Investigating Ability Scores

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When you sit down to create an entirely new RPG from scratch, where do you start? I don’t know if there’s a particular method used by more experienced game designers, but the handful of times I’ve attempted it, I always start in the same place: how does the player create their character? It’s the closest thing to a ‘logical’ starting place that I can think of. Nearly every mechanic in every RPG I’ve ever looked at relates either to how the characters can affect the game world, or how the game world can affect them. And since the character needs to exist before it can affect or be affected, it seems like that’s the best place to start. So when I began making notes for the game system I mentioned yesterday, that is what I did.

From there, I chose to start with the most fundamental building block of a character: ability scores. I’m sure there’s a system out there where characters don’t have any of ability scores, and it might be really good. But, for my purposes with this game, ability scores seem like the best way to go. Then came my first real decisions: how many ability scores, what do they represent, and how are they generated?

I am most familiar with the D&D base ability scores. There are six of them: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Numerous methods exist for determining the numbers associated with each ability, but all of them are just permutations on the original. The player rolls 3d6, six times. The basic score is a number between 3 and 18, weighted heavily towards scores of 10 or 11. When you look at OD&D or AD&D, it’s very clear why ability scores were set up this way. Rolling 3 dice makes the minimum and maximum scores very unlikely, so when a 17 or 18 is rolled, it’s a cherished event. Hell, I got excited when my OD&D Magic User Higgins rolled a 16 Intelligence. The maximum score of 18 also plays beautifully into the original “ability check” mechanic, where a player rolls 1d20 and compares it to the ability score they’re attempting to use. If the result of the d20 roll is less than or equal to their ability score, whatever they’re attempting succeeds. I love the way this mechanic makes the specific number of a character’s ability score significant, while also retaining an absolute 10% failure chance.

Modern versions of Dungeons and Dragons–including Pathfinder–retain the basics of this system, but have lost everything which made the systems elegant. By using larger dice pools, the game removes the rarity of high or low numbers. There are racial ability bonuses which can easily increase a character’s score to 20 at first level, and even extra ability points given to characters at every 4th level. This would kill that consistent 10% failure chance, if the ability check mechanic hadn’t been dropped in favor of rolling against a target number. As I understand it, D&D 4th edition dropped the die rolling aspect of entirely, using a ‘point buy’ system instead. The ability score range of 3-18 seems like nothing more than tradition at this point.

After seeing this example of a mechanic being used in a game where it doesn’t fit any longer, I wanted to make sure I didn’t just copy the system I was most familiar with. I needed to properly explore my alternatives, and thoroughly examining why a particular system was the right choice for this game. (Incidentally, this concern is what prompted me to question Reinventing the Wheel.) And what better way to explore my alternatives was to grab every game sourcebook I own, and look at how they handled ability scores, presented in no particular order.

Note that these are specifically from books I own, and not an exhaustive investigation into every system of ability scores ever used. I’ve also excluded the Adventurer Conqueror King and Dungeon Crawl Classic systems, since they both use a system based heavily on oldschool D&D.

The Deadlands RPG published in 1996 (which I picked up at a garage sale about a year ago, but have not yet taken a serious look at) has a whopping 10 ability scores, divided into two groups. There are the “Corporeal Traits,” which include Deftness, Nimbleness, Quickness, Strength, and Vigor; and the “Mental Traits,” which include Cognition, Knowledge, Mien, Smarts, and Spirit. Having not played the game it seems unfair to judge, but some of these seem awful similar to me. Deftness is defined as “Hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity. Great for shooting holes in things.” and Quickness is defined as “Reflexes and speed. Draw, pardner!” I get that there’s a difference, but is it really significant enough to add additional complication to a tabletop game? I would need a lot of convincing.

Ability scores are determined by drawing from a standard deck of playing cards, with the two jokers included. You draw 12 cards, discard 2. You then assign each card to one of your ten scores. The card is then compared to a chart. The number on the card determines which type of die you roll in association with that ability score, while the suit determines how many of that die you roll.

The game has a wild-west setting, so using playing cards as a mechanic makes sense. Aces & Eights did the same thing. But really it’s just a fancy method for assigning dice to abilities, and that idea has always interested me. The difference between having a 1d4 Strength and a 1d12 dexterity is a lot more interesting than the difference between a -2 Strength and a +4 Dexterity in Pathfinder.

The Serenity RPG was the first game I bought after D&D, but I still haven’t had the opportunity to play it! I blame none of my friends being big Firefly fans. And maybe it’s just as well–I’ve heard that the system is horribly broken.

Like Deadlands, the attributes in the Serenity RPG are die types, rather than numbers. Before play begins, the group selects which “heroic level” they’d like to play at, choosing from “Greenhorn,” “Veteran,” and “Big Damn Hero.” Each of the heroic levels has a different number of “Attribute Points” which are spent in creating a character. Again, they are divided into physical and mental, but with only 6 instead of 10: Agility, Strength, Vitality, Alertness, Intelligence, and Willpower. Dice are purchased for each of the scores, with each die costing a number of points equal to the number on its highest face. (A d6 costs 6 points, a d8 costs 8, etc.)

Personally, I’m not a fan of point-buy systems. I see their value as a means of balancing characters, but I find it far more fun when characters have a chance of being unusually flawed or gifted. None the less, I still like the dice idea. It’s something to think about.

Earthdawn is another system I picked up at a garage sale and never took a really look at. It appears to be more of a storytelling game, which is not my forte. Again it uses a sort of “point buy” system, ranging from 2-18, with the lowest numbers actually adding points to your pool if you take them. It also has an alternative method allowing characters to roll 3d6 for their scores. The actual scores are similar to D&D as well: dexterity, strength, toughness, perception, willpower, and charisma.

Whatever other interesting elements the game might have, it’s not particularly useful for this exercise.

Star Trek: The Next Generation RPG is notoriously bad. I couldn’t not buy it when I found it at a used book store a few years back, just for the sake of morbid curiosity. I’m honestly having a difficult time even understanding how this works. From what I can tell, there are actually only 5 attributes, which range from 1 to 5 for humans, and each attribute has two “edges” which a character can be particularly strong or particularly weak in. I honestly can’t decipher how this works by flipping through the book, but it seems similar to the WEG Star Wars RPG, which I’ll discuss below.

Gangbusters (first edition, 1982) has some seriously strange ability scores. It looks like each character has Muscle, Agility, Observation, Presence, Driving, and Luck. But each is rolled differently! For muscle, agility, and observation, the player rolls a percentile die. Modifiers go from +0 to +25, with a lower roll being better. The presence score is just rolled on a D10, with modifiers from 0 to 2. The driving score is the average of your agility and observation scores, and the luck score is just a percentile dice divided by two.

This is a mess. I don’t think there’s really any way to redeem it within the system’s mechanics. Though again, I should probably play it before I pass judgement. (If you haven’t figured it out: I own a great many systems I’ve never had an opportunity to play!)

I picked up the Batman Role Playing Game a little over a year ago because I found it at a used book store and was curious. Unlike some of the other RPGs I’ve picked up second had, I took a very serious look at it. My ladyfriend is a huge batman fan, and I had some fun ideas for a campaign where the players started out as thugs in Gotham city, constantly hounded by Batman. Unfortunately, I discovered that it was the worst system I’ve ever laid eyes on.

