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.

Product Review: Using Banners on the Cheap for Maps

The first dungeon I ever made. There’s a good 30 or 40 pages of this from when I was roughly in second grade. It’s…actually really sexual.

Full Disclosure: I received this product for free, in exchange for the review. I have done my best to honestly represent its quality here.

Like all good game masters, fantasy cartography is dear to my heart. I’ve been making maps of worlds and dungeons since I was a small child. Not good maps, mind you. I lack any semblance of artistic ability, but I always enjoy seeing an environment grow and come to life. Role playing games have given that little hobby of mine new dimension, as I actually get to see others explore my worlds, interact with them, and provide them with a depth and context that I could never create on my own. Often, as my worlds take on more epic proportions, I wish I had some way to immortalize them. I once spent a month re-drawing an entire world by hand, then laminating it, just for that purpose.

So a little over a month ago, when I was approached by a company called Banners on the Cheap to evaluate their products for mapmaking purposes, I jumped at the chance. There’s a lot to like about the idea. Not only do you get to see your world laid out on a huge surface, but vinyl has a nice weightiness to it as a material. It’s certainly not as cool as having your map painted on leather or something more reminiscent of a fantasy setting, but being more durable than paper is a huge plus in my eyes.

Based on my conversations with BotC prior to agreeing to the deal, we did hit upon one snag. There was some concern that the printing process they use might not be rated for cartography. Maps have details which are much finer than those found on a typical banner image. Truth be told, one I learned that, I didn’t expect to be happy with the product. I even spent a few idle moments drafting a disappointed review in my head. None the less I spent some time in Hexographer expanding my current game world. I then uploaded the map to their website and waited for it to arrive. A couple days ago, this is what I received:

Wow. Just…wow. I’m still feeling a little bit of shock over how cool this looks. That’s my game world, and it’s huge! 3’x3′ didn’t sound quite so large in my head. I could hang it on a wall if I wanted, or lay it out on a table for my players to move around on during gameplay.

Here’s another photograph, with the Pathfinder Core Rulebook used as a reference, just to give you an idea of how massive this thing is:

I chose to use a map made with Hexographer for a few reasons. Firstly, it would be the most personally useful to me–so I had some selfish motivation there. As I mentioned above, this is my current game world. Having a nice big version of the map will be an interesting tool to use as I plan adventures. Rather than examining landscapes on a computer monitor, I can do it on a table. Which is how I like to plan my games anyway.

My biggest reason for choosing a Hexographer map, however, is that it was easy to scale. I could have uploaded my Negune world map (which is far more sentimental than the map I ended up using) but I doubt it would have printed well. My pencil scratches look alright on an 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper, but I doubt they’d look quite so good when blown up to this size. On top of that, Hexographer takes my (lack of) artistic talents out of the equation. Many GMs are familiar with Hexographer, and what maps produced with it look like. My hope is that having a ‘baseline’ for the art, which everyone is familiar with, will help my clumsy photographs convey the quality of the printing.

Regarding that quality, there is some fuzziness which may not be apparent in the larger shots above. Personally it doesn’t bother me. The lines are crisp, the icons and text are easily legible, and unless I look closely I don’t really even notice it. However, the more artistically inclined might find the grainy texture disappointing. I’ve done my best to capture it in these two pictures. Please forgive my amateurish lighting in the second photo:

Now, for myself, I tend to stick to large scale maps like this one. Maps which cover miles upon miles of terrain. However, I know that others like mats which represent a single battlefield. So in their interest, I tested the mat with wet-erase markers. It worked just as well as my blank battle mats do, so that’s a huge bonus:

Drawing a cute lil’ ship in the water. Sail, little ship! Sail!

This ship is immune to even the most diligent of finger rubbing!

Oh no! Water! The ship’s one weakness! Which, in retrospect, is a terrible weakness for a ship to have!

For those same people, I also placed a mini on the map to give them an idea of what the scale is like. For the record, this map’s hexagons are set to 200px by 200px in Hexographer.

“By Vecna’s Balls! With the ship gone, I will surely drown in all of this armor!”

