drum kit. Me, I'm going to try and get him to provide musical accompaniment to my ongoing reread of Lord of the Rings. "Drums, drums in the deep. They are coming . . ."

Beorning Bonus: Botild Openhand as Drawn by Jon Hodgson

2011-08-09T07:21:00.000-05:00

Botild was created in partial response to "[The One Ring] Lets Make a PC," an ongoing RPG.net thread devoted to the creation of sample characters for the game. Begun by Skywalker, the thread morphed at post 55 from the group creation of an Elf loremaster to the creation of an entire company of PCs. The participants are currently working on a Dwarven treasure-hunter and an as-yet indeterminate Woodman. TOR artist extraordinaire Jon Hodgson (whom I first noticed for his work on the Dragon Warriors revival) took some time from his busy schedule to provide a sketch of the loremaster Gloreithel. When I woke up this morning, though, I discovered that he had also generously produced this illustration:

Wow. Just wow. I have been wanting a Hodgson illustration for some time now, but I didn't think that one would just show up in response to one of my own creations. Thank you, Jon!

Building a Better Beorning: Chargen in The One Ring, Conclusion

2011-08-08T20:39:00.004-05:00

Here's Botild's complete character write-up (now with the Beorning byname I forgot in Part One of the series):

Name: Botild Openhand

Culture: Beorning

Cultural Blessing: Furious

Background: Head of the Family

Calling: Wanderer

Basic Attributes: Body 6 (8), Heart 4 (7), Wits 4 (5)

Common Skills: Awe 3, Inspire 1, Persuade 0 (personality); Athletics 2, Travel 2, Stealth 1 (movement); Awareness 2, Insight 3, Search 1 (perception); Explore 2, Healing 2, Hunting 3 (survival); Song 0, Courtesy 1, Riddle 1 (custom); Craft 1, Battle 0, Lore 0 (vocation)

Weapon Skills: Great spear 2, Axe 1, Dagger 1

Endurance: 28 (Fatigue 14)

Hope: 12 (Shadow 0)

Damage: 6
Parry: 4
Armor: 2d+1 (2d from leather corslet, +1 from Reward)

Valour: 2 (Close-fitting Reward applied to her leather corslet)
Wisdom: 1

Specialities: Beast-lore, Mountaineer
Distinctive Features: Curious, Folk-lore*, Generous

Shadow Weakness: Wandering-madness

Equipment: Great spear, axe, dagger, leather corslet

Botild Openhand grew up on the eastern slopes of the Misty Mountains, tending her family's herds and wandering about the countryside. Those carefree days ended at age ten when her mother died, forcing Botild into the role of lady of the house. Four years later, fourteen-year-old Botild had to grow up once again when Beorn sent her father and older brother to help guard the passes over the Misty Mountains. Botild was now in charge of the family holdings, but her generous nature helped them prosper and earned her the epithet of "Openhand" from her neighbors. At age sixteen, Botild learned that her father had died in a skirmish with Orcs in the mountains. Her brother returned home and took control of the estate. He was grasping where his sister was generous; worse, he refused to find Botild a husband among the neighboring families, preferring a drudge at home to an ally abroad. Botild initially did her best to do her sisterly duty, but a year of enduring her brother's casual cruelties proved to be too much even for her. She left home with her father's spear in hand, determined to regain her childlike sense of wonder through exploration and adventure. A year of wandering has done much to toughen her up, and she begins TA 2946 with a sense of hope for the future.

Overall I'm extremely pleased with TOR chargen. Several people have complained online that the heroic cultures exert too powerful an influence over the process, that multiple characters from the same culture are essentially cookie-cutter copies of one another. I'm not seeing that: there are certainly some points of contact between Botild and Beran of the Mountains, the pregen Beorning from the TOR rulebook (they both took the Head of the Family background; their base Attributes are thus the same, giving them identical Endurance and Hope as well as Damage and Parry; both have opted to prioritize Valor over Wisdom). But the differences are clear: Beran made Body his most favored Attribute, followed by Wits whereas Botild put Heart first and then Body. Their various Traits only overlap at Mountaineer; Beran is the grim warrior whose word is his bond, while Botild is a generous woman always on the lookout for the horizon.

What impressed me most was the way in which the sequence of the process generated backstory and hooks for play. As I noted in an earlier post, I already had a strong image of Botild as an individual before I even began the customization process. (This is more evidence against the idea that culture generates too much conformity in game.) Customization only strengthened this view. I'm actually disappointed to be planning on running a TOR campaign: I really want to play Botild Openhand now, especially when her company finds its way back to the Western Vales of Anduin and a confrontation with her skinflint brother becomes imminent . . .

Building a Better Beorning: Chargen in The One Ring, Part Two

2011-08-08T19:01:00.007-05:00

The first step in hero customization is the determination of the hero's Calling, his or her particular motivation for adventure. Like Background, the choice of Calling initiates a cascade of sub-choices. There are currently five Callings available: Scholar (the acquisition of knowledge drives you forth into the Wild), Slayer (someone did you or yours wrong, and you're seeking the means of vengeance), Treasure-hunter (the ruins created by the long, tragic history of Middle-earth = PROFIT), Wanderer (the experience of new things is its own reward), and Warden (someone must protect the weak against the onset of the Shadow). Each Calling allows a hero to determine two more favored skills (taken from Calling-specific skill groups), pick up one unique Trait, and (unfortunately) acquire a Shadow Weakness as well (i.e., the path you're like to follow if you're overwhelmed by the Shadow). It's worth noting here that each heroic culture write-up lists suggested and unusual Callings; the latter are not forbidden to player heroes from that culture, but the game suggests that Loremasters generate stories from the character's willingness to flout his home culture's expectations.

The suggested Callings for Beornings are Slayer (haughty Beornings make enemies easily) and Warden (in the end, though, they stand up against the Shadow); the unusual Calling is Treasure-hunter (what is a Beorning going to spend his treasure on in the Vales of Anduin?). There's a bit of the caretaker in Botild, so Warden could work. But I think her sense of hard-won freedom from familial duty and strife inclines her more toward the path of the Wanderer, so that's my pick. The Wanderer's favored skill groups are Custom (Craft, Battle, and Lore) and Survival (Explore, Healing, and Hunting). In Botild's case, Healing seems like an obvious choice for a favored skill: she did spend all that time tending to her flocks, after all. So Healing gets underlined. The second favored skill can come from the same skill group or from the other one; I don't see Botild as being particular inclined to fixing things, skilled at warfare, or eager for facts (her curiosity is directed at experiences, not information). I'll therefore underline Explore and boost it from 0 in a few steps. The Wanderer's unique trait is Folk-lore, an aptitude for picking up the sort of social knowledge that interests Botild most. Her Shadow Weakness is Wandering-madness, the temptation to completely break free of all ties that bind and lose herself in the moment. Botild is going to have to work to establish an equilibrium between the responsibilities she's escaped for the moment and the freedom that could potentially lead her astray.

The next step of customization is the determination of favored attributes. These are boosted Body, Heart, and Wits values representing a hero's particular inclinations; when a player spends a Hope point to augment a Common skill roll, he adds his regular attribute score to a regular skill and his favored score to a favored skill. Each hero adds three points to one attribute, two to a second, and one to a third.

Looking at the character sheet, I see that all of Botild's favored skills are clustered under Body (Athletics, Awareness, Explore) and Heart (Healing). Since her base Heart of 4 is lower than her base Body of 6, I'm going to add the three points to Heart for a favored total of 7 and the two points to Body for a favored total of 8. Poor old Wits will have to make do with a favored total of 5 (up one from 4).

I now get ten points to spend on raising my skills (both Common and Weapon). I have to be careful here: skills cost their new level in points, and each level must be paid for (e.g., going from 0 to 3 is going to cost six of the ten points). Worse: weapon skills cost two per level and are also cumulative in cost.

Some tough choices here. I established that Explore was one of Botild's favored skills, so I want to put enough points there to make that decision worthwhile. A score of 2 (average) eats up three of my ten points. Now I have seven left. I'm going to bring Healing up to 2 as well; since it was already at a 1, I'm out just two points (total of five left). Botild has seen a bit of Wilderland before play begins, so Travel goes from 0 to 2 (three points, two left), and she's learned to overcome some of her Beorning brusqueness, raising Courtesy from 0 to 1 as well (one point, one left). I don't have enough points left to raise any of her existing Weapon skills, but then I never pictured her as a front-line fighter: she's more like to fight from a defensive stance, protecting her allies and herself. I do think she's picked up some woodcraft by now, though, so I drop the last point into Stealth, making it a 1 (one point, zero left).

I'm getting close to finished here. Time to start calculating some key secondary stats, Endurance and Hope. For a Beorning, Endurance equals 24 + Heart; Hope, 8 + Heart.

Botild's Endurance is 28; her Hope is 12.

Gear is based on a character's choices. Each hero gets a free weapon for each of the Weapon skills he has at 1 or greater. Heroes also start with one suit of armor and may choose one piece of headgear and one shield. Traveling gear (season-appropriate clothing, water, food, blankets, etc.) is also provided free of charge. Any other starting gear is a result of negotiation with the Loremaster (with the hero's cultural Standard of Living as a touchstone). Equipment is encumbering of course, and a character's total encumbrance from gear equals his Fatigue score.

