HAG Black Forest Campaign

And like that….we have a group!
Pen and Paper, Table-top Dungeons and Dragons….compleat with tweaks and house-rules (not too many)! Fathers and Sons (and Daughters if I can suck her in…)! Here we go.

Here’s the breakdown:
1) The Player Characters (PCs) are HEROES. They don’t focus on piddly schtuff. More on this later.

2) The Setting – The Atlantean World: in the 80’s S. M. Sechi and the rest of the Bard Games crew put out the Atlantean Trilogy: The Arcanum, The Lexicon, and the Bestiary…later revised into The Arcanum and Atlantis – The Lost World (Lexicon/Bestiary combined). This is probably the most evocative, flexible, awesome setting ever for fantasy role-playing. It is essentially our Earth thousands of years ago, before the oceans drank Atlantis….More on this later (it deserves it’s own post). Anyway, this is the setting!

3) D&D 5E – The most current incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons is probably the best ever (and I’ve never said that about a current “new and improved” rule set before). They’ve taken all of the best of the old and mixed it with the best of the new. I like it a lot!

4) Players Roll All the Dice – this innovation puts all the rolls in the hands of the players and can greatly increase player engagement. They roll an attack vs. a static defense score, but they roll a defense vs. a static offense score….and so forth. More on this later too!

5) 0-Level is in effect – The 1st Class Level is on top of this ( 4-12 extra hitpoints for each PC)

6) Instead of rolling a single d20 or a hi/lo (advantage/disadvantage) 2d20 for everything, we’ll be rolling a mid20 (3 d20s, take the middle result or the advantage/disadvantage result). This increases the predictability of random die rolls.

7) Looking at removing secondary “damage” rolls and putting the damage determination into the primary “to hit” roll. More on this later.

8) Hitpoints are always maximum for PCs

9) Magic Missile may be a bit different…..more later.

~AoB

CnC Middle Earth

Awesome thread on the Troll Lord Games Forum discussing adapting Castles & Crusades to the Middle Earth setting. It started a few years ago, but it keeps coming back….Troll Lord Games :: View topic – C&C Middle Earth. One could use a lot of the material for adapting any game to Middle Earth….

~AoB

 

New Players

When adding new players to a new gaming group, it can be good, bad, or both. I’ll tell you….we’ve had some rather interesting characters (meaning interesting players actually) over the years. This blogpost by Samuel Van Der Wall seems to touch on a  lot of that.

The Dynamics of Adding a New Player to Your Gaming Group | Roleplaying Pro | Roleplaying Games, Miniatures, DnD, Gaming.

~AoB

I live….again

I  live…..again.  OK folks. I’ve officially arrived at a decision. I’m returning to the “active GM” chair. No more just tinkering with mechanics. I’ll aim my tinkering to a specific game/group. And it won’t be for a planned out, extensive campaign. It will be for a one-shot…just to play. That one-shot may grow into something bigger, but for now I’m aiming for a one-shot game. Details to follow…..but as a teaser, I’m thinking some Atlantean Fantasy goodness is in order.

[As an aside, I really need to trim the number of categories I have…..jeesh.]

~AoB

ZeFRS

Remember the original Conan RPG from the 80’s? So do these guys and it is magnificent! They’ve scrubbed this S&S classic of all the Conan intellectual property and represented Zeb Cook’s most excellent game as “Zeb’s Fantasy Roleplaying System” or “ZeFRS”. You’re welcome!

~AoB