Regarding the service itself, I really only have nice things to say. Uploading my map was extremely simple. I just selected the size of the banner I wanted, and uploaded an image. I was then shown how the image would be positioned on the banner, and fiddled with my image until it looked the way I wanted on the preview. I received the product over a week earlier than they estimated. And the price is easily affordable. With the mounting grommets (which are an extra I tacked on) the map above cost less than $25. More than you’d probably want to spend on every gaming session, but not so much as to be unreasonable if you were planning something special, or hoping to immortalize your game world. And there are smaller sizes than 3′ by 3′ too. A 2′ by 2′ banner is priced at about $10!

Normally, when I review something, I tend to be pretty harsh. I’ve sometimes even worried that I’m too harsh, since I doubt Robin D. Laws would like me very much if he and I ever met. But I don’t see much to dislike here. This is a cool service which fills a niche within the role playing community. The company itself is actively reaching out to us as potential clients by asking tabletop bloggers to review their products. And it’s pretty damned cheap. I do most of my printing at Office Depot, and I’ve occasionally had simple paper printings which cost more than $10 just because the paper was larger than 8.5″ x 11″.

So, yeah, in conclusion, I hereby give my recommendation to Banners on the Cheap as a resource for printing maps. And if anyone ends up using it for a more artistic map, let me know! I could add the picture to this post to give people a better idea of what to expect.

Dungeon Crawling at a Crawl

During my recent Google+ game of OD&D with Brendan, one of my biggest surprises was how little the system surprised me. Prior to that game, the oldest form of Dungeons and Dragons I’d ever played was 3rd edition. So when I logged in to Google+, I thought I was about to encounter something unlike anything I’d ever played before. Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last year reading OSR blogs, but the truth is, the game worked pretty much how I suspected it would. The mechanics were simpler than Pathfinder’s, but in exchange the game got off of the ground quickly and still had a lot of depth and action.

None the less, I have some things to consider. I’ve already mentioned how I was taken aback by the elegance of the initiative system we were using (which, as it turns out, is actually from Chainmail, not the OD&D booklets themselves). Today I’d like to briefly discuss something else which surprised me: how entertaining it can be to move at a snail’s pace.

If someone had told me a month ago that they’d played a 3-hour game where the party only investigated 5-ish rooms of a dungeon, I would have assumed the game was very boring. Unless those 5 rooms had an immense amount of things to do in them, I couldn’t have imagined enjoying an average of 36 minutes in each room. I was familiar with Game Masters who expected their players to treat every little thing as potentially lethal, and in fact I have a lot of respect for some of those game masters, I just didn’t think it was something I could enjoy myself.

Yet that’s exactly what we did, and I loved every minute of it. I not only prodded things that looked dangerous with my 10ft pole, I also detailed how I prodded them. When I opened the door, I didn’t say “I open the door with my 10ft pole.” I said “The door opens into this room, right? Alright, I stand 10ft away from the door, against the wall on the side with the hinges. Then I use the hook on my 10ft pole to latch onto the door handle and pull the door open.” I played that way because I was easy to hit, had 1hp, and didn’t want to die. And when I didn’t die, it felt like a god damned accomplishment.

I’ve been puzzling over why something which sounds so boring was so much fun, and I think the serious lethality of the game was a major factor. Most of the party had more survivability than I did*, but for my own part, any damage whatsoever would cause my death.** Finding ways to participate while still keeping myself relatively safe was a real challenge, and one I enjoyed. And as I said above, when the adventure was over and I had actually survived it, I felt special.

Another reason I think this style of play worked is that there were very few die rolls to speak of. The last time I ran a dungeon for my Pathfinder group, the rogue commented that he found checking for traps to be tedious. Rolling a D20, adding his modifier, comparing it to a number, over and over again. I talked about this and the problems with it way back in my skills overview. However, the other day was the first time I really saw the alternative in action, and it was beautiful. We only encountered a single trap—a pressure plate which activated a hidden crossbow—but we didn’t find it by rolling any dice. We found it because we said we walked around the room carefully, testing the ground with our 10ft poles as we went. Had I not done that, and found the body on the floor, I fully suspect Brendan would have shot me dead right there.