But lets stick to the attributes. This game has a nine of them. When I first read it, that seemed extremely excessive. But then, I hadn’t read anything about Deadwood yet. The attributes make up a cross-section, which I do find somewhat interesting. Three attributes are physical, three are mental, and three are spiritual. Of those, one in each category is an “Acting/Opposing” attribute, one is an “Effect Attribute,” and one is a “Resistance Attribute.” Once again, point-buy is used during character creation, so this isn’t of particular interest.

The Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game is god damned beautiful. It is based on the Burning Wheel role playing system, which I’ve had no prior experience with. Despite appearing to focus more on storytelling than gaming, the system is very interesting and I would like to learn more about it.

The game doesn’t have ability scores in the traditional sense, but it does have Nature, Will, Resources, and Circles. These can used and depleted through play, however, so perhaps this would be a good example of a system without ability scores.

Shadowrun, 1st edition, has 8 attributes for most characters, but has a 9th if the character is a magician. In some ways, this seems like a poor design choice to me. The purpose of ability scores, as I view them, is to be the most basic, fundamental, and universal expression of what a character can do. An Orc Barbarian who cannot cast spells still has an Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma score.

But, on the other hand, I can see this making a certain amount of sense in a setting where mystical abilities are completely inaccessible to those who were not born with them.

The way attributes are generated is also interesting. It’s a point-buy system, with some complexities that are a little reminiscent of Gangbusters, but much more refined. There are five columns to choose from in creating a character from scratch: Magic, Attributes, Skills, Tech, and Race. The player is given five importance ratings, 0 through 4, and they must assign one rating to each of the five columns. They will receive more or less resources in each of the five categories, depending on how important they rate them. Giving attributes an importance rating of 0 gives you 15 points to spend, while an importance rating of 4 gives you 30 points.

The six physical and mental attributes can each range from 1 to 6 for humans. The three mystical attributes each work a little differently. All characters start with an Essence of 6, which decreases as they add cyberware implants, or if they are healed improperly. Reaction is the average of Quickness and Intelligence, but is also reduced by cyberware implants.

Magic rating is the ninth attribute which only magic users posses, and I don’t actually understand why it exists based on these rules. It starts at 6, and “declines with essence rating.” I can’t figure out why they would need a seperate ability if–by all appearances–magic should always be equal to essence. But as I’m not intimately familiar with the system, I’m sure there’s something I’m missing.

Traveller (2008, Mongoose) has one of the coolest character creation systems ever, wherein the players must make a number of decisions and roll on a number of charts to generate their character’s entire lifetime prior to the point that play begins. Rolling the six basic ability scores, however, is straightforward. Roll 2d6 six times and assign them in any order. It’s simple, but works.

I like the idea of using two dice to generate an ability score rather than 3. The roll is still weighted towards the center, but both high and low scores will be more common.

And lastly, we come to the West End Games Star Wars Role Playing Game. I love this game. And, as it turns out, I’ve written about its ability scores before. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just quote myself:

WEG Star Wars characters have six basic attributes; Dexterity, Knowledge, Perception, Strength, Mechanical, and Technical. Each of these has a certain number of six sided dice attached to it during character creation. (WEG Star Wars only uses six sided dice.) For example, a human character gets 18 dice total, and has a minimum of 2 dice and a maximum of 4 dice in each of the six attributes. After filling the minimum requirements, players have 6 dice to spread between their six abilities. Once in play, any action which requires a roll will be associated with one of the six abilities, and the player gets to roll however many dice they allocated for that attribute. For example, hitting something with a blaster requires the ability to aim the blaster accurately, so you would roll your dexterity. If you went ahead and maxed out your dexterity, then you’d be able to roll 4d6 against your opponent’s dodge. And if he or she rolls lower than you did, the blaster bolt hits! And given how dangerous combat is treated in this game, there’s a good chance getting hit by that blaster bolt killed them.
There’s also a skills system for more specific tasks. Each character starts out with 7 dice to apply to skills. So even though you have 4 dice in dexterity, you could put another 2 dice in the Blasters skill, and be able to roll a whopping 6 dice whenever you try to hit somebody. Dice can also be split up. Each die counts as 3 “pips,” which is WEG’s code for bonuses. Essentially, if you’ve put 2 skill die into blasters, 3 into medicine, and 1 into starfighter piloting, and can’t decide where to put your last die, you can just break it up. Add a +2 to starfighter piloting (making the skill 1d6 + 2) and a +1 to blasters.

The system is elegant, and beautiful. Despite using what is essentially a point-buy system, it doesn’t feel bogged down with number crunching, nor do you ever feel obligated to build an “optimized” character.

This has been a weird post. When I started it, my intention was to examine all of these different game systems, and figure out how their use of ability scores could be adapted to the game I’ve been working on. Instead, I’ve really just listed all the different systems I found next to one another, with some commentary attached.

This might be a bad post…but it doesn’t seem bad to me right now, at 1 in the morning. Maybe I’ll feel differently later, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Reinventing the Wheel

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During my spare time for the last few days, I’ve been working on a new game system. It’s not a particularly ambitious project, nor am I taking its development very seriously, but I was struck by inspiration and have enjoyed putting those ideas down on paper. Whether or not I’ll ever finish this project, I don’t know, but for the time being it has been an entertaining process. Going through the motions of putting an entire system together from scratch has given me a new appreciation for the challenges involved, and raised a few questions I don’t think I would have considered previously.

Many of the mechanics I’ve come up with for this game are unique in my experience. I’ve never played another game where all spells are equally powerful, or where additional hit points are gathered as treasure. I’m not saying nobody has ever done it before, I’ve just never seen it myself. For a lot of mechanics, I have specific ideas about how they should work, and how I will adapt them from my source material. For other mechanics, however, I…well, don’t.

Take combat, for example. There’s something you want to kill, so you attack it with a weapon. This is a fundamental part of fantasy adventure games, and most everyone would agree that it requires a resolution mechanic. Unless you want to stand up from the table and start LARPing, you need a standardized procedure to easily determine the success or failure of an attack. Personally, I’m from the school of thought which says that since war is chaos, a wide variance of random probability is appropriate when determining the success or failure of an attack.

I’ve seen this handled a couple different ways in the various games I’ve played, but I am most familiar with the method D&D, and later Pathfinder, have used since their beginning. Every player and NPC has an ‘Armor Class’ number representing how difficult they are to hit. The attacker must roll a twenty sided die, and if their result is equal to or better than their target’s AC, the attack is successful and damage can be rolled. Various editions have had more or less complexity on top of this basic system, but the fundamental mechanic has remained unchanged from the early days of OD&D. Why change what works, after all?

This is one of the problems I’ve encountered while developing this game. For some things, including conflict resolution with regard to attacks, I don’t have any ideas better than the ones which have been used in D&D for decades. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to call using D&D’s attack roll system ‘plagiarism,’ there is something that feels wrong about it. If I use a mechanic someone else came up with, without adapting it to make it my own, then am I really making my own game, or am I just regurgitating something that already exists with a few superficial tweaks?

