The shortest route is not a straight line (Exalted session report)
Posted on | September 29, 2008 | No Comments
My name is David, and I’m an addict. Exalted just does something special for me. It has a rich and detailed background that is so much spicier then the traditional fantasy setting, coupled with characters capable of doing some serious ass prodding (which is when you try to get a donkey to go back down the stairs and out of the tower).
My regular group has picked up the game for a month before our premier Exalted GM goes off to get married and honeymoon, and after the last session I found myself idling on the train looking for something to do and started typing.
The sun rose over The Lap, a city still showing the scars of the battle that never happened. Some of those instrumental in saving it are still within the city, recovering, training, and helping with the rebuilding efforts.
On the road to the city, Lotus of the Solar Light, loyal worshiper of The Unconquered Sun and member of the rare race know as The Dragon Kings had travelled south from the Blessed Isle, a sense of unease growing within him at the sight of a massive convoy of mechanical vessels taking the opposite route.
You can read the rest on the group’s website under Exalted Series 13.
As for our GM - Ant, I wish you and Ada every happiness.
Spycraft 2.0 is approaching
Posted on | September 16, 2008 | 1 Comment
Forbidden Planet recently turned 30 and gave away some nice big 30% discounts, I couldn’t resist and picked up a copy of Spycraft 2.0.
This is a scary book, it has 500 pages and I can’t find any fluff in it. Most of it is rules, but there is a little bit of advice for GMs thrown in. It does cover everything, and, unlike most games, doesn’t dramatically downplay everything except combat.
The rules for a chase sequence, for instance, involve a series of opposed rolls and an abstract distance between the participents. Each turn the two sides pick a strategy, which modifies their skill roll and provides a number of possible outcomes (such as changing the distance between the two parties, forcing the opponent to drive through dangerous terrain (or loose ground) or giving a bonus to attacks - yes, gunfire can be exchanged during a chase). The winner picks the outcome they want from the strategy they chose (and if they won by a lot, they get to pick multiple outcomes).
Complicated? It looks that way, but I like the look of it, and am looking forward to giving it a try.
As it happens, a couple of friends have moved back to the area recently (from exciting locales such as ‘the wrong side of London’ and ‘Uganda’) which gives me a suitable pool of victims to try it out on. We’ve been tossing around ideas and it looks like we’ll have:
- The tech guy (”Flinkman? No, not Flickman. Like the tech guy from Alias.” “That’s Flinkman.”)
- The martial artist driver
- The stealthy killer
- and one other
It is early days and we just have broad strokes from a couple of emails so far, but it looks like the concept is shaping up nicely.
As a D20 based (in the loosest possible sense) game, Spycraft is almost certainly going to benefit from a battlemat so I think I’m going to have to invest in some more miniatures from the Street Violence range (I’ll take any excuse to buy them, the sets have some really nice figures in them, I just need to find time to attack the ones I have already with paint brushes).
TwitterRPG
Posted on | September 4, 2008 | 1 Comment
Tiny Adventures has been keeping some people rather busy on Facebook lately, but there is tiny, and there is tiny, and I think I might be partially to blame for the latter.
As far as I can tell (any errors are my own, feel free to send me corrections), the time line went something like this:
It all started last night during a game of 4e when the resident Dwarf Fighter swung his warhammer at a goblin and hit the wall instead. (Or, in mechanical terms, when Jim rolled a 1). It wasn’t surprising that he was a little unhappy about this, and exclaimed:
Stupid short things
… which I found amusing enough to repeat in public.
Despite the lack of context, someone enjoyed it enough to respond, and then had an idea.
@chattydm Did you see what @dorward said? Could you not oh great DM come up with a twitteresque world for us to game in?
… and after a little more discussion — he does. I’ll be watching with interest.
(On an entirely seperate note, this is my inaugural post to RPG Bloggers, so thanks for welcoming me to the community!)
Pathfinder Game One
Posted on | August 23, 2008 | No Comments
When WotC moved to fourth edition D&D, Paizo picked up the discarded remnants of 3.5 and started work on Pathfinder.
Wanting to give it a go, and feeling the urge to GM something on Tuesday Knights, I threw together a five room dungeon and roped a couple of players into giving it a try.
This was my first attempt at running a home-brew adventure for D&D, so a few hiccups were to be expected — which was one reason I wanted to try it out on willing victims before using it to kick off a proper campaign. Lessons were learned:
- Knowing what you want to happen in each area isn’t a good substitute for actually writing down the details and arranging convenient stat blocks that don’t require flipping from tab to tab on a laptop
- The power level in Pathfinder has been upped
- Many weak creatures are rubbish compared to few large creatures, especially when in a confined space without room to maneuver
- If you fail to map a dungeon out properly in advance, you will end up with the final chamber being too close to another room and ending up in a disturbingly phallic shape in order to be large enough for your plans
Despite these setbacks, the game proved to be rather fun. I just need to go away with the above lessons and tweak it somewhat.
Dragon Warriors is being resurrected
Posted on | August 14, 2008 | No Comments
A long time ago, I had a couple of volumes in the Dragon Warriors series. I was very impressed with the scenarios in the books, although I never got a chance to play them (thanks to a number of factors, not least of which was lacking volume one).
I was reminded of the system today by a post from Greywulf, which in turn reminded me that we have a new edition on the way. I’ve got a number of reasons for wanting to be first in line to grab a copy of this when it comes out. I know (and like) some of the people involved in the project. The last book I bought from Magnum Opus Press (The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen) was a bloody good read (and I’m eagerly awaiting my hardback edition from Mongoose). Finally, they have the original author on board with the project.
Sadly, it looks like some of the old adventures are going to fall by the wayside. Greywulf knows where to look to find them, but scans of out of print books do have some prickly legal issues. If you buy the new edition, I don’t think your conscience will hurt too much though.
I suspect I’ll be offering to run it for my Tuesday group almost as soon as the new edition is out. I hope I won’t be alone.
Tags: Baron Munchausen > dragon warriors > Magnum Opus Press > mongoose > RPG