Botild's Weapon skills mean that she owns a great spear (encumbrance 4), an axe (encumbrance 2), and a dagger (encumbrance 0). She's a wanderer, not a warrior, so I don't get her any headgear or shield. (Not that she could use a shield while wielding her great spear!) At the same time, Wilderland is a dangerous place, so I opt for a leather corslet (encumbrance 8). Her total encumbrance gives her a Fatigue score of 14, half her Endurance score (giving her a lot of wiggle room before she becomes Weary). In spring and summer, her traveling gear raises her Fatigue to 15; in autumn and winter, it's 16 instead.

Some more calculations now: a hero's Damage score equals their basic Body rating, while their Parry score is identical to their basic Wits rating. (Weapons and shields respectively modify these scores.)

Botild hits hard: on a great success, she adds her Damage score of 6 to her spear's Damage rating of 9 for a total damage of 15; on an extraordinary success, she adds double her score of 6, generating a total damage of 21—enough to drop all but the toughest Orcs in a single blow. That said, she's not the best at getting out of harm's way, what with no shield and a Parry score of 4. But then that fits her generally defensive approach to combat.

The last major choice to be made involves ranking the hero's Valor and Wisdom scores. These function as reputation indicators, and they also represent opportunities for heroes to acquire power-ups. These bonuses begin piling up at rank 2 (and every rank thereafter, all the way up to the maximum rank of 6 in each score). A new TOR character begins with a rank of 2 in one score and a rank of 1 in the other, giving the hero a power-up before play begins. If the hero opts for Valor 2 and Wisdom 1, she gains a Reward (a new piece of culturally-specific equipment or an upgrade to an existing bit of normal gear). If she opts instead for Wisdom 2 and Valor 1, she can choose one of several culture-specific Virtues—or select one of several generic stat boosts instead.

I decide to prioritize Valor over Wisdom and give Botild Valor 2 and Wisdom 1. She's now entitled to a Reward. I look over the three Beorning Cultural Rewards—the Giant-slaying Spear, the Noble Armor, and the Splitting Axe—and don't feel the love. So it's a generic upgrade instead. Botild's leather armor is already light enough, so there's no real reason to classify it as of Cunning Make (-2 to Encumbrance). But it might also be Close-fitting (+1 to Protection, raising the corslet from 2d to 2d+1). Alternately, I could make her spear Grievous (+2 damage for a total of 11), Keen (the weapon's Edge rating—the number the attacker must equal or beat on his Feat die roll to cause a Wound—drops by 1 to a value of 8), or Fell (the weapon's Injury rating—the number the target must equal or beat on his Protection roll to avoid taking a Wound—goes up by 2 to a value of 18). In the end, I opt to make the leather corslet Close-fitting: the bonus to Protection fits Botild's general defensive posture, and it might even allow her to risk more aggressive combat stances (she'll get hit more often, but will be able to avoid Wounds more easily).

That's it for individual customization. In my final post in this series, I'll present Botild's complete write-up and offer some general reflections on chargen in TOR.

Building a Better Beorning: Chargen in The One Ring, Part One

2011-08-08T15:28:00.003-05:00

To set the mood for this post, I've placed Tolkien's depiction of Beorn's Hall just to the left of this text. The first step in creating a TOR character is the choice of the character's home culture. I did that in the last post, selecting the Beornings. This decision brings certain conclusions with it, but it also leaves room for individual choice between cultural options. I'm going to work my way through the TOR discussion of the Beorning culture, recording game-related decisions in italics when I'm asked to make them.

One decision to make right away is the character's sex. There are no mechanical repercussions to this choice, but it will inflect all concept-related choices that follow. I have no particular predilection for a character gender, so let's roll a six-sided die: odds, the character is male; evens, it's female.

I rolled a 4. Looks like this character will be female.

Each heroic culture in TOR has a set standard of living that conveys the culture's relative prosperity (and thus an individual character's ability to make purchases). Beornings have a Martial standard of living, one akin to that of the heroic culture presented in Germanic epics like Beowulf: the chieftain is the source of all wealth, rewarding individuals for bravery, loyalty, and daring deeds accomplished. A Martial character has his or her personal gear, along with a few coins to cover simple accommodations and meals.

I put "Martial" down on the character sheet.

Heroic cultures also provide cultural-specific blessings (akin to D&D feats). The Beorning blessing is "Furious": when a Beorning receives a wound in battle, he ignores all effects of being Weary and/or Miserable for the remainder of the combat in question. There's the berserker quality I mentioned in my intro post.

I put "Furious" down on the character sheet.

Now it's time to see which skills Beorning cultures provides a character. In TOR, skills are broken into two categories: Common and Weapon. All Beorning heroes receive the following Common skills: Awe 3, Inspire 1, Persuade 0; Athletics 2, Travel 0, Stealth 0; Awareness 2, Insight 3, Search 1; Explore 0, Healing 1, Hunting 3; Song 0, Courtesy 0, Riddle 1; and Craft 1, Battle 0, Lore 0. (An underlined skill is a favored skill, receiving a bonus in certain circumstances; Beornings are clearly athletic types.) Heroes are giving a choice of Weapon skills. Beornings may either select (Axes) 2, Spear 1, Dagger 1 or Great spear 2, Axe 1, Dagger 1. A Weapon skill in parentheses is actually a Cultural Weapons skill: someone taking "(Axes) 2" would add two skill dice when using any type of axe.

I first of all record my beginning scores in the game's eighteen Common skills, underlining "Athletics" on the character sheet to convey its favored status. Then I consider the two Weapon skill packages: since I've played a lot of axe-using characters over the years, I'll be different this time round and take the second package. Now my character has a favored skill in "Great Spear" and basic skill in "Axe" and "Dagger."

My next choice involves Specialties, culturally-specific Traits that register expertise in a given trade or activity. I can choose two of the following: Anduin-lore, Beast-lore, Fishing, Mountaineer, Story-telling. In game, I can invoke these Traits to gain automatic successes, make a skill roll where the Loremaster would normally say "no," or gain an Advancement Point in a Common skill group related to the Trait in question.

Here's where the character individuation really begins; the Specialties I pick will say a lot about my character's upbringing. I'm going to pick "Beast-lore" and "Mountaineer." My character is essentially Heidi-on-steroids: a gangly Beorning woman who grew up on the slopes of the Misty Mountains tending her family's herds. A spear doubles as a walking staff in these conditions, and it's good for keeping the Wargs off as well.

A flurry of choices follows, all springing from a decision about the character's Background. Each heroic culture provides six of these. The Beorning choices are Child of Two Folks (you're the product of a Beorning-Woodman union), Errand-rider (you are known for carrying messages between the clans), Head of the Family (you've watched over the homestead while your father protected the mountain passes at Beorn's orders), Light-foot (you're excellent at sneaking around in the woods), Keeper of Tales (you spent lots of time listening to the wisdom your old granddad chose to impart), and Voice from the Past (you've grown up keeping the songs of the clan in your heart). Each background sets your basic attributes of Body, Heart, and Wits; grants you another favored skill; and provides you with a choice of two Distinctive Features (Traits that signify your personality instead of your expertise).

The two Background that make the most sense for my character are "Head of the Family" (which connects to the idea of her shepherd history) and "Light-foot" (which could apply to any character who has spent much time outdoors). I'm going to opt for "Head of the Family"--a foreboding choice: what would have caused my character to give up her obligations to go adventuring? This Background sets the character's Body at 6, Heart at 4, and Wits at 4. She also gains Awareness as a favored skill (which I then underline on the character sheet). Finally, she can choose two Distinctive Features from the set of Curious, Determined, Generous, Grim, Hardy, Steadfast, Trusty, and Wilful. I'm beginning to think that this character may have been dispossessed: she should have inherited the clanhold when her father died fighting Orcs in the passes of the mountains, but her no-good brother came home and displaced her. So let's give her "Generous"--her kindness to other clans paid off when she finally left her grasping brother, but it also kept her from fighting to keep her patrimony--and "Curious"--familial duty was all well and good, but now she actually is free to find out what lies on the other side of the mountain.

At this point, I've completed the Heroic Culture phase of chargen. The only remaining tasks are to pick a name for the character and determine her age at the start of play. Since "Beorn" is itself an Anglo-Saxon name, I'm going to go to Kate Monk's Onomastikon and pick out an Anglo-Saxon female name for my hero: Botild. The rulebook suggests that Beornings go adventuring sometime between 16 and 30; let's split the difference and say that Botild left home at 23, well after she should have been married (but clearly wasn't because her cheap brother preferred to keep a drudge at home rather than pay a dowry to another clan). Coming up next: customization!

Building a Better Beorning: Chargen in The One Ring, Introduction

2011-08-08T14:18:00.004-05:00

A friend at Gen Con last Friday and a few too many positive RPG.net posts on the game caused me to give in and acquire a copy of The One Ring boxed set. Overall I'm very pleased with the game--it's surely one of the best looking RPGs ever published. I also feel that it goes further in recreating the feel of Middle-earth than any other Tolkien RPG before it.