It’s not as though it would be difficult to come up with a reasonably unique mechanic, either. Just off the top of my head I can think of a few different ways to handle this kind of conflict resolution. The attacker and the defender could make opposed rolls, which would increase the chaos of battle. I could replace the 20 sided die with a 30 sided die. Perhaps the attacker doesn’t even make a ‘to hit,’ roll. Every attack immediately results in a damage roll, and every character has a minimum amount of damage which must be rolled in order to hurt them at all. Or perhaps “defense” and “attack” numbers are static, and can only be modified with clever tactics described to the GM. Give me 30 minutes and I’ll give you a dozen more ways it could be done.

But would any of them be better?

I would have to be stupid to be different, simply for uniqueness’ sake. It’s possible I’ll think of a mechanic which better suites the tone aiming for than the D&D attack roll does. It’s also possible that I won’t, and if that happens, then why should I shoehorn something different into the game just so I don’t feel as though I’m being derivative? I believe that every choice made in game design should be made because the designer believes it improves the way the game plays. I can’t think of any other consideration which matters at all by comparison.

True as that may be, however, it doesn’t stop me from feeling bad when I lift something wholesale from another game. Even a game as time honored as Dungeons and Dragons.

Lively Locals 6: The Godstone

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A bag of holding is a coveted prize for an adventurer. In one small sack, a person can carry an entire armory of weapons, more potions than a wizard could brew in a year, and enough riches to buy a kingdom. Never does the bag grow in size, or become any heavier than a skin filled with water. Few know how these marvelous devices work, but the truth is that each bag accesses a small pocket of the Astral Plane. The infinite nothingness which flows between the dimensions, holding them together into a single multiverse. Each bag of holding is a small portal into a pocket of that void.

As precious as these items are, they’re also a great liability. It’s a simple task for a thief to rob you of your entire fortune, if you’re foolish enough to put it all in one place. Thieves are not even the greatest of an adventurer’s worries. A far greater danger is that posed by a stray blade, or arrow. A whizzing bit of steel which, while it may fail to harm the adventurer, damages their bag. When a bag of holding is broken, it does not simply split as a bag of canvas would. A bag of holding implodes, sending its contents whirling into the astral plane in all directions, and the unfortunate adventurer will be lucky if they’re not sucked in along with their lost treasures.

Over the centuries, countless bags have burst into the astral plane. Since the acquisition of such a bag in the first place is a dangerous–or at least expensive–proposition, the items contained in them are often quite valuable. Powerful magic items and artifacts float aimlessly throughout the vast nothingness.

But the astral plane is not entirely empty. Planar travelers use the astral plane as their road between worlds. The alien Githyanki even call the astral plane their home. There are many astral phenomena as well. Young wizards preparing to travel the planes for the first time are warned of the dangers of sonic rain, and transformative clouds. Worst of all is the bridge lightning. Arcs of energy which are drawn towards physical matter. They appear as if from nowhere, and move so quickly that by the time the eye has seen them, they are already gone.

If a person can survive the shock of being struck by bridge lightning, they’ll suddenly find themselves somewhere completely different. The lightning draws anything it touches to an area of intersection, where the astral plane overlaps another plane. Whatever the lightning strikes is unceremoniously dumped into a seemingly random spot somewhere in the multiverse. It is said that the astral plane’s natural state is emptiness, and the gods created the bridge lightning to enforce that.

Lost treasures are far more numerous than travelers in the astral plane, though. The lightning is often drawn to a mighty sword or magic potion lost by an adventurer who trusted their magic bag a little too much. Sometimes the items fall into the fires of hell or the endless fields of Elysium. Occasionally, they even end up in the depths of a dungeon, only to later be found by another adventurer. And other times, the items are zapped to a rock.

It’s not a particularly interesting rock. It’s just a stone in the middle of a field, which happens to intersect with the astral plane. Every so often, some item appears on the rock without warning. One day, a magical sword might appear, and six months past that, a dozen gold coins. A week after, a collection of goblin teeth, then a year later a powerful suit of plate armor.

A century or so ago, a clan of nomadic orcs were wandering through the wilderness, and came upon a small pile of gold and other treasure. They fell upon it eagerly, and took it as an omen that they should make camp around the stone. They intended to stay only a few weeks, but while they were there, they noticed that magical marvels continued to appear. The shamans declared the rock to be a manifestation of the orcish god, and the tribe cast off their nomadic ways to remain with the godstone.

To this day, the Tribe of the Godstone guard their land viciously. They are impossibly wealthy and well equipped, and eagerly offer outsiders as sacrifice to please their deity.

1st Annual Papers & Pencils Reader Census

I’ll just admit right up front that I’m completely lifting this idea from Jen McCright of Blag Hag. I’ve had the opportunity to participate in three of her annual reader censuses over the years, and I’ve always thought they were a lot of fun. So now that I have my very own blog which has lasted a full year, I thought I’d get in on that fun for myself! I’m not a scientist, and I don’t have the kind of statistical knowledge that she does, but the results should be interesting to muse over none the less.

So here’s how this works. First, you visit:

The Papers & Pencils 2012 Reader Census

Then you fill out the questions as best you can, and click submit. It’s not very long and shouldn’t take much of your time. There are only 8 multiple choice questions that are required, with some extra optional questions at the end. You’ll be able to take the survey until Saturday the 18th, at whatever time I get around to closing it.

If you read and enjoy Papers & Pencils, I would like to ask you to take a few minutes to do this. It should only take a moment, and the more responses I get, the more reliable my eventual data will be. Hopefully, what I learn here should help me better understand and serve my readership.

Ding! Level Two

WARNING: This post is self-indulgent tripe. Turn back now, while you still can!

One year ago today, I was depressed. My life had taken a number of dark turns right in a row, and even though things were getting better, I was unsure of how to move forward. I’d been thinking about getting back to my writing, so I pulled up blogger, set up a site named ‘Comma, Blank_;’ and jotted down an essay about how shitty I felt. After I wrote it, I remember feeling oddly at peace with myself. The half dozen people who read it told me it made them feel terrible, but for some reason I now felt like everything was going to be okay. That was was the first day of the experiment which has grown to become Papers & Pencils. And while I didn’t write any RPG themed articles until August 9th, nor did I start taking that writing seriously until October 10th, I still view today, August 8th, as the day the project began. The day I looked at my shitty situation and said “Fuck this noise.”

But I already wrote about all that way back when I moved off of blogger, so I won’t bore you with it a second time. Instead I figured this would be a good opportunity to take a look at the posts from the past year. Which ones are really good, really bad, or just somehow interesting. Hopefully it will give newer readers a chance to check out some of what came before, without needing to prowl the archives themselves. After that, I’ll outline some of my goals for the future of the site, and other related projects.

The past year has over 200 posts for me to sift through, though, so that’s enough introduction. Lets go.

The Girl and the Granite Throne began shortly after the site went up, and as of this writing hasn’t been updated since I started taking the blog seriously back in October of 2011. It is, I think, a story with a lot of potential. The four parts of it which have already been written still hold up well in my opinion. And now that the campaign the story was based on has officially been declared dead, it’s important to me that I find another medium through which I can tell Erin’s story. The only problem is that I’m actually a very slow writer. Between a full time job, writing 4 blog posts every week, and playing in the games which inspire those posts, it’s difficult for me to make time to write lengthy fiction.