I also wonder if the simple process of character creation has anything to do with it. The characters were created almost entirely by rolling on tables, and my character sheet was literally written on an index card. Perhaps we were able to enjoy the lethality which necessitated our slow movement because we knew that even if we failed, and died, we could have our next character ready to go within minuets. In a game of Pathfinder, players have already invested so much in even level 1 characters, that a dungeon lethal enough to kill them in a single blow seems like an insane place to enter until much higher level.

It’s funny how something can sound extremely unpleasant until you actually give it a try. I don’t think this is something I could implement in a Pathfinder game. Player characters are too durable for a spike trap to terrify a Pathfinder Wizard anywhere near as much as it would terrify my OD&D Magic User. Still, I wonder if my players would enjoy this as much as I have. I may need to run an OD&D session or two sometime in the future!

*By ‘more survivability,’ I don’t mean much. Everybody started out by rolling 1d6 for their HP, with no bonuses to it based on constitution. On top of that, all weapons dealt 1d6 damage. So yes, any damage at all would kill me for sure. But any damage they took still had a potential to kill them as well. It’s not as though the fighter could be confident that he would be able to survive a few hits.

**I should note that my constitution is high enough that I am allowed to roll a saving throw to be unconscious, rather than dead. But that’s not exactly a safety net I want to rely on.

Colorful Characters 18: Laura Kraul

Laril Kraul spent his early years in a small village on the Venusian coast. For generations his family–along with most other families in the village–had been fishermen. Laril was taught to use a net and spear from a young age, and proved adept in their use. During his teen years, he even created and popularized a form of gladiatorial jousting within his village which used the tools (the spears were blunted, of course). As he grew older, however, he became increasingly aware of the fact that he was different from the others in the village. The responsibilities he was expected to shoulder were awkward for him, and he often fantasized about what it would be like to be other people within his village. To experience their lives, and everything that went with that.

When Laril reached manhood, he took his leave of the village. He had always been strong, and the call of adventure gave him ample opportunity to explore his feelings of discontentment. Mastery of his unusual weapons proved beneficial to adventuring life. After a handful of minor successes on his own, Laril was approached by a small band of dungeon delvers who were impressed with his deeds. They asked if he would like to join them as they hunted for treasures hidden in crypts beneath the earth, and Laril was happy to accept. Adventuring life was dangerous, and he’d been hoping to find some companions to mitigate some of that danger.

The group traveled together for several months, and their excursions were largely profitable. Laril took pleasure in the excitement of the hunt. The fact that he’d recovered more gold to than anyone in his village had ever seen before didn’t hurt either. Yet his discontentment remained. Even in the life he’d made for himself, he felt out of place.

About a year after joining the group, Laril and his companions were exploring a particularly dank cavern. They’d slain the troll who lived there, and were beginning to worry that the treasure the beast had supposedly hoarded was fake. It took them nearly an hour to find the chest, modestly sized, hidden under a pile of rocks. Its contents were hardly worth their trouble. A measly few bags of silver coins, a pair of jewels, and a jade-studded leather belt with a silver buckle. Everyone agreed the belt must be the greatest prize, and they rolled bones to see who would get it.

Laril won, and immediately began putting the belt on while his companions set about dividing the rest of the loot between themselves. He was surprised by how comfortable it felt. In fact it affected his comfort much more than he would have imagined a belt could. He began to comment to his companions that the belt seemed to be magical, only to have his thoughts interrupted by the sudden and hysterical laughter of his friends. He asked what was funny, and noticed that his voice sounded strange in his ears. Worried, he went to his pack and began to fumble around for the steel mirror he kept there. As he rummaged through his bag, he noticed something else:

He had breasts.

“It’s a belt of gender changing!” the group’s wizard called to him, having finally regained his breath. “A cursed item. You won’t be able to take it off without a spell ofRemove Curse.” Laril was silent for a long moment as he pondered this development. Despite a change which should have upset him, he still felt strangely…comfortable. More comfortable than she’d ever felt in her life. The nagging discontentment which had pestered her in otherwise quiet moments was nowhere to be found. She felt whole.