I thought that I would create a character here on the blog as (a) a way of learning the rules for myself and (b) letting others get a sense of what the game entails (and thus becoming more able to decide whether or not it's for them). As many of you may have heard, Cubicle 7 is taking a graduated approach to the game: the first boxed set introduces the basic rules and provides relevant game information for adventures in Wilderland (aka Rhovanion), the northeastern quarter of Middle-earth that is home to the majority of action in Tolkien's The Hobbit. Characters are thus restricted in origin to one of the six Free Peoples inhabiting that region: the Bardings, the Beornings, the Dwarves of Erebor, the Elves of Mirkwood, the Hobbits of the Shire, and the Woodmen of Wilderland. Since Vargold is a blog nominally dedicated to barbaric games and narratives, it seems appropriate for my first test character to be as close to a barbarian as one can get in Tolkien and still be on the side of the setting's protagonists. So Bardings, Dwarves, Elves, and Hobbits will have to wait their turn. The Woodmen are a viable choice under the conditions just laid out, but the Beornings (what with their berserkr chieftain Beorn) are an even better one.

Let's build a Beorning, then! In my next blog post, I'll handle the first stage of TOR chargen, that related to heroic culture. The post after that will cover individual customization.

The Seven Cities of Magic, Take Three

2011-07-12T23:18:00.001-05:00

On the bus ride home tonight, it occurred to me that a better way of approaching the Seven Cities setting would be to come at it from the perspective of play than concept. I.e., instead of starting with the magic system, I would do better to start with the major geopolitical conflicts informing the setting, conflicts that would make for interesting sessions.

Here's what came to mind as a result of this insight:

1. Led by seven powerful sorcerers, the ancestors of the Seven Cities citizens arrive at the mouth of a great river basin. They are fleeing some great conflict or evil in their ancient eastern homeland. (Yes, Kevin Crawford's Red Tide is my inspiration here.)

2. As the Seven Cities folk spread out across the basin, founding new cities, they come into conflict with the aboriginal clans. The locals are no match for advanced sorcery and are eventually conquered. They become the ancestors of the laborers who grow the cities' food, mine their ore, chop down their wood, and clean their homes. Periodically there are workers' revolts and uprisings.

3. The most savage of the aboriginals refuse to be conquered and flee into the mountains north of the basin. Their descendants are the barbarian tribes that periodically harass the northern cities before being driven back into the hills and mountains.

4. There also aboriginal tribes dwelling in the great southern desert that sits between the river basin and the territory of the expansionist Azure Empire. The sorcerers never bothered to conquer these tribes, having no interest in their harsh desert lands. As a result, the tribes continue to raid the southern cities and attack caravans moving north and south through the desert.

5. The Azure Empire would very much like to conquer the Seven Cities and take their magic lore for its own. Imperial sorcerers aren't a match for the Seven Cities wizards, though, and the Azure Empire has opted instead to achieve its goals through destabilization, infiltration, and treason.

6. One of the Seven Cities is "the good guy." Its citizens treat their workers well, try to maintain peace with the local barbarians, and work to unify the region against the Empire. Needless to say, they're the primary target of rabble-rousers and enemy agents.

7. One of the Seven Cities is "the bad guy." Its citizens are not just interested in political power in the region, but are actively messing with forces best left alone. This is the nasty, decadent piece of work in the setting.

8. The remaining five cities are in a state of political flux, constantly forming and breaking alliances in attempts to dominate the river basin.

This history gives me a number of story elements:

1. What caused the citizens to flee their ancestral homeland? At the campaign's start, this will be a mystery. It may stay that way unless players are particularly interested in revisiting it.

2. The conquered locals are a source of unrest that players will inevitably find sympathetic.

3. The northern barbarians and the southern barbarians are not only points of origin for the most archetypal of S&S characters, but are also adventure generators in their own right. Maybe they're uniting to make a major push for revenge (and are seeking common cause with their "cowardly" cousins in the lowlands), threatening the caravan trade, etc.

4. The Azure Empire is always there, lurking in the background.

5. The good city provides players who want to be the good guys with a patrons. Players who like to live on the shady side of the law might opt to help conquer it instead.

6. The bad city is the mad dog that needs putting down--it's the Joker, and it just wants to see the world burn. Maybe it's gotten in touch with demons or maybe it's reestablished connection with whatever forced the ancestors to flee in the first place.

7. The petty intrigues of the remaining five cities are a source of constant story hooks, big and little.

With this framework in place, I can start to figure out the game-related stats for each culture involved in the setting (smallfolk, northern barbarians, southern barbarians, Azures, city-dwellers with an option to further subdivide into seven urban cultures). I can also decide what magic traditions to associate with each city. Two things that immediately come to mind: Drimshy maintains its focus on wind and water magics--it's the oldest of the Seven Cities, sitting atop the landing site of the refugee fleet. I also think that I need to avoid the clichéd approach of making the necromancers of Achiroth the crazy bad guys; they're either one of the "neutral" five or (if I was feeling particularly cheeky) the good guys.

Thoughts?

Work of Giants Now Online

2011-06-20T15:53:00.000-05:00

I've set up a wiki for the Stars Without Number campaign that I'm developing; it's called Work of Giants. I'll probably post material under development here first and then shift it to the wiki when it's in final form. So just a heads-up!

Barbarians in Spaaaaaace!

2011-06-15T16:25:00.002-05:00

Time for a shift in direction here: my work on the Seven Cities of Magic setting was bogging down in a mass of perfectionism and procrastination, and I think I want a break from fantasy at the moment anyway. So I'm going to opt instead for a science fiction approach and run Sine Nomine Publishing's Stars Without Number RPG. Author Kevin Crawford is known through the Old School Renaissance (OSR) community for his mastery of random table creation; in SWN, he marshals those skills to the end of subsector and world generation. I've always been better at justifying or modifying the results of a chart (or a pre-gen setting) than I have been at ab ovo world-building, so I am optimistic that I can be up and running SWN sooner rather than later (or never).

I'll have more to say about SWN in a later post, but I wanted to concentrate for now on the thematic link between sword-and-sorcery fiction and science fiction: the connection that lets me justify talking about an SF RPG on a barbarian-themed blog. (Well, in addition to the fact that I can talk about whatever I want on my blog.)

While rereading David Brin's Startide Rising as part of an SF inspiration binge, I realized that Brin's central metaphor of Uplift is both a knowing critique of imperialism within SF (Earthclan emerges into interstellar space not as masters of all they survey but as primitives confronted by imperial authority) and an entry in SF's ongoing infatuation with the cyclical historiographies of Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee. The Old Weird writers so central to twentieth-century pulp fantasy—Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith—were operating at the same time as Doc Smith and the early SF pulp writers—and clearly the fantasists were drinking the same Spenglerian Kool-Aid as the scientifictionists. (Toynbee's 1950s provenance puts him after the original Old Weird moment.)

This is not a stunning, hitherto-unanticipated insight, but it is a useful one for me: the same tropes that inform barbaric fantasy inform imperial SF. Howard's Cimmerians are Brin's Earthlings (human, neo-chimp, and neo-dolphin alike). The SF characters fly their ships through the same ruined, belated landscape as their sword-slinging cousins, and the mandarinates of Brin's Galactic Institutions are perfectly akin to the decadent Hyborian civilizations of Conan's day.

All this is a fancy way of saying that running SWN—a game indebted in equal parts to the S&S-drenched rules sets of early D&D and the imperial SF of Traveller—fits in perfectly with the primary focus of this blog!

The Seven Cities of Magic, Take Two

2011-05-25T16:17:00.003-05:00

I've made a few changes since my last post on the Seven Cities, both in response to the comments I received and as a result of further personal reflection. At the macro level, I've decided to concentrate on the Seven Cities and their immediate neighborhood instead of outlining a larger, more global setting. Working on a smaller scale is conducive to actually playing sooner rather than later. To this end I'm thinking that a mountain range populated by barbarian tribes and foul beasts lies to the north of the Seven Cities while a vast desert separating the Cities from the Azure Empire lies to their south. This desert also contains savage tribes and hideous beasts, but well-guarded caravans can successfully cross it.

I'm pondering the wisdom of including a large forest populated by the devolved remnants of the precursor civilization to the current human population. One thought would be to go with the savage elf archetype (a kind of inverse Melnibonean). But I could be persuaded to go in a different direction here. One thing is for certain: I don't want to use any sort of Serpent Men. That archetype feels played out to me.

As for the Seven Cities themselves, six are now dedicated to a particular magical tradition while the seventh is a sort of treaty city dedicated to sorcerous education:

1. Achiroth - A thanatocracy devoted to necromancy and shadow magics.

2. Banashan - Home to the university.

3. Belrood - A gynocracy ruled by witches and alchemists.

4. Drimshy - A maritime republic specializing in water and wind magics.

5. Kherem-Kha - A theocracy dependent on summoned outsiders.

6. Meton - A landlocked republic specializing in earth and fire magics.

7. Viserne - A city of illusions and glamours.

Thoughts?