The Hall of a Dozen Deaths is a terrible post, which is a sad thing for me to admit. Most of the time, when I’ve written something bad, I already know it’s bad when I post it. Sometimes, that bad stuff actually gets a pretty warm reception, but that doesn’t change the fact that I know it could have been better if I’d just focused more, done more research, given myself more time, or something else like that. Not so with this post. I did my research, invested plenty of time, and when it was finished I was proud of myself. So proud, I even took the time to repost on /tg/, where someone pointed out that all I had done was create an annoying series of skill checks.

Damn it.

The Corpse Sewn Hekatonkheires. Of all the monsters I’ve created, this one is still my favorite. I have a few of them wandering around my current game world, and I can’t wait for my players to encounter them. And as an added bit of sentimentality, ranting about how difficult Pathfinder’s monster creation rules were while making this beast is how I met by my twitter-pal DarkPatu for the first time.

Ability Penalty Flaws are an idea I wish I could claim as my own, but they were originally proposed by Paul over on Blog of Holding. The system is elegant in its design and application, and lends depth to the characters built using it. In the post, I revised Paul’s original idea to work with Pathfinder, and to be a little less goofy than he had originally envisioned. I love this rule, and it would probably end up codified in any serious attempt I made to design a fantasy adventure game.

Magically Generating New Adventures is an important post for several reasons. First, I think it’s one of the best and most unique ideas I’ve ever had. Second, it was my first post after I decided that I was going to take RPG writing seriously. Third, even after all this time, it is still one of my most popular and oft-linked-to posts. I’m proud of this idea, and I’m always excited when someone tells me they used it to help them design their game world.

Colorful Characters 1: The Governor was (obviously) the very first Colorful Characters post. The series was originally intended to serve two roles. First, I hoped it would provide me with something I could write quickly without to much hassle. Second, I wanted to create a consistent series of posts which readers could know to expect and look forward to. As it turned out, Colorful Characters didn’t fill either of those roles, because they turned out to be longer and more difficult to write than normal posts, and due to that fact, weren’t as reliable as I had hoped they would be.

Instead, they’ve given me an outlet for writing short fiction over the past year which has been invaluable to me. Even though I don’t have time to write full short stories, it’s nice to sit down and sketch out the highlights of a character’s life.

Non-Digital Random Map Generation. The idea I wrote about here is one of my favorites. Like Magically Generating New Adventures, it feels uniquely “mine,” and I’ve received a lot of compliments for it at the time. Sadly, this one doesn’t get linked to nearly as often as the magic card post does. One of the great flaws of the blogging format is that old posts sometimes get lost, because nobody is going to spend their time going through all 200+ posts in my archive looking for gems. I hope this link gives that post some of the traffic I think it deserves.

Simple Experience Points is another idea taken directly from Paul of Blog of Holding. And, somewhat frustratingly, it’s one of the posts which I’ve received the most recognition for. Again, I did adapt it for Pathfinder, and add a few refinements of my own to the idea, but the critical leap of intellect was Paul’s. None the less, it’s a good system, and one of the best house rules I’ve ever implemented in my game.

I wrote The Problem with Feats on Halloween night. I was covered in caked-on makeup, and had a severely burned finger that stung every time I typed with it. But it was worth it, because that post gave me my first real bit of attention from the very generous Courtney of the blog Hack & Slash. Thanks to the link he posted, I had 74 hits on my blog the next day. And bear in mind, this was back when I was having a good day if I broke 10 hits! I doubt I would have lasted long enough to write a 1 year retrospective post without Courtney’s encouragement. I didn’t get that many hits again until late February, and it didn’t become normal for me until long after I had made the move to Papers and Pencils.

Deadly Dungeons: Scholomance Part 1. Ho boy. Well, first I’ll point out that originally, I was planning to make ‘Deadly Dungeons’ an ongoing series, much like Colorful Characters. But I bit off more than I could chew with my first outing, an adaptation of my favorite World of Warcraft dungeon, Scholomance. Part of my failure there was that I failed to realize that WoW dungeons and D&D dungeons have very different design goals. Sholomance, in WoW, is one of the most sprawling dungeons in the game. In D&D, it’s a very brief, very combat-heavy dungeon, which lacks a lot of flavor.

I’d still like to revisit the idea of transforming Scholomance into a dungeon someday. Particularly since Blizzard recently brutalized this beloved dungeon of mine, sucking out everything that made it beautiful in the first place and making it linear. I’m not sure when I will tackle it, but when I do it will likely be a fresh start, with a completely different approach.

Funny story: I’m very proud of Thoughts On Hero Points, but I still don’t use Hero Points in my game, nor do I really intend to start doing so in the future. It’s a good post with good ideas, but they don’t really suit my gaming preferences, or those of my group.

Sitting Behind the GM Screen stands out in my mind as one of the worst posts I’ve ever written. My thinking, at the time, was that it would be cool to write a post about how I prepare for games, and how I set up my table before my friends arrive to play. I’ve never been happy with how the post turned out, and generally try to avoid remembering it. Which is too bad, because that’s an excellent photograph of me.

My book review of The Worldwound Gambit is kind of a dickish piece of writing on my part. I stand by every criticism I made, but in my attempt to be entertaining about it, I think I just came off as mean-spirited. None the less, it’s kind of cool that my review of a book is currently the 5th result when you perform a Google search for the book’s title.

I’m proud of Succubi Deserve More. If I had to pick my favorite post from the first six months of the site, I would probably pick this one. I don’t even have all that much to say about it, except perhaps to mention that after it went up, I suddenly started getting a lot of hits from people searching for Succibi.

No More Overzealous Paladins was really just a rant which didn’t turn out as well as I wanted. I had this vision of finding tons of good and bad paladin stories, and spacing them throughout the post. But when it came time to write the thing, I couldn’t find any of them! Feeling defeated, I jotted down what came to mind and wrote it off as a bad post. The next day I woke to discover that it had been reposted to several different websites. This was probably the first post of mine to get circulated around the internet much at all.

Obfuscation Through Volume. Aside from being a solid post about Game Mastering techniques, this post made it onto the OSR Required Reading List posted by Courtney over at Hack and Slash. That was a proud day!

After writing Colorful Characters for months, it started to become more of a chore to do it every single week. So I started writing the Magical Marvels series, starting with Kofek’s Tongue. These have always been really fun, because I was able to work together with my ladyfriend Morrie on the art. Plus, they allowed me to share the history of my game world by describing the history of artifacts found therein. I think pretty much every Magical Marvels post I’ve written to date holds up very well, and would recommend giving them a look.

I don’t have a lot to say about A Personal History of Role Playing. It is a post which I felt like I had to write, and I’m glad I did. I feel as though I expressed myself very openly, honestly, and clearly in that post.

As I mentioned, after writing “Succubi Deserve More,” I started to receive a lot of hits from people searching for Succubi on Google. Oddly, one of the most common searches was for “Succubi in Succubus Town.” To this day I’m still not sure why that happened, but I decided to write a post about it. What started as a shameless attempt to draw in more traffic turned into an interesting exploration of what a succubus society might look like.

NPC Reactions is the single laziest post I’ve ever written for this site. I am ashamed of it.