Laril remained silent for the moment, unsure of how to broach this issue with her fellows. But when the morning came and the wizard had prepared his spell, she knew she couldn’t go back. She refused to allow the Remove Curse spell to be cast upon her, stating that she was happier this way. The party was confused, and concluded that the belt must have additional magical properties they were unaware of–some manner of mind control. They took hold of her and held her in place while the wizard performed his spell. Laril protested, but the others were certain they were doing her a favor, and held fast.

The spell was completed, and the belt destroyed. Laril again found herself in a male body, once again disconcerted, once again less than whole. She was so overwhelmed by rage and loss that all she could do was sit and weep over the ruined remains of the belt that had changed her life. Her companions were concerned for her, and opted to remain another night without traveling, to allow her some time to work out whatever was wrong. The following morning, she informed them that she had come to two decisions.

The first was that she would no longer remain with them. Now that she’d found what she’d been looking for, she intended to waste no time in figuring out how to get it back.

“And the second thing?” they asked.

“My name is Laura.” she answered. Then left.

Laura Kraul (CR 5)

XP: 1,600
Female Human Fighter 6
LG humanoid
Init +8; Senses Perception -1

Defenses

AC 20, Flat Footed 14, Touch 16 [10 + Dex(4) + Armor(5) + Dodge(1)]
hp 53 (6d10 + 24)
Fort +7 Ref +6 Will + 1

Offense

Speed 30ft
Melee Shocking Burst Longspear + 9 (1d8 + 3 + 1d6 Electricity/x3 + 2d10 Electricity)
Melee Net +10 (Causes the Entangled condition)(Ranged Touch Attack)(10ft)

Stats

Str 16 (+3) Dex 19 (+4) Con 14 (+2) Int 11 (+1) Wis 9 (-1) Cha 13 (+1)
Base Atk +6/1; CMB +9; CMD 23
Feats Improved Initiative, Weapon Focus (Spear), Weapon Specialization (Spear), Dodge, Weapon Focus(Net), Quick Draw, Lunge, Toughness
Skills Craft (Boatswain)(+11), Knowledge (Engineering)(+11), Ride (+10), Survival (+5)
Languages Common, Dwarven
SQ
–Lunge: Can increase the reach of your melee attacks by 5ft in exchange for a -2 AC penalty.
Gear Slick Lightly Fortified Hide Armor; Mithril Shocking Burst Longspear; 3 Silk Nets; Backpack; 842 GP, Dagger, Bedroll, 10′ pole, steel mirror, 3 weeks rations, 1 lantern, 3 flasks of lantern oil, small jar of salt, fishing line, 3 hooks.

I Concede: OD&D Initiative is Superior

The other night, I participated in my very first OD&D game, played via Google+ with Brendan as the GM. I could be wrong, but I think Brendan may be only the second person to GM for me. He’s good, and the game went exceptionally well. One of the other players has already written a pretty thorough recap of the game, so I won’t go into too much detail. Suffice to say that I have thus far made a good account of myself, considering that I’m easy to hit, have only 1 HP, and can prepare only a single spell per day. Instead, I’d like to focus on system analysis, specifically with regards to initiative.

In Pathfinder, initiative is mechanically simple. At the start of combat, following any surprise round, each participant in the combat rolls a twenty sided die. They then add their dexterity modifier to the number they rolled, and each of the battle’s participants are ranked. They then begin taking turns in descending order of initiative. There are ways to gain an additional boost, or a penalty, to your initiative, but that’s the system in a nutshell. The mechanic is quite simple.

In OD&D, initiative is handled en masse. The battle’s participants are divided into groups (usually consisting of “the players” and “the stuff which wants to hurt the players.”) Each ‘side’ of the encounter then rolls a single six sided die. Whoever wins the roll is allowed to take their actions first, along with everyone else on their side. Once the winner’s turn is over, the other side takes their turn. Following that, initiative is rolled again to determine which side will go first in the next round.

Amusingly, I recently encountered this rule during my ongoing perusal of the AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. It was featured in Part 6 of that series, and at the time I was not impressed. To be specific, I wrote:

There seems to be an excessive amount of computation involved in determining the order of combat.

A comment which I now find rather ironic.