The Upcoming Conan Movie

2011-05-10T13:16:00.002-05:00

Not so sure about the recent full trailer--although it's a vast improvement over the green mists of the teaser--but I do like the new poster for the film. It's reminiscent of Frazetta's "Conan the Destroyer" without being a slavish reproduction:

"Born on the battlefield," indeed.

Founding the Seven Cities of Magic

2011-04-25T16:35:00.002-05:00

I realize it's been some time since my last post to the blog. Rather than start with some sort of placeholder post signifying my return, I have decided to pick right back up with the sword-and-sorcery setting construction thread I had started back in 2010.

Jaws of the Six Serpents is the game for which I'm now constructing the setting. The element I want to work on at the moment is the collection of "Grimy City States" I was planning on calling the Seven Cities of Magic.

Each of the Cities of Magic is governed by a single sorcerer (or a cabal of sorcerers). I would like for each city to reflect the magical specialty of its ruler (or rulers). The question is how to realize that specificity in Jaws. The rules for Alchemy*, Charmcraft*, and Sorcery* take me in the right direction, but I'm thinking that I may need to follow the suggestion on p. 114 to divide Sorcery* in the setting into smaller, theme-specific categories of magic. Thoughts?

There's also the possibility of adapting the Urge system to fit my setting. I would probably not keep the idea of the Six Serpents, but there does seem some potential value in linking each of the Cities to a specific element (and a corresponding subset of magic). I just worry here about needless symmetry: might it not be better to separate the idea of Urges/mana entirely from geopolitics?

Here are the names I have down for the Seven Cities as well as any ideas I have about their magical tradition:

1. Achiroth, City of Shrouds - Necromancy and Shadow Magic.

2. Belrood, City of Witches - No particular thematic emphasis, but a clear political one that takes the shape of a matriarchal government.

3. Kherem-Kha - No ideas at present.

4. Enkal, City of Spirits - Unlike the other six Cities, Enkal is actually a temporary city formed by the annual gathering of the nomadic clans wandering the plains. Spirit Magic would be the theme here, and it's possible that I might give the Enkali the ability to serve as Intercessors (i.e., channels for the Ancestors in the world of today).

5. Honsulath - No ideas at present.

6. Meton, City of Gears - Here I was initially thinking of the Barbarians of Lemuria idea of Alchemy as the recovery of the lost magics of the Ancients. Alchemy* in Jaws is less mechanically and scientifically inclined, though, so I'm not sure how to realize Meton.

7. Regest - No ideas at present.

Conan Meets Jaws

2010-09-05T21:56:00.003-05:00

This long weekend I've been enjoying my perusal of Jaws of the Six Serpents, an RPG published by Tim Gray's Silver Branch Games that offers a sword-and-sorcery take on Chad Underkoffler's PDQ (Prose Descriptive Qualities) ruleset. Indeed, I'm so pleased with what I'm reading that I'm thinking of giving up the Barbarians of Lemuria rules in favor of Jaws. As a test run of the character creation rules, I took my Barbarians write-up of "Tower of the Elephant" Conan and translated it into Jaws terms. Game stats and commentary behind the fold . . .

Conan

People: Cimmerians

Strengths: Expert [+4] Unerring Instinct of the Barbarian, Good [+2] Broad Heavy Shoulders, Good [+2] Eyes Blue and Smoldering, Good [+2] Given Courage by Crom at Birth, Good [+2] The Hand of Fate, Good [+2] Moves with the Supple Ease of the Great Tiger, Good [+2] Steel-Trap Quickness

Weakness: Poor [-2] Too New to Civilization to Understand Its Discourtesies

I'll admit to being somewhat precious in my desire to base all of Conan's Qualities on actual phrases from Howard's "Tower," but they're such great phrases—and they work quite well in PDQ terms. (I.e., their evocative nature gives each of them a sizable "penumbra" or range of applications.)

The astute reader will note that I've included nothing like "Warrior" or "Thief" here. My reading of Conan suggests that it's his innate qualities that most mark him out as a hero; his strength lies in the inherent superiority of the savage to the civilized man. Certainly at this early stage of Conan's career skills are of lesser importance in defining him than essences and character traits. He's less an experienced swordsman and second-story man than he is a force of nature that turns any weapon into certain death for his foes.

I've also subordinated his strength ("Broad Heavy Shoulders"), dexterity ("Moves with the Supple Ease of the Great Tiger"), and speed ("Steel-Trap Quickness") to the Cimmerian sixth sense that saves his life time after time in "Tower." More than his physical qualities, it's Conan's "Unerring Instinct of the Barbarian" that enables him to slay the Kothian slaver in the dark, survive his encounters with lion and spider in Yara's lair, and avoid insanity at the sight of Yag-Kosha.

"Eyes Blue and Smoldering" is probably Conan's best social quality: it's those eyes that make the women swoon and the men back down. There's also a hint of rage there to enable Conan to withstand torment. "Given Courage by Crom at Birth" is another psychological resource. The weakness "Too New to Civilization to Understand Its Discourtesies" will often leave poor Conan befuddled—but then he can usually make use of his prodigious physical abilities to resolve any resulting faux-pas.

Finally, "The Hand of Fate" (Yag-Kosha's term for Conan) stands in for Conan's protagonist status and eventual destiny as King of Aquilonia. This quality functions as per the rules for Fate qualities given on pp. 34-35 of Jaws (i.e., two times per session, Conan can invoke this quality to immediately gain a Fortune Point).

I'm very pleased with the extent to which Jaws can create Conan as he exists in the source narratives. Particularly satisfying is the system's ability to factor in personality traits; if I get around to generating Jaws versions of Fafhrd and the Mouser, I can easily see "Love for Vlana" and "Love for Ivrian" as qualities. Whether or not those traits are strengths, weaknesses, or both at the same time is a matter for another discussion.

Shadow, Sword, Spell, and . . . BABY?

2010-08-15T18:08:00.000-05:00

James Malieszewski of Grognardia has coauthored a "humanistic, pulp fantasy" RPG with his Rogue Games partner Richard Iorio. The game's called Shadow, Sword, & Spell, and it looks like another good addition to the tradition of sword-and-sorcery RPGs. I don't have time to review it at present, though—something suddenly came up:

Once the baby is settled in at home, I'll post a SS&S test character.

Kracalactaka!

2010-06-23T23:23:00.000-05:00

Just a brief heads-up to inform those of my readers interested in superhero gaming that I've started up a new blog devoted to that topic: Kracalactaka! I'm doing my OCD-related part to keep from crossing the streams.

Building an S&S Setting: Prolegomenon

2010-06-21T15:05:00.001-05:00

This post is the first in a series of posts dedicated to the creation of a new sword and sorcery setting for use with Barbarians of Lemuria. I'm going ahead with this project because I'm not particularly satisfied with Lemuria itself: I haven't read the Lin Carter novels that serve as the basis for that setting, and my sensibilities are more in tune with Howard's Hyborian Age than with Carter's cod-Burroughs approach to Lemuria.

There are two principles governing this process as it goes forward:

1. Do not invalidate the players' choices for their characters.

I don't want to make my players create new characters to fit the new setting. This means first and foremost that the plot established in the first session of the BoL campaign remains the same: the heroes are still looking for an ancient library in a fabled lost city, and they are still going to begin the next session on a ship in the midst of a raging storm. It also means that the new setting has to respect the players' character creation choices. In Lemuria, Irryn was a prostitute-turned-assassin from the Port of the Sea Lords. In the new setting, she won't be from that particular location—but she will hail from a pirate-themed city. The same for Daneel's gladiatorial background: the new setting will have to have a location that sponsors games.

2. Keep it simple.

In my three-decade career as a gamer, my customary approach to setting creation has been to start working from the top-down (i.e., cosmologies instead of counties, epics instead of short stories). The usual result has been a game that either stalls out after character creation or never even gets started—I always find myself tinkering with the big picture "just one more time" before play begins. So the ground rule for this session will be "one paragraph per location before play resumes."

In addition, rather than agonize about how many locations to create, I will simply use the categories included by Russell Bailey in his Pulp Civilization Random Encounter Chart as the basis for the setting. That gives me six basic locations—enough for a start. New locations can enter play as a result of player action or active scenario creation.

Third, I will try to recycle as many old RPG setting ideas as I can when making these six locations. There's no reason why I can't put old ideas to new use here.

With all that in mind, here's my initial set-up:

1. Warring Tribes: Undetermined

2. Grimy City-States: The Seven Cities of Magic

This setting element is a new one for me: each of the fabled Seven Cities of Magic is governed by a powerful sorcerer (or cabal of wizards or arcane spirit being or . . . you get the idea). The Seven Cities spend most of their time squabbling with each other or engaging in low-level mischief within the boundaries of the Vital Empire.