Roughly halfway through the past year’s posts is Deities Defined. Some might argue that it’s pointless to spend too much time working on the mechanics of a god, since in essence, the gods are just a tool for the GM to manipulate the game world with. Keeping their powers nebulous and undefined is valuable. But I think gods are interesting. I love the idea of players being pawns in a war between deities, or entering a realm where their god cannot help them. I honestly view my system for defining the limits of the gods to be one of my best additions to Pathfinder.

After writing Merciless Monsters 2: Bloody Avenger (Bloody Mary) I received one of the best compliments I think I’ve ever received about my game design, again from Courtney of Hack & Slash:

Hello Friend.
You’ve committed the wonderful gygaxism of generalizing a specific creature into a monster! (Gorgon, Medusa et. al.)

That made me feel like a god damned badass.

Player Agency in the Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon. After watching the 80s D&D cartoon, my ladyfriend and I joked that whoever was running that D&D game was a terrible GM, because they weren’t giving the player any ability to affect the outcome of the adventures. It seemed like a fun idea for a post, so I wrote this. Like the book review for The Worldwound Gambit, I stand by everything I wrote, but I feel like I may have come off as mean-spirited when I was really just attempting to be funny. There’s even a Facebook thread out there where a bunch of people complain about what a dick I am for writing it. Ernest G. Gygax Jr. even left a comment in that thread talking about how hard they worked on the show, though he didn’t give any indication that he read the article itself.

I tried to play up my hatred for the show to get laughs, and I wonder if I did a poor job of that. Though, bad as I might feel, I seriously considered making “Gary Gygax Jr. Disapproved!” the tagline of the site. >.>

After the success of my Bloody Avenger post, I decided to find another little-known undead monster I could convert to Pathfinder. I settled on Merciless Monsters 3: Draugr. All I remember about this post was that it took forever to write, and I was up for hours working on it at a snail’s pace when I really wanted to be sleeping. I’m happy with how it turned out, though I was disappointed when I learned that I had failed to notice the Draugr’s presence in Pathfinder’s 2nd Bestiary.

Making Travel More Engaging and Hex Crawling Encounters were written as a pair, and they basically epitomize what I want to do with this website. I want to identify gaps in tabletop RPGs, and I want to thoroughly discuss how those gaps could be filled. I want to improve upon gaming’s weaknesses. These two posts are largely aimed towards Pathfinder players, and attempted to re-introduce concepts which were commonplace in the early days of gaming, but have become forgotten over time.

Like the previous posts, A Paladin’s Fall and The Paladin’s Oath, and GM Clarity were written as a pair. The success of my rant about Paladins a few months prior had left me thinking about the class a lot. It is a class with a lot of fun potential, but one which is often improperly handled. The three posts were my attempt to articulate and address those problems intelligently, and I think I succeeded to a reasonable degree.

Making Encumbrance Work is another example of a post where I took something which I don’t think works in modern games, and I made it work for myself. I’m proud of how it turned out, even if I think the system presented there needs some improvement based on reader feedback, and my own playtesting.

March 2012 was apparently a pretty good month for me!

Oh, wow. I’d forgotten about How Players Make Enemies & Influence People. This was a decent idea, ruined by rushed and lazy writing. It’s easily a contender with ‘NPC Reactions’ for wost post I’ve ever uploaded to this site.

I spend a lot of time thinking about features that might improve Papers & Pencils. For awhile, I was really set on the idea of having a sub-section of the site where I just posted adventure notes. My thinking was that I would write detailed notes for each adventure, and others could use them either to follow the progress of my game, or to run my adventures within their own campaigns as a kind of mini-module. The only thing which ever came out of that idea was Behind the GM’s Screen:ToKiTiMO 3. Writing such detailed notes was simply too much work to keep up with. And since my players started to make their own plans, rather than following the adventure hooks I put in front of them, my style of note taking has needed to adapt to a format which would be much less enjoyable to read.

Then there’s the grand overview of skills. Christ on a Cracker, was this a lot of work to write. Eleven posts in all, which took over half of the month of April to post. This is probably my most notable work to date. And while I have had one person complain that they were far too dry, I’ve also had at least three other blogs start similar skills series of their own, citing me as part of their inspiration. That feels really good.

While it is far from completed yet, Page By Page: Gary Gygax’s DMG has been an educational thing to write. Slowly reading through the original Dungeon Master’s Guide, and writing down my thoughts on sections which stands out, has helped me to better understand a lot about gaming’s origins. I look forward to continuing this series into the next year, then finding another book to do the same thing with!

I was honored when I was asked to participate in the May of the Dead Carnival. So much so that I asked if I could write four posts instead of only one. From those, I think Undead Items is the best. Followed closely by The Crypt of Ancient Wisdom. I have a penchant for the macabre, and I got to exercise that here. I really ought to come up with another post about Undead Items!

The Wide Swing Dilemma created some fascinating discussion in the comments. This was one of those rare cases when I honestly was not sure what the correct response was as a GM. Normally I’m pretty confident in my decisions, even if I later decide I was wrong. But in this situation, I had my personal gaming philosophies on one hand, and an important game mechanic in the other. It was a difficult choice, and not one which everybody agreed with.

My post on Fantasy Languages was the first time in a couple months that I really tried to comprehensively address a problem with RPGs. To date I think this is one of my most underrated posts. I’ve never received any comments or feedback on it, despite pouring many hours into its development. Maybe this is a subject which just doesn’t interest anybody but me. But that’s fine, because I myself have used it as a resource several times already!

If you want me to write for anybody but myself, you gotta pay me.

Writing What I Want felt like writing a manifesto. I stated my goals, and I’m going to work towards finding or building a game which meets those goals. And once I’ve done that…well, I’m sure I’ll have new goals by then!

While it wasn’t the first in this series, Lively Locals 2: River of Blades is the first Lively Local post which I felt a strong connection to. Lively Locals finally did what my “Friday” style posts (Colorful Characters, Magical Marvels, Merciless Monsters, and Lively Locals) were supposed to do from the beginning: they don’t take forever to write. I can bang one of these out pretty quickly, and I think most of them have been both entertaining to read, and useful for GMs.

The Updated Forest Battlefield Generator might just be the most useful GMing tool I’ve contributed gaming community. Which, come to think of it, is kinda sad. And on top of that, I completely forgot to add another sub table for elevations! None the less, I think it is a solid tool, and I use it in many of my games.

My post on Weapon Mechanics is one of my favorites from recent history. One of the things which keeps me from abandoning modern gaming and jumping completely into the OSR is my love of deep, tactical combat. But what modern gaming does wrong is that much of the tactics come from character build options, many of which unnecessarily limit what players can attempt within the game. I think increasing the importance of which weapons the character chooses to carry is a much more interesting way of enhancing the tactical aspect of combat.

This is getting to be pretty recent, but I very much enjoyed my posts on Tabletop Magic from Final Fantasy, and Tabletop Items from A Link to the Past. These posts were written over a week apart apart from one another, but I group them together because they have the same purpose. I took a property which is similar to tabletop RPGs (in these cases, Final Fantasy games and a Zelda game), I selected an aspect from these properties which is also present in tabletop games (magic systems and special items), and I adapted them to a tabletop environment. I love this kind of thing because it forces me to change my thinking patterns in order to accomplish the goal. And anything which forces me to approach tabletop gaming from a fresh perspective is a good thing in my mind.