The problem is that while Pathfinder’s initiative mechanic is simple, it is not elegant. When my entire game group is all able to get together, I’ve got six players. Even the simplest encounter must include at least one foe for them to face, so that’s a total of seven initiatives to track at a minimum. When I ask for an initiative roll, I need to quickly write down the names and numbers of each person. This is often an awkward task, since I can’t write even simple initials as fast as my players are able to recite their initiative scores to me, and at some point I need to roll and record the initiative for the bad guys as well. Going through this arduous process isn’t just annoying for me, it’s damaging to the player’s experience as well. Deciding to fight an enemy is an exciting moment in gameplay, but when the group spends 30-60 seconds rolling and recording initiative, some of that excitement is drained.

That’s not even the end of it, because once initiative in Pathfinder has been recorded, it must betracked.Since it’s impossible to have the initiative order written down linearly (unless you want to re-write it after initially recording it, thus wasting more time) you need to bounce around on your list and do your best not to skip anybody. The best method I’ve come up with is to quickly draw a “bouncing line” between names on the list. But even this is a pretty hit-and-miss technique.

Comedic overstatement aside, these complaints are not what I would call game-breaking. Until recently, I would have even called them necessary evils. Evils which, frustrating as they may be, are minor in comparison with the benefits the system provides. Using Pathfinder’s initiative, players and player foes get mixed together in the combat order, creating an interesting and chaotic effect for battle. Additionally, it allows for individual characters to be particularly good, or particularly bad, at leaping into a fight. Rogues can move in quickly to attack before their foes are prepared, while a character who used dexterity as a dump stat is forced to deal with the consequences of that choice. Plus, it adds structure to the tactical combat, and I like tactical combat. There’s a lot of good to be said about how the system works.

By comparison, OD&D’s initiative mechanic sounds not only chaotic, but intrusive. At least with Pathfinder, order is determined at the start of combat, after which it only need to be referenced. Plus, when rolling as a group, how does one determine who in the group goes first? It all sounds pretty sketchy in theory.

In practice, however, OD&D’s initiative is simple, and surprisingly intuitive. Who goes first when the player group has initiative? Well…whoever feels like going first, that’s who. I can see how that question might pose a problem if you were running a game for children, but we’re all adults. We’ve stood in lines, waited at traffic lights, and given our bus seats to old ladies. We know how to be gracious, particularly when it doesn’t really matter who goes first. In function, the person who went first was whoever had an idea they were excited to try out. It even turned out to be a large benefit, since one of our players had never played the game before. He was able to wait until last during each round until he gained some confidence in how the game was played.

And since rolling for initiative is so simple, (a single opposed D6 roll, no modifiers), re-rolling it each round didn’t intrude on gameplay at all. If anything, it enhanced the excitement of combat. Remember above how I mentioned that Pathfinder’s initiative allows friends and foes to be mixed in the combat order, which makes things a little chaotic and exciting? That effect is enhanced when either you or your enemies might be able to take two turns in a row!

The system isn’t flawless. For example, I’m pretty sure there was a round or two where a PCs took an extra action than they should have, or no action at all. And as an avid player of rogues, I would be pretty disappointed to permanently shift to a system where I couldn’t jump the initiative order by a significant margin. But these are minor complaints. The bottom line is that OD&D’s initiative mechanic is better than Pathfinder’s. As such, I propose the following amendment to Pathfinder’s rules:

Initiative: At the start of combat, separate each of the battle’s participants into groups based on affiliation. (Most battles will be between two groups, but some battles may be between three or more). The member of each group who has the highest initiative modifier rolls 1d20 and adds their initiative modifier. The members of the group which rolled highest take their actions first, followed by the other groups in descending order of initiative.

Once everyone has taken a turn, initiative is re-rolled, again by the group member with the highest initiative modifier. The process repeats itself until combat has concluded.

I considered adding a few other mechanics in there, such as players with the Improved Initiative feat being moved into a separate group, or an incremental decrease in initiative bonuses as the combat goes on. But I think stuff like that would just complicate an otherwise simple mechanic, without adding anything of value to it. Though I might later amend the rule so that initiative bonuses only count during the first round.

I think this should serve as a good compromise between the two systems, and look forward to using it. Though I doubt I’ll be springing it on my current group just yet. I think they get a little confused by my constant re-tooling of the game’s mechanics.