3. Vital Empire: Undetermined

4. Decadent Empire: The Empire of the Azure Throne

The inspiration here is Azure Orb, an old Everway Realm of my making. I originally described it as follows: "Azure Orb is dominated by the element of Air. Its inhabitants debate one another in lamaseries clinging to the sides of mountains. The gates leading to Azure Orb from Glister and Rubyflame are marked with sapphires." I'm going to combine this idea of a fantastic Tibetan realm with Simon Washbourne's Ceruleans from Lemuria: the giant blue people are the specially bred shock troops with which the Azure Emperor once conquered the lowlands. Now the people of the plateau have retreated into decadent pleasures and abstruse philosophies, leaving it to the Ceruleans to maintain contact with the rest of the setting, this time as merchants instead of warriors.

5. Monstrous Survivors: Undetermined

6. Haunted Ruins: The Storm Lands

For this location, I'll be riffing on a recurring element from my various abortive D&D worlds: a land shattered by a mystical apocalypse, dotted with ruined cities, fell spirits, sentient storms, and bold human tribes eking out an existence.

So that's where things stand at the moment. I need to come up with locations for Warring Tribes, Vital Empire, and Monstrous Survivors. I suspect that the Warring Tribes will be a cross between the Caribbean pirates of history and the Iron Islands of George Martin's Game of Thrones setting: competing pirate empires with the potential to become something greater. The other two elements are still hazy as yet; I need to come up with something alien for the Monstrous Survivors that isn't just the usual serpent-men or ape-men trope.

"Oh dear, I rolled a 10. You encounter a Decadent Empire!"

2010-06-18T12:26:00.000-05:00

Pure awesomeness: Russell Bailey's Pulp Civilization Random Encounter Chart.

Marvel's Conan the Barbarian . . . SUPERS! Style

2010-06-09T15:04:00.005-05:00

As my last post intimated, work has kept me too busy for gaming over the last month or so. Because I suffer from a form of C.A.D.D. (Campaign Attention Deficiency Disorder), that delay has meant a transfer of momentum away from sword-and-sorcery to superheroes. The barbarians of Lemuria will ride again, of course, but first I need to work the supers out of my system. Luckily Simon Washbourne, creator of BoL, can help me out here. I'm running his excellent rules-lite Supers! system this coming Sunday for the children of several of my colleagues. But I also thought I'd honor the spirit of this blog by generating a Supers! version of the Marvel Comics Conan.

Or, rather, a Marvel Comics Conan. Since I'm using a superhero RPG system to generate the character, it makes sense to use the version that actually interacted with superheroes: the Conan of What If #43 (February 1984). What If is Marvel's name for its on-again, off-again series devoted to superhero counterfactuals. (Although the series predates DC Comics's Elseworlds concept by twelve years, it almost certainly owes a conceptual debt to the "Imaginary Stories" DC ran in many of its Silver Age titles.) I didn't buy What If on a regular basis during my childhood stint as a Marvel Zombie, but I couldn't pass up this issue: "What if Conan the Barbarian Were Stranded in the Twentieth Century?" First of all, I was a regular reader of Marvel's various Conan titles at the time. Second, how can anyone pass up this wonderful Bill Sienkiewicz cover?

The story in issue #43 is technically a counterfactual of a counterfactual: in What If #12 (February 1979), Conan had briefly spent time in modern-day New York before he was zapped back to the Hyborian Age by magic lightning. Issue #43 has the NYPD wrestle Conan out of range of the lightning, leaving him stuck in the Big Apple. Conan spends some time in the slammer, masters the New York criminal scene, dresses like a pimp, and eventually ends up fighting Captain America on two occasions. The first fight ends with the image depicted at the start of this post (Conan slicing open Captain's left arm). The second fight ends with Cap saving Conan from the cops and offering him a place in the Avengers. At the end of the issue, the Watcher looks on as Conan ponders making a call to Avengers Mansion and doing something more with his life than petty crime.

As a way of playtesting the Supers! rules, I've decided to assume that Conan does pick up the phone and accept Cap's offer. What would Conan's superhero RPG stats resemble? Check them out beneath the fold, True Believers!

CONAN THE AVENGER

Resistances

Composure 2D

Fortitude 4D

Reaction 4D

Will 3D

Aptitudes

Athleticism 3D (Climbing 4D, Dodging 4D)

Fighting 3D (Swords 5D)

Intrusion 2D

Presence 3D

Streetwise 2D

Survival 2D

All the rest 1D

Powers

None

Ads

Attractive (It's those smoldering blue eyes)

Disads

Disreputable (Conan's got a rap-sheet)

Normal (+2D in Competency Pool)

Outsider (Conan's a man-out-of-time . . . just like his buddy Captain America)

Competency Pool

Still Here, or Why Being an Adminstrator Sucks

2010-06-05T23:44:00.001-05:00

The blog's not dead yet--it's just waiting for the massive administrative pile-up that was the English Department's end of semester to actually end!

Stay tuned!

The Tower of Mad Mungus, Part Two

2010-04-24T13:10:00.001-05:00

Last night my regular gaming group returned to the Tower of Mad Mungus, the latest adventure in our ongoing Fourth Edition D&D game. Two things stood out about the session:

1. DM Dave continued the theme of classic D&D monsters. While we did fight Fourth Edition monsters like darkmantles and kruthik, we also encountered one of my favorite oldies: the piercer. (The cut view of the piercer anatomy to the left is taken from one of my favorite Dragon articles.) Even better: my character, dragonborn warlord Sergeant Kesek, ended up getting taken to -1 HP by a piercer! (Luckily the eladrin wizard Tük-J'a Zephrus was nearby with a handy potion of healing.) Best of all, though, was the group's subsequent encounter with a knight polymorphed into piercer form by Mad Mungus. The ensorcelled knight's name was . . . wait for it . . . Sir Pearce. Imagine a piercer talking with a British accent, and you've got D&D gold. The session ended with Sergeant Kesek rigging up a perch on his back for Sir Pearce. No doubt hijinks will ensue.

2. I went completely paperless for this session, bringing only my dice bag, my Sergeant Kesek mini, my set of laser-engraved action point tokens, and my new 64 GB iPad. I had uploaded the PDF version of Kesek's Character Builder character sheet to the iPad via the GoodReader app's ability to downloaded documents from my Dropbox. (I also uploaded the Pages version of last session's notes and a PDF of the Fourth Edition Player's Handbook.) When I needed to consult one of Kesek's power cards, I'd just enter GoodReader. The rest of the time I was keeping track of initiative, hit points, healing surges, treasure, and XP with Penultimate, the most intuitive notebook app I've seen. While I suspect that things will be even more efficient once iPhone 4.0 comes out with multitasking in the fall, I didn't have any particular trouble switching back and forth this time around. The iPad worked like a charm!

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Barbarian-Themed Blog . . .

2010-04-12T16:09:00.006-05:00

My Friday night group's Fourth Edition D&D game came back to life yesterday after a year-long hiatus. The heroes (including my dragonborn warlord Sergeant Kesek) finally managed to make their way to the Tower of Mad Mungus, a supposedly long-dead wizard known for his uncanny experiments in hybridization. The most significant aspect of the session involved the monsters we fought, a veritable honor roll of D&D standards: stirges, bulettes, and owl bears. Although I've been gaming for nigh on thirty years (got the Holmes Basic Set for either my tenth birthday in 1979 or for Christmas later that year), I've never previously encountered a single stirge, bulette, or owl bear. So label me honored to have at long last met these lovely animals, brought to loving life by miniatures.

Of course, I killed them and took their stuff.

Monsters Barbarized: The Decapus

2010-03-25T21:28:00.007-05:00

[This post was inspired by the "Weekly Monster Challenge" on the Lords of Lemuria forum.]

I don't remember many details from Jean Wells's Palace of the Silver Princess (BD&D Module B3), but I've never forgotten the image to the left: Erol Otus's amazing depiction of the hideous decapus. This foul beast may have begun its existence in the Principalities of Glantri, but it seems perfectly suited to life in the Jungles of Qo and Qush. In those trackless wastes, the wild decapus swings through the trees, using its uncanny powers of illusion and ventriloquism to trick its prey. To see through the decapus's deceptions, a hero has to pass a Mind test with a difficulty modifier of "hard" (-2). At the GM's discretion, heroes may add relevant careers to this roll. (Appropriate boons may allow the hero to roll a bonus die on the test as well.) If the decapus's illusion remains unbroken, it has the advantage of surprise and gains a "free" round of attacks.

Attributes
Strength 6
Agility 2
Mind -1

Combat Abilities
Attack with bite +4; d6+2 damage (only against a grabbed target)
Attack with 3 tentacles vs. a single target +2; d6+2 damage
Attack with 6 tentacles vs. a single target +4; d6+2 damage and target grabbed
Attack with 6 tentacles vs. two targets +0; d6+2 damage per target
Defense: 2
Protection: d3 (tough, rubbery hide)
Lifeblood: 30

Keeping Score

2010-03-24T13:57:00.002-05:00

Tim (Irryn's player in the Friday night BoL game) has asked me to maintain a public kill counter for the campaign. As a generous GM, I have obliged him. Look for it over in the righthand column of the blog.

Of course, it turns out that Irryn is the kill leader . . .