My Product Review of the AD&D First Edition Reprints was a cop-out post. A friend of mine had spent the day with me, and I didn’t have time to write a proper post. So I took a bunch of pictures of my new books and threw up a review of them. This post wouldn’t be even slightly notable, except it somehow got me a link from Penny Arcade, which shot my traffic into the stratosphere for a day. It gives me a lot of hope when something I’m not particularly proud of can still be important. It makes me think that perhaps I’ve got a chance at doing something more than uneducated labor with my life.

And finally, Product Review: Using Banners on the Cheap for Maps. Even if this wasn’t a very good post, and even if the product was bad, it would still be important to me. Because for the first time, a company gave me free stuff in exchange for a review. That kind of recognition, combined with the Penny Arcade thing, really makes me feel as though this writing is a valuable use of my time. (And by the way, the post is pretty good, and the product was awesome)!

And that’s it. An overview of what I think are the most notable posts from the last year. This is already the longest post I’ve ever written for this site, but I promised a look at what I want to do in the future, so I’ll go over that quickly here:

I want to learn to write faster, which I understand means I need to lower my standards for what I write, and raise my standards for how much I edit. I’d also like to inject more humor into my writing, because I like to think I’m a funny dude.
There are a number of improvements I’d like to make to the site itself. I have a long-standing bad habit of constructing extremely over-designed websites with very little content. And now that I have tons of content, I worry that I’m not displaying it as effectively as I could. I would like to find a way to integrate some kind of automatically-generated navigation system, which allows people to go through the various posts in a more organized fashion. Doing so will probably require me to revise all of the post categories and tags, which means:
I need to revise all of the post categories and tags.
I need to begin working my way through my archives and making sure all of the images I use are properly attributed to their respective creators. As the site gets bigger and more people see these images, the people who created them really deserve to get some attention for it. This is something I should have been doing from the start, and I’m trying to improve on it now.
I’d like to integrate a few other kinds of content into the site. I’m very interested in both board gaming and war gaming. I doubt the focus of the site will ever stray far from its pen-and-paper roots, but these are related topics and I think it would be not only fun to cover them, but valuable to examine them and how they relate to tabletop RPGs.
I have and idea for a space-combat board game which, I think, is quite good. It is in very early development at this stage, but my hope is to eventually produce a complete set of rules which can be played with household objects. Once I’m there I can’ start looking for groups interested in playtesting the game.
I’ve written a script for a 5-10 minute comedy video centered on tabletop RPGs. I don’t want to reveal much about this right now, but it’s a project I’m extremely excited for. The biggest obstacle is that I don’t yet own a video camera, nor do I have a computer which could easily handle video editing. Both of these problems are being addressed, but may take some time.
While I’m sure the site will always have a lot of one-off posts, I want to move towards doing more series, similar to the one I did for skills posts. Not necessarily that long, mind you, but there are many topics which are better covered in 3 or 4 posts than they are in only one.
I would like to begin writing more fiction for the site as well. I think I’m a much stronger fiction writer than I am an article writer, so the fact that I’ve hardly posted any fiction in the past year is kind of silly. Returning to, and finishing, The Girl and the Granite Throne is high on my list here. But I also have an idea for a much shorter story about a lowly porter, and his adventures with a Fighter, a Paladin, a Wizard, and a Sorcerer.
I’d like to begin covering a larger variety of games. Which means I need to start playing a wider variety of games!

And that’s that. First year under our belts, and if I have anything to say about it, the second year will be a lot better than this one was.

Lets do this

Termite Suicide Bombers: How the Animal Kingdom Should Influence Your Game

A new species of termite was discovered recently. That, in itself, is hardly news. New species are discovered all the time, and in fact, I recall hearing that there are many thousands of undocumented insect species in particular. But what makes this species worthy of note is that they explode. No, seriously. When the worker termites grow old, they can fill a cyst on their backs with toxic crystals which have been produced throughout their lifetime. Once the ‘backpack’ cyst is full, it bursts, killing both the termite, and any enemies unfortunate enough to be caught in range of his toxic explosive.

My first thought when I read about these was “Wow, all those video games with exploding insects suddenly have a lot more grounding in reality.”

The scientists who documented this find even released some brief video footage of the phenomena. It’s a little difficult to make out, and it only shows the cyst filling, not exploding. None the less, it’s a fascinating discovery, and one which prompted me to finally cover a subject which I’ve been thinking about for several months now.

Animals are strange. Exploding termites aren’t even the most bizarre creatures I’ve heard of. Did you know that many species of shark fight their siblings to death while still growing in their mother’s womb? Or that some species of hermaphroditic gastropods fight each other to determine which one of them has to be the female? And then there’s shit which just looks strange, like the soft shelled turtle. And for me, the strangest part about these creatures, is that I’ve never seen anything in a tabletop game based on them. The world is filled with potential monsters, all we need to do is make ’em big enough to eat an adventurer.

Angler Fish: I’ve linked before to The Oatmal’s excellent description of the life of a male angler fish, but I’m linking to it again, and if you haven’t read it, you should. Anglers are fascinating, and still very mysterious, creatures. You could base a dozen different monsters off of them, but here I’m specifically interested in the fact that the skin of the female absorbs the male, and uses his remains for reproduction. A Pathfinder monster could do the same thing. Except instead of luring the males of the monster’s species, the creature could instead lure male adventurers. Once their skin touches the monster’s flesh, the contact poison the beast secretes would begin to melt the adventurer, until nothing was left but his testicles. (Or, if you’d like to go more creepy and less vulgar, nothing is left but his expressionless face).

Speaking of angler fish, I just noticed…were they the inspiration for the modern design of the Beholder?

Traumatic Insemination: One of the most interesting things about animals is the way they have sex. Often that’s where the truly unique and bizarre aspects of an animal really come out. I’ve made an effort to avoid filling this list with dicks (which was not easy, let me tell you)! But this one has fascinated me for years, and it translates well to a game.

Essentially, many species of invertebrates do not have external female genitalia. Not even a Cloaca. So since there’s no opening, the male’s phallus makes one. It stabs the female in the abdomen with a sharp phallus, and that’s how insemination is handled. It’s gruesome, kinda disturbing, and a perfect way to fuck with your adventurers. I’m not saying your game should be filled with dagger-dicks (though I did once post a dick-dagger…) but why not have a prehensile blade extending from a monster’s chest, or back? The creature gets an extra attack with it, and upon scoring a critical hit, the monster implants a parasitic larva within the victim, a-la the Alien films.

The Almighty Squid Worm I really don’t have anything specific to say about this creature, or how it acts, or the abilities it has. But I marvel at it’s profoundly alien shape. These are the dreams of a mad god.

The Hagfish: Ocean life is often the most unusual. As humans, we’re at least somewhat familiar with what it’s like to live on land. Legs are a good way to get around, warmth is needed to keep our bodies functional, light is useful to help us understand our surroundings, and so on. Creatures which have adapted to living deep underwater need none of these things. And, as such, serve as perfect inspiration for game masters hoping to create interesting monsters.