Using the Mythic GM Emulator

2010-03-21T11:06:00.004-05:00

Although I'm running the Friday night campaign with the BoL rules, I'm also using the Mythic GM Emulator (published by Word Mill Games). Designed to facilitate GM-less or low-prep play, this product is essentially a Magic 8-Ball for RPG campaigns: at its core is a Fate Chart that adds a random element to yes/no questions about the campaign setting. There are also rules for random events, and a subsequent supplement (Mythic Variations) allows for genre and theme-specific modifications to the frequency of those events. All of these systems work like an overlay on whatever set of RPG rules you happen to be using at the time.

I decided to use the Mythic GM Emulator because I hate game prep. I get "analysis paralysis," and campaigns die shortly after beginning. The GM Emulator's guidelines for random scene generation (used in conjunction with the logical premises derived from the campaign setup and the players' choices of characters) thus seemed like a way around this problem for me. I would create the first scene of the campaign myself and then let the GM Emulator guide me the rest of the way.

This plan worked out beautifully in prep and play. After the heroes had accepted Radam Tyl's pitch, they were almost certainly going to go down to the docks of Zalut to hire a ship. Rolling on the Event Focus Table for this scene, I got a result of "Introduce a new NPC." Nothing particularly surprising: I assumed at first that this would be the ship captain. Then I rolled for the event's meaning and received results of "release" and "rumor." Those didn't sound like a ship's captain; instead, the two terms suggested that the heroes were approached by a competitor of Radam Tyl's, an alchemist who had also learned about the new clues to M'lor's location. Thus Sorsha was born. I was even able to generate one of the best images of the session randomly: I rolled on the "Event Meaning" tables to determine the nature of Sorsha's alchemical speciality and got "inquire" and "pain" as results. Interpreting these as indicators of her interest in torture, I invented her poor slaves (and their sewn-shut eyes) on the spot.

The next scene of the session was also randomly determined. This time the Event Focus table generated a result of "PC Negative"—something bad happens to one of the heroes. Event Meaning results of "communication" and "disruption" suggested that, once again, the search for a ship's captain would be interrupted. This time a hero's backstory would be the vehicle of the deferral, and a d4 roll made Daneel my victim. Clearly the sorcerous cheaters he was tracking down had decided it was time to remove the pesky investigator . . . permanently. I turned to the page of the BoL rulebook providing stats for tough thugs and told the players to roll for initiative. I was particularly pleased by the GM Emulator in this scene: I came to the table knowing nothing of Brian's plans for Daneel, but the framework for random inspiration provided by the Emulator allowed me to foreground those plans on the spot.

The third and final scene was "NPC Positive." As a group, we decided that the heroes would finally locate a suitable ship and that said ship's captain would be more than eager to provide the heroes with passage to Parsool. After all, they had more than enough gold from Radam Tyl to convince even the most reluctant captain to let them on board. When I rolled for Event Meaning, I was temporarily stumped by my results of "advice" and "postpone"—I wasn't sure how to interpret these to fit the scene. Irryn's player Tim came to my rescue here, suggesting that Captain Tinray knew a storm was coming but didn't think he needed to mention it to the heroes. With Tim's help, I was able to set up the cliffhanger for the session: the sudden darkening of the sky and an ominous wave rearing up over the deck of the Screaming Manta.

Consider this post a positive review for the Mythic GM Emulator, then. I didn't use the Fate Chart all that much or play around with Chaos Factors (an aspect of the system that alters the frequency of yes/no responses), but the Event Focus and Event Meaning tables were pure gold where scene setting was concerned.

Friday Night Campaign, Session One

2010-03-21T10:26:00.003-05:00

On Friday night (the 19th), I ran the first session of my BoL campaign. The set-up was the one I mentioned a few posts ago: having discovered new clues to the whereabouts of the lost city of M'lor, the alchemist Radam Tyl recruits a band of intrepid heroes to travel to the Jungles of Qo, locate M'lor, and return with whatever First Age knowledge survives in the city archives. (The BoL rulebook identifies M'lor as a Second Age city, but that doesn't seem to jibe with its "lost" status—so I moved it back in time.)

Radam Tyl's recruits (and the players' heroes):

Dakar, a Valgardian swordsman whose brief career in piracy ended with him being booted off the ship and left to fend for himself in the port district of Zalut. Played by Dave.
Daneel, a Shamballan gladiator who parlayed his success in Satarla's arena into a noble's title. He has come to Zalut to investigate rumors of sorcerous interference in the Sartalan games. Played by Brian.
Irryn, a dancer turned assassin who left her home in the Port of the Sea Lords to execute a contract on the magician Samaldran. Played by Tim.
Segdral Darkstar, a Halakti assassin who has also been hired to kill Samaldran (albeit by a different client). He and Irryn met while casing their shared target and agreed to work together. Played by David.

The adventure began with the heroes' arrival at Radam Tyl's luxurious townhouse. Each of them was met at the door by Tyl's most notorious creations: his uplifted dinosaur servants. While these small dinosaurs did not prove capable of human speech (forcing the players to endure my dinosaur squeaks and hisses), they were able to mix drinks, serve canapes, and light dreamsmoke pipes. Tyl eventually arrived and made his pitch to the heroes, sweetening the deal with several chests of gold and jewels. (The heroes were also allowed to take whatever loot they wanted from M'lor, provided that they saved the scrolls they found for Tyl.)

With surprising alacrity (and almost no hard questions), the heroes agreed to the alchemist's plans and set out making preparations for their journey west. They decided to first purchase passage to Parsool on a deep-water vessel, then travel via coast-hugger and river-barge to Malakut. There, in the City of the Thieves, they would be able to hire the local guides they would need to survive in the Qo.

Their search for a ship headed to Parsool was twice interrupted, though. They were first approached by one of Radam Tyl's rivals, the alchemist Sorsha. (Tyl is a specialist in animal uplight; Sorsha's palanquin-bearers, slaves with their eyes sewn shut, pointed to her own interests in information acquisition and the pain centers of the human body.) Tyl was apparently not the only alchemist to learn of the ancient document offering hints to M'lor's location, and Sorsha was eager to hire the heroes to serve her interests instead. Irryn was the only hero willing to listen to all of Sorsha's offer, receiving a jewel-encrusted necklace for her "open-mindedness."

The second interruption was far less polite. Daneel's investigations into sorcerous cheating had apparently earned him the enmity of the magicians involved, and they sent a team of thugs armed with enchanted daggers to kill him. The thugs, confident in their numbers, attacked Daneel—and were promptly butchered by the gladiator and his newfound friends. Irryn demonstrated her prowess as a kill-stealer, finishing off thugs Daneel and Segdral had worked hard to defeat. Dakar's massive Valgardian greatsword needed no assistance in parting the thugs' heads and limbs from their bodies.

Cleaning their weapons, the heroes were soon able to find the ship they were looking for: Captain Tinray's Screaming Manta. Tinray had made some bad trades in Zalut and was more than happy to take the heroes' gold with no questions asked. Unfortunately, he also thought that the Manta was fast enough to outrun the storm that bore down on the ship several hours out from Zalut . . .

Gaga-ga-choo

2010-03-19T08:53:00.002-05:00

Inspired by the RPG.net thread "[Tuesday Challenge] Gaga for Gaga," I have gone ahead and statted up Lady Gaga as a BoL hero--see below the fold for details. Her high "Brawl" score represents a unique martial art melding combat and dance moves. Her "Merchant" career is based on her father's background as an Internet entrepreneur; her "Noble" career, on the entry to elite circles gained for her by her performing abilities. The rationale for the "Unsettling" Fault should be obvious. :)

Attributes
Strength 0
Agility 1
Mind 1
Appeal 2

Combat
Brawl 3
Melee 0
Ranged 0
Defense 1

Careers
Merchant 0
Dancer 2
Minstrel 2
Noble 0

Essences
Lifeblood 10
Hero Points 5

Boons
Artistic
Great Wealth

Faults
Unsettling

Still Kicking

2010-03-17T15:13:00.000-05:00

It's been thirteen days since my last post, but I've not abandoned the blog. This Friday I'll be running BoL for my regular gaming group. They've already playtested the game with the pregenerated heroes from the rulebook. Now it's their first time out with their own heroes. Stranded in Zalut, City of the Magicians, for one reason or another, each hero has received a cryptic invitation from the alchemist Radam Tyl . . .

(Expect character posts to go up over the weekend, followed by an Actual Play report.)

A Few Words on Gary Gygax

2010-03-04T10:40:00.003-06:00

Gary Gygax, co-creator (with Dave Arneson) of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away two years ago today. (The image to the left is my favorite of the various tributes to him.) I was never particularly a fan of Gary's: I got into D&D via the various Basic editions of the game, so Holmes, Moldvay, and Metzner were "my" TSR gurus. Gary was always the obstreperous guy writing cranky editorials in the few issues of Dragon Magazine that I was able to locate and purchase during the 1980s. In fact, the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, Gary's magnum opus, is the one AD&D book I've never owned. I have vague memories of reading one of the Gord the Rogue books (going by the cover images, either Saga of Old City or Artifact of Evil)--but if I did, that novel was the only thing Gary wrote that I ever did read in its entirety.

I nevertheless want to pause and remember Gary today. He wasn't my favorite RPG designer/writer, but I wouldn't have had all of the pleasure this hobby has given me over the last thirty years if he and Dave hadn't gone ahead with their plans to publish D&D. My world has been richer because of Gary's presence in it, and I'm grateful to him for that.

J. R. R. Tolkien's Thorongil (a.k.a. Aragorn II)

2010-02-27T22:59:00.004-06:00

I'm currently teaching Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as part of an advanced writing course entitled "Legends of Modern Fantasy," so I thought I'd pull a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and get some Tolkien chocolate in my BoL peanut butter. I've therefore generated a character sheet for Aragorn II. In TA 2957, the twenty-six year old Dunadan left Rivendell and traveled the length and breadth of Middle-earth for twenty-three years. Using the alias "Thorongil" (Sindarin for "Eagle of the Star"), Aragorn served in the armies of Thengel of Rohan and Ecthelion of Gondor. It's at this moment in his life that he most approximates the power level of a starting hero in BoL.

As a Dunadan, Aragorn is superior in all ways to the lesser varieties of Men. I've therefore given him scores of 1 in all four of his attributes; the broad spread reflects his abilities not only as a mighty warrior but also as a leader of men (and future king). Combat scores are more concentrated: I see little evidence in Lord of the Rings for giving Aragorn scores in Brawl and Ranged, especially at this point in his career. As a result, I've split his four combat points between Melee and Defense. The four-career requirement perfectly suits Aragorn: "Noble" stems from his upbringing in Imladris; "Physician," his birthright as Isildur's Heir; "Hunter," his destiny as "the greatest traveller and huntsman of this age of the world"; and "Soldier," his brief experience so far as a mercenary in Thengel's army. (Thorongil's prominence in Gondor's campaigns against the Corsairs of Umbar suggests that Aragorn will soon be spending some advancement points on adding "Mariner" to his list of careers.)

Note that I have not equipped Aragorn with the Shards of Narsil—in this instance, I prefer the movie Aragorn's decision to carry a normal sword beyond the confines of Rivendell. The Boon "Isildur's Heir" is a Middle-earth variant of "Marked by the Gods"; "Master Tracker" follows the lead of the BoL version of Legends of Steel in collapsing all of the terrain-specific tracking boons into a single boon. "Hunted by the Enemy" is lifted right from the character sheet of Pellem Pharn in the main BoL rulebook.

Attributes

Strength 1

Agility 1

Mind 1

Appeal 1

Combat

Brawl 0

Melee 2

Ranged 0

Defense 2

Careers

Noble 1

Physician 1

Hunter 1

Soldier 1

Resources

Lifeblood 11

Hero Points 6

Gear

Light armor (protection d6-2)

Sword (damage d6)

Dagger (damage d3, range 10')

Boons

Isildur's Heir

Master Tracker

Flaws

Hunted by the Enemy

Character Sheet Blues

2010-02-25T12:47:00.002-06:00

The extant English-language character sheets for BoL are serviceable, but then I look at what the French players of the game get to use, and I weep for the Anglophone world. (That link takes you to French blogger Kobayashi's site.) Alas, I lack all design skills to produce anything in that ballpark . . .

Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe

2010-02-21T00:13:00.003-06:00

The idea to stat up Sokka as a BoL hero came to me tonight when my daughter and I were watching Season 2 of Avatar. I've represented him as he is at the end of Season 3 (just before the series finale—where he appears to lose both boomerang and "Space Sword"). At that point in his career, he is (or is about to turn) sixteen, a perfect age for a hero about to begin the adult phase of his adventurous career.

Attributes were no problem: Sokka's quirky intellect and ability to see what others fail to notice made it easy to justify a Mind of 3, and I put the other point in Agility. Combat abilities were also fairly straightforward: Sokka's fighting skills seem to consist of an emergent talent with the sword (Melee 1), the luck not to get hit by better fighters (Defense 1), and a high level of skill with his boomerang and other thrown weapons (Ranged 2).

Careers represented the biggest challenge, but the three seasons of Avatar gave me some ideas. As a member of the Southern Water Tribe, Sokka has an initial career of Barbarian 1, reflecting his ability to survive in the harsh conditions of the southern polar regions. His career of Poet is largely based on the haiku contest in "Tales of Ba-Sing-Se" and on the advice he gives to his Fire Nation double in "Ember Island Players." I've left the career rank at 0, though, since Sokka's performance abilities are more innate than trained. Artificer 1 (coupled with his high Mind score of 3) simulates Sokka's inventive side, while Soldier 2 represents both his natural aptitude as a leader of men and his experience fighting the Fire Nation over the course of the series.

Attributes

Strength 0

Agility 1

Mind 3

Appeal 0

Combat

Brawl 0

Melee 1

Ranged 2

Defense 1

Careers

Barbarian 1

Poet 0

Artificer 1

Soldier 2

Resources

Lifeblood 11

Hero Points 6

Gear

Very light armor (d3-1 protection)
Boomerang (d6-1 damage, ? range)

"Space Sword" (d6 damage)

Boons

Born Sailor

Marked by the Gods

Flaws

Clown

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2010-02-19T15:02:00.001-06:00

One thing about Vargold that I want to warn readers about is my propensity to tinker with posted entries until they're just right. This is especially so in the case of fictional S&S heroes that I'm translating into BoL terms: comments from readers and further reflection will often cause me to rethink how I've statted up these heroes. (In fact, you'll notice shortly that the Grey Mouser entry will be changing in responses to points made in this Lords of Lemuria thread about 0-rank careers representing aptitudes instead of minimal experience.) I know that some bloggers like to leave their entries as is, but posts like the hero stats feel differently to me than other entries--they're more like gaming resources than stages in an ongoing discussion.

Gracious Grognard

2010-02-18T09:46:00.001-06:00

Work beckons, but I wanted to take a brief moment to thank my old Internet compadre James Maliszewski for plugging Vargold on Grognardia, his amazing Old School Gaming blog. Barbarians of Lemuria (the current RPG focus on this blog) isn't echt Old School--the game has as much in common with many more recent RPG systems as it does with those of the 1970s. But I like to think that BoL shares the same spirit of free-wheeling fun and pulp inspiration that informs the early games of Gygax, Arneson, Barker, and St. Andre--as well as the retro-clones of the last decade. In any event, I can't recommend Grognardia enough. Thanks again, James!

Fritz Leiber's Grey Mouser

2010-02-17T16:57:00.014-06:00

As was the case with my earlier post on Fafhrd, the following set of stats represents the Mouser as he appears in "Ill Met in Lankhmar." That story makes it clear that, not only has the Mouser been in Lankhmar for some time, but that his daring thefts have begun to earn him a degree of notoriety. (Even a hick from the sticks like Fafhrd has heard of the Mouser's exploits as the .) So I've given him the career of "Thief" at 3, the highest possible value for a starting character. Augmenting this career selection is one determined by the acrobatics that he displays on several occasions in the story (e.g., making the ascent to his love-nest for Ivrian early in the tale and then escaping from Thieves' House over the roofs of Lankhmar toward the end). These stunts thus make it clear that the Mouser also has "Tumbler" at a rank of 1. (Here I differ from the BoL rulebook assumption that "Dancer/Tumbler" is largely a woman's career.)

In "The Unholy Grail," Leiber reveals that the Mouser's first training was as a hedge wizard's apprentice. (He was known as "Mouse" at the time.) Although he successfully casts several spells in this story, it's clear that his magical knowledge is shallow--after all, he's not routinely casting spells in the stories that follow. I therefore rank his "Magician" career at 0. I have also given him "Scholar" at 0, a more future-oriented selection that reflects the Mouser's curiosity and penchant for arcane lore. ("Bazaar of the Bizarre" is lurking behind my thinking here.)

Attributes

Strength 0

Agility 3

Mind 1

Appeal 0

Combat

Brawl 0

Melee 3

Ranged 1

Defense 0

Careers

Magician 0

Scholar 0
Thief 3

Tumbler 1

Resources

Lifeblood 10

Hero Points 6

Gear

Very light armor (d3-1 protection)
Sword named "Scalpel" (d6 damage)
Dagger named "Cat's Claw" (d3 damage)
Sling (d6-2 damage, 30' range)

Boons

Marked by the Gods (gains an extra Hero Point)

Sneaky (gains a die where stealth is important)

Flaws

Curious (like the proverbial cat, the Mouser just has to know; gains a die whenever tempted by the hint of mystery)

Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian

2010-02-16T22:55:00.009-06:00

The following set of stats represent Robert E. Howard's Conan as he appears at the start of "The Tower of the Elephant." In this story, Conan is relatively new to Zamora and to urban civilization; I've therefore rated his "Thief" career at 0. He gets "Blacksmith" at 0 as well; this career reflects his childhood in his father's smithy back in Cimmeria. The "Mercenary" rank of 1 stems from his mercenary service alongside the Aesir (depicted in "The Frost-Giant's Daughter"). "Barbarian" is of course a no-brainer for Conan, clocking in at the highest possible starting rank of 3.