The Hagfish is one such creature. For starters, it has a skull, but no column of vertebra. To my knowledge, it is the only known species where this occurs, and that is awesome. But far more interesting to potential monster-creators is its slime. Hagfish can exude insane amounts of slime which reacts with the water around it. If the Hagfish is captured, this slime can clog the gills of an attacking fish, suffocating it. And after it does so, the Hagfish needs to literally tie itself into a knot to clean itself off, restoring its own gill function.

Imagine a creature which could excrete goo which expanded into a foam capable of filling dungeon corridors. Or a giant hagfish which waited until adventurers tried to swim across its pool, only to quickly turn the water around it into a thick gooey substance which is impossible to swim through.

Elephants: A long time ago, Elephants captured the imaginations of the western world. They were huge, majestic, and interesting. And because of the way Elephants captured the imaginations of our ancestors, they had become ubiquitous by the time we were born. While we were growing up, we regularly saw elephants depicted in drawings and cartoons. Most of us even saw them up close at a zoo. I personally, find them somewhat boring.

Then I remember that they have a FUCKING THIRTEEN FOOT LONG, PREHENSILE NOSE. WHAT THE FUCK!?

It’s funny, actually, because I have a difficult time imagining a fantasy creature where such a thing doesn’t look goofy. Yet on an elephant it has a certain majesty, appearing almost regal.

Vampire Squid:Vampire is an acquired template which any intelligent creature can gain if their life force is completely drained by another vampire. But if a mer-person gains the vampiric template, surely they don’t turn into a vampire bat, right? So what do they turn into?

This:

Based on what I’ve read, the Vampire Squid is quite unique. Its order is somewhere between that of a squid and an octopus. It is almost entirely covered in a special organ called a Photophore, which can produce light. The creature can either use a quick flash to disorient attackers, or can sustain its light for several minutes at a time. The vampire squid’s “cape” is covered in spines which, while technically harmless, look quite dangerous. When threatened, it will turn its cape inside out, making itself appear larger, and covered in dangerous-looking spines.

This post could keep going on forever. There are hundreds and thousands of creatures with unusual anatomies or abilities ripe for use crafting monsters. I’m sure the subject will come up again in the future–though someone with a better grounding in biology would probably do a much better job than I can.

Webcomic: Castle Greyhawk

I have a great love for webcomics. As a kid, the first thing I can clearly remember wanting to be when I grew up was an artist and writer for comic books. I even produced a 9 issue run of my very own super hero, “The Black Skull,” as well as first issues for “The Hunter,” and “The Brain.” In retrospect, I kinda had a thing for “The [Simple Noun]” as a naming convention. Though, come to think of it, two days ago I posted about a character named “The Ghost of the Uprising,” so maybe I shouldn’t talk about that tendency in the past tense.

When I was a teenager and a lovely young woman (whom I was very interested in at the time) introduced me to Megatokyo, I was intrigued. Mind you, this is back when Megatokyo was still good, but that’s beside the point. I became somewhat obsessed with webcomics. There was even a time when, I am not kidding, I had over 200 webcomics which I checked every single day. It was almost a religious ritual for me. These days I’ve scaled down to a measly 28. Several of those I still read draw their inspiration from tabletop role playing games.

Several of the big ones are on that list, Order of the Stick, Oglaf (NSFW), and Goblins are all fantastic. (For one reason or another, I never really got interested in Guilded Age). But I also read a couple which simply do not get the recognition they ought to. At least not yet. Which, finally, brings us to the point of this post:

Castle Greyhawk; The Comic Strip.

This homage to Gary Gygax’s iconic megadungeon, and the characters who dared to delved into it, has been a favorite of mine for a few months now. It’s a collaboration between artist Mike Bridges, and writer Scott Casper. Though it is still relatively new as of this writing, with only 15 pages since March, the team have already demonstrated that they can produce impressive work together. I look forward to seeing how they represent Castle Greyhawk itself. A dungeon which I, unfortunately, have never had the opportunity to explore myself.

Bridges’ work is reminiscent of the art in the old core books. The style supports both serious, and goofy moments, which is important for a comic like this. Greyhawk is a setting with the potential to be grim and unforgiving, but the game itself is not always a serious one, and the art reflects that. It is nicely detailed as well, particularly in the backgrounds. You can tell that Bridges enjoys creating the comic’s rooms and forests. And the giant centipedes which recently made an appearance looked legitimately scary for a 1st level monster! I’ve also been somewhat surprised by how much I like the gray scale coloring. Normally I much prefer colored comics, but this style supports the story’s retro tone. The black and white feels as though it’s continuing the legacy of Darlene Pekul’s marvelous DMG illustrations.

Casper’s writing has a nice pacing as well. So far the story has moved at a leisurely stride, with the party forming and making their way towards the dungeon, taking some time to work on characterization along the way. But it never feels like the story is moving too slowly. The characters always have a goal and they’re always moving towards it. None of the three primary characters are really well developed yet, but we have enough information to get us interested in learning more. Tenser is a young inexperienced guy who’s down on his luck, and thinks adventuring might help him turn his life around. Cool, I want to hear more. Yrag is an old soldier with a lot of experience, and an altruistic spirit. He’s a little gruff, but willing to show a couple of honest kids how to survive their first adventure. I look forward to learning more about his past! My only real complaint in this area would be Ehlissa. So far the only motivation for her we’ve been shown is that she’s crushing on Tenser, which is kind of weak. I hope we get to see some deeper motivations from her as the comic moves forward.

Really you should just check the comic out for yourself. As I mentioned above: it’s only 15 pages as of this writing, which shouldn’t take you much time at all to read. I think you’ll enjoy it!

(Though, for some reason, they post their comics on blogger. What’s up with that nonsense?)

Colorful Characters 19: Henrietta Thaeblum, the Ghost of the Uprising

No matter who you are, life in the Land of Admon is harsh. The God-King tortures the royal family, encouraging them to betray and murder one another to prove their worth to him. The royal family uses the nobility as pawns in these games, manipulating them, and commandeering their property or lands whenever it is convenient. The nobility oppresses their serfs, forcing them to work themselves to death and selling their children to other nobles if they need to raise some money. But as bad as everyone has it, no one suffers more than the women of Admon. They are insignificant baubles, regardless of their station. The God-King’s own daughters would be no better off than peasant women if they weren’t useful to their father. And when the God-King dies and one of his sons ascends to the throne, the best the new God-King’s sisters can hope for is that they’ll be sent to live out the rest of their lives amongst the peasants.

Forty years ago, the women of Admon had enough of their slavery. There was an uprising. Wives slit their husband’s throats while they slept, harems smothered their noble lords, and slave owners were strangled by the very chains they had used to assert their control. It is still unknown how the attacks were conceived of or coordinated, but the death toll was massive. Tens of thousands of men were killed, and the unbroken line of God-Kings seemed poised to give way to the reign of a God-Queen. But the God-King was ruthless, and summoned his armies to him. The vile orders which he gave to them that day have echoed throughout history.

“There seems now to be a great excess of women in my kingdom. Bring me the head of every woman of childbearing age. Fill the courtyard with their skulls, and let the imbalance be corrected.”

The slaughter which followed is unspeakable. There were enough remains that every building was required by law to display a decapitated head above its door for a decade after the uprising ended. With all the women gone, it was years before any new children were born. And after the brutality of the God-King’s counterattack, no one dared whisper a single word of dissent.

Save one.

No one knows her name, who she is, or where she came from. No one who has ever gotten a clear look at her has survived the encounter. Her crusade began shortly after the uprising was put down. The heads of women displayed throughout the town would be taken in the dead of night. In their place would be the head of a man noted for his brutality. On most mornings, a would-be assailant’s body is found, skull crushed by a brutally heavy object. For lack of a better name, the people took to calling her the Ghost of the Uprising.

Numerous attempts to ensnare or kill the Ghost of the Uprising have been made over the years, but to no avail. For decades she has eluded the authorities, waging a private war against oppression. Giving the men of Admon reason to fear. But in recent years her attacks have slowed. No one can fight forever. She has grown old, tired, and bitter. For all her work, the system she fights remains in place. If she’s ever going to bring the God King to his knees, she needs to find help…

Henrietta Thaeblum, the “Ghost of the Uprising” (CR 14)

XP: 38,400
Female Human 15 (Fighter 10 / Rogue 5)
CN humanoid
Init +10; Senses Perception +18 (+2 v. traps)

Defenses

AC 26, Flat Footed 19, Touch 120 [10 + Dex(6) + Dodge(1) + Armor(6) + Ring(3)](+1 v. traps)(Cannot be flat footed)(+4 v. attacks of opportunity)
hp 107 (10d10 + 5d8 + 25)
Fort +9 Ref +13 (+1 v. traps)(If 1/2 damage, No damage) Will + 4 (+3 v. fear)

Offense

Speed 30ft
Melee Flail/Flail + 20,15,10/20,15,10 (1d8 + 11 + 1d6 Fire, 20/x2 + 1d10 Fire)
Melee Greataxe +20/15/10 (1d12 + 9, 19-20/x3)
Sneak Attack +3d6

Stats

Str 18 (+4) Dex 22 (+6) Con 12 (+1) Int 16 (+3) Wis 11 (+0) Cha 08 (-1)
Base Atk +13/8/3; CMB +17; CMD 33
Feats Improved Initiative, Weapon Focus (Flail), Weapon Specialization (Flail), Greater Weapon Focus (Flail), Quick Draw, Two-Weapon Fighting, Double Slice, Weapon Focus (Greataxe), Weapon Specialization (Greataxe), Dodge, Improved Two Weapon Fighting, Greater Two Weapon Fighting, Combat Reflexes, Mobility
Skills Acrobatics (+24), Craft (Arms & Armor)(+13), Disable Device (+19), Knowledge(Local)(+21), Perception (+18)(+2 v. traps), Sleight of Hand (+14), Stealth (+24)
Languages Common, Admonan, Thieve’s Cant, Tongue of the God King,
SQ
–Stand Up: May stand up from a prone position as a free action.
–Fast Stealth: May move at full speed while moving stealthily without penalty.
–Armor Training 2: Armor check penalty decreased by 2. Maximum dex increased by 2. May move at normal speed in heavy armor.
–Weapon Training 2: +2 attack and damage with Flails, +1 attack and damage with Axes.
–Combat Reflexes: May make 6 attacks of opportunity per round.

Gear Masterwork Hide Armor, Ring of Protection +3, Two +3 Flaming Burst Flails, +2 Keen Greataxe

The Beauty of Character Death, and a Shameful Confession

In the many years I’ve been a devotee of role playing games, I’ve very rarely had a chance to be a player. For the most part that’s fine by me. What initially drew me to the game was the mystique of the GM. He or she is master of the entire world, knows what’s behind every door, understands the desires of every NPC. I like playing that role, which is why I’ve spent almost a year of my life writing about it. None the less there’s something to be said for being a player. GMs never get to experience the game’s most exciting moments in the same way the players do, largely because the GM never faces any real struggle within the game. The player characters might live or die, but the world that the GM embodies is eternal.

I’ve played in perhaps a half dozen campaigns, the majority of which have used D&D 3.5. The most notable among these is the Zalekios game, which has lasted for the better part of a decade, and which I’ve written about several times. Until recently, only one person had ever GMed for me. We’re old friends, and after all these years we’ve got a rhythm going which is always a lot of fun when we get a chance to play together. Much as I enjoy my friend’s games, though, I’m excited to finally have an opportunity to broaden my horizons in my fellow blogger Brendan‘s Vaults of Pahvelorn game. He’s a fantastic game master, and I’ve already learned a lot after seeing his GM style from a player’s perspective.

The other night was our second game session. We had a new member in our group, and returned to the vault to continue our dungeon delving. It was a damned lot of fun, but I won’t bore you with the details. If you’re interested our fighter has already taken care of the session recap, but I’ll skip straight to the important part. The party encountered a number of undead, and eventually came upon a necromancer controlling them. There was a lot of scary stuff on the battlefield, so I didn’t think it was right for me to stay completely out of danger. My party needed me. My character, Margo, hefted a sledgehammer he’d brought along with him. I thought it would be particularly effective against the skeletons. He took a swing, and missed. In retaliation, the skeleton punched Margo in the face.

And that’s how Margo Waggletongue, first level Magic User, met his untimely end. The skeleton’s mighty punch was just too much for Margo’s measly 3HP. And after I failed my saving throw against death, it was all over. The party mourned, and I was already rolling stats to promote Margo’s squire, Higgins. The game went on. And here’s the part I hinted at in the title of this post; my shameful confession:

This is the first time any character of mine has ever died.

How did I feel? I was disappointed and sad! Margo Waggletongue was an awesome character, and I had a lot of plans for him. Like my serious in-game goals of building a tower someday, filling it with books, and being the most educated wizard in all of Pahvelorn. If this setting ended up with any kind of longevity, I wanted future players to encounter Margo the Archmage, and learn spells like “Margo’s Black Disk,” “Margo’s Floating Tentacle,” or “Margo’s Flinging Roof Tiles!” I had a lot of fun character traits I wanted to work into the character as well, such as the fact that his robe was literally just a blanket, or that he was a virgin. But none of that will ever happen, because he was punched in the face by a skeleton, and died. God damn, it was awesome.

Honestly, it was. I’m sad that all of my plans were foiled before they could ever get off the ground, but more than that, I’m exhilarated to know from personal experience just how dangerous this game world is. True, no young magic user will ever shout “Margo’s Floating Tentacle!” in the heat of battle, but if my next character does achieve success on that scale, then that success will be all the more meaningful because I will know I was always just a skeleton punch away from complete failure. And as it turns out, my new character, Higgins Dreadgrin, has an even higher intelligence score than his former master did, so I may not need to scrapall of my plans just yet.

I’ve written before about the importance, and the fun, of character death. But when I did so, I wrote it as a GM. I was drawing on what I’ve read, and what I’ve observed, and what non-tabletop experiences I could draw conclusions from. And now I reaffirm that statement with player experience to back it up: character death is fun. The game would be diminished without it.

By the way: welcome to all my new readers from the Penny Arcade Report. There has been quite an influx of you, and I hope you like what you’ve seen and choose to stick around for awhile.