At this point in his life, Conan is as fast as he is mighty, so I devoted the same number of points (2) to both Strength and Agility. Melee is his highest combat ability; I thought about making Brawl equal in value, but Conan's fight with the spider convinced me that he knows how to avoid getting hit (and thus merits a Defense score of 1). "Country Bumpkin" is an obvious fault for the young Cimmerian; "Sneaky" reflects his natural stealthiness; "Marked by the Gods," his uncanny instincts that repeatedly save him just in the nick of time.

Attributes

Strength 2

Agility 2

Mind 0

Appeal 0

Combat

Brawl 1

Melee 2

Ranged 0

Defense 1

Careers

Barbarian 3

Blacksmith 0

Mercenary 1

Thief 0

Resources

Lifeblood 12

Hero Points 6

Gear

Very light armor (d3-1 protection)

Sword (d6 damage)

Boons

Marked by the Gods ("You are the hand of Fate")
Sneaky ("He made no more noise than a panther stealing through the night")

Flaws

Country Bumpkin ("He . . . was too new to civilization to understand its discourtesies")

Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd

2010-02-14T22:13:00.004-06:00

The following set of stats represents Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd as he appears at the start of "Ill Met in Lankhmar." (As "The Circle Curse" reveals, Fafhrd and the Mouser gain a great many Advancement Points in the three years of exile following the events of "Ill Met.") "Barbarian" is an obvious career choice. "Minstrel" corresponds to Fafhrd's skaldic training in the Cold Wastes; it also reflects the actor's training he acquires from his brief time with Vlana. "Pirate" has a rank of 0 because "The Snow Women" makes it clear that Fafhrd only went a-viking the one time--and spent much of it talking to Mouse. "Thief" also has a rank of 0: it's clear from "Ill Met" that Fafhrd's thieving upon his arrival in Lankhmar mostly consists of mugging other thieves.

Attributes

Strength 2

Agility 1

Mind 0

Appeal 1

Combat

Brawl 1

Melee 2

Ranged 0

Defense 1

Careers

Barbarian 2

Minstrel 2

Pirate 0

Thief 0

Resources
Lifeblood 12

Hero Points 6

Gear
Very light armor (protection d3-1)

Sword named "Graywand" (damage d6)

Boons

Marked by the Gods (gains an extra Hero Point)

Snow Tracker (rolls extra die when tracking creatures in snowy and icy conditions)

Flaws

Country Bumpkin (rolls extra die when confronted with urban survival)

Tuuva the Strong

2010-02-09T18:47:00.002-06:00

[Played by Amity]

Tuuva is from Valgard, and left her tribe for unknown, and unspoken-of, reasons. She tried for a time to make a living as a mercenary, but she doesn't play well with others, even other warriors, and the profession didn't exactly suit her: not enough killing. She once overheard two mercenaries talking about a visit to "the Arena," and the life of a gladiator sounded heavenly to her: a bed, ample food, and a chance to kill as many things as she wanted. She left mercenary work immediately and headed to the gladiatorial ring.

Gladiators are only supposed to kill when they have been given the sign, and often non-fatal matches are "rigged" so that particular crowd favorites come out on top. Unfortunately for Tuuva, once the blood-lust takes a hold of her she often can't reign herself in, and during a fight that was supposed to be "to-the-pain" only, she killed her opponent. She then killed several guards who entered the arena to subdue her. The Master of Games had no interest in harboring an out-of-control and obviously dangerous gladiator, so Tuuva was sold into slavery.

She was disconsolate over losing her place in the Arena, and could not understand the concept of commercial slavery: the man who had bought her was, in her eyes, weak and pitiful, and he had not beaten her in battle. Why should she be his slave? She had soon attacked her new master for "insulting" her, and was subsequently sentenced to death in the very ring she had once called home.

Tuuva is very tall and very muscular, with fair skin and red hair. At first glance, she looks more like a man than a woman, but her features are handsome enough. She is dressed in the garb of a slave, though she also wears a peculiar necklace, crafted in the style of the Northern tribes. Not even her former master dared to try to take it from her. She doesn't speak much, and when asked about her past, she says nothing -- but will absently caress the necklace.

Attributes
Strength 2
Agility 1
Mind 0
Appeal 1

Combat
Brawl 1
Melee 2
Ranged 0
Defense 1

Careers
Barbarian 2
Mercenary 1
Gladiator 1
Slave 0

Lifeblood 12
Hero Points 6

Protection: 0 (no armor)
Weapons: spear d6, crossbow d6+2

Languages
Spoken: Valgardish, Lemurian

Boons
Valgardian Blade (rolls an extra die when using a blade of Valgardian make)
Marked by the Gods (gains an extra Hero Point)

Flaws
Unsettling (rolls an extra die in social situations due to Tuuva's overly intense glare)

Know, oh prince . . .

2010-02-09T13:13:00.001-06:00

An introduction, however brief, is probably necessary at this point. The immediate rationale for Vargold's existence is to serve as an archive for the Barbarians of Lemuria game I've just started running. Thus you'll see character write-ups, monster stats, and the like as time goes by. But I'm also going to reserve the right to occasionally use the blog as a sounding board for my thoughts on RPGing and fantasy literature as well.

A comment about the blog's name. Vargold (ON "wolf-time") is a compound noun taken from a passage in the Völuspá, the first poem in the Poetic Edda. Here's the passage in the 1968 translation of the poem by W. H. Auden and P. B. Taylor:

Brother shall strike brother and both fall,
Sisters' sons defiled with incest;
Evil be on earth, an age of whoredom,
Of sharp sword-play and shields clashing,
A wind-age, a wolf-age till the world ruins:
No man to another shall mercy show.

It seemed like an appropriate term to use for a sword-and-sorcery gaming blog. :)

Initiative

2010-02-08T23:06:00.002-06:00

As pointed out in the "New initiative rules in the Legendary Edition" thread on the Lords of Lemuria web forum, BoL's current initiative rule (roll 1d6, add Agility, act in descending order from highest total) seems out of place when compared to the usual model for tests in the game (roll 2d6, add attribute, add career if applicable, check for Mighty Successes and Calamitous Failures).

We'll therefore be using a variant of one of the house rules suggested in that thread. Heroes and NPCs will check initiative at the start of combat; their results will stand for the duration of the battle (unless something in the fiction of the game happens to necessitate a new initiative check). Each participant (or group of participants in the case of NPCs and creatures) will roll 2d6, add Agility, and see if the result beats the standard target number of 9. (A player can ask to apply a relevant career bonus to this roll; however, if the bonus is granted, that career cannot be utilized again in the ensuing combat.) Results should be read as follows:

Calamitous Failure = Unable to act in the first round of the combat; thereafter always goes last.

Failure = Acts in descending order of total result after all successes have gone.

Success = Acts in descending order of total result after any Mighty and/or Legendary Successes have gone but before any failures may go.

Mighty Success = Gains an extra action in the first round of the combat; thereafter always goes first (unless someone spends a Hero Point/Villain Point to gain a Legendary Success).

Legendary Success = Gains two extra actions in the first round of the combat; thereafter always goes first.

The extra actions for Mighty and Legendary Successes represent "getting the jump" on the rest of the combatants. Ties are broken according to the rules provided on p. 36 of the Legendary Edition (but Mighty Success and Legendary Success totals always trump regular successes, even if the regular success total is numerically higher).

Quaris the Fallen

2010-02-08T22:49:00.001-06:00

[Played by Rob]

Quaris is the last scion of a once mighty Satarlan noble house. His father spent the last of the family fortune to buy his son a lieutenant's commission in the city's Sky Navy. The money was well-spent: Quaris swiftly rose through the ranks, earning the captaincy of his own boat before he was thirty years old. Unfortunately, success breeds envy, and the young sky pilot soon came into conflict with a brace of jealous officers with even bluer blood. They framed Quaris for bribery, costing him his career and his freedom. Sentenced to hard labor in Sartarla's allanium mines, the fallen officer fought for and won a place amongst the other convicts. One of the prisoners taught him the basics of thievery, skills that made possible Quaris's escape from the mines. He returned to Satarla, hoping to expose those who betrayed him, but was soon recaptured and sentenced to death by combat in the city's arena. There he and his cellmates—Tuuva the Valgardian shield-maiden and Vanuth the Satarlan hustler—defeated a mighty jemadar man-eater and escaped in a sky boat piloted by a mysterious sorcerer . . .

Attributes
Strength 0
Agility 2
Mind 1
Appeal 1

Combat
Brawl 0
Melee 2
Ranged 1
Defense 1

Careers
Noble 1
Sky Pilot 2
Slave 1
Thief 0

Lifeblood 10
Hero Points 6

Protection: 0 (no armor)
Weapons: spear d6

Languages
Spoken: Lemurian
Written: Lemurian

Boons
Etiquette (rolls an extra die when good manners matter)
Marked by the Gods (gains an extra Hero Point)

Flaws
City-dweller (rolls an extra die when forced to deal with the great outdoors)