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

Gleichman….anyone…..Gleichman

Its been several years since Brian Gleichman departed the net. I thought he’d be back by now.

Brian was at one point quite active in the rpg online community and posted quite prolifically on The Forge, rpg.net, and other online fora. And then, quite suddenly, he announced his intent to withdrawal from net and remove any online presence “to attack”.

To be sure, his style of play and his way of looking at games was not typical and he often was at odds with others. He did have a sharp tongue, but also a sharp wit to back it up. Whether or not his feeling of being “attacked” or not was justified, I don’t know. I wasn’t involved in direct discussions with him.

But I did appreciate his positions, especially given his gaming goals. As he states in the designer notes of Age of Heroes, “requiring some roleplaying in my wargame”.

At one point in my gaming career, I was decidedly in the same camp. I’ve since drifted into what some might term as more “narrativism”-based goals. Whatever. I miss Gleichman’s perspective.

When he left, I said to myself, “he’ll be back…no one as passionate as him can stay away from this stuff.” But alas, he has not returned….and its been years now. I tried to email him a while back, but all the addresses that I have are bouncing. If someone does still have contact with him, please let me know. And Brian, if you are reading this…isn’t it time to come back to the table?

~AoB

Digging Castles & Crusades

I’m really digging Castles & Crusades (C&C). It is an old school (meaning D&D/unmuddled-AD&D) system that cleans up and updates the game going back to the original game rather than dragging it through all the history of D&D/AD&D 1E/Basic D&D/AD&D 2E/ D&D 3E/D&D 3.5/rumors of D&D 4E. It allows for a lot of customization and I like that. This snippet is from “The Trolls Den“, the official Troll Lord Games Blog:

 

…Castles and Crusades was designed to be fooled with. We have long encouraged players to add, subtract and amend rules to fit their needs and desires. What the CKG does, is give them some of the options available to them and should (in an ideal world) teach others how to amend rules to fit their needs.

 

In that regard , we have borrowed ideas from every edition of the game and incorporated them into ‘rules sets’ which can be taken and used. The important aspect of this, is that no optional rule exists in and of itself. An optional rule exists in relation to a choice. The CK and Player must choose which optional rule they are going to use because many are mutually exclusive….

That’s great news. I was drawn to C&C due to its familiarity (based on it being derived from old-school D&D) and the ease with which the core system (The SIEGE Engine) can be modified/tweaked/adjusted/what-have-you. As a long-time dabbler in house-ruling and home brew systems, C&C really resonates with me. My own HAGIS projects should interface well with C&C….much of what we do is designed as “targeted tweaks”. Anyway, I’m greatly looking forward to the “Book that until very recently was known as the Castle Keeper’s Guide”.

I should probably do a review of the C&C Players Handbook….and definitely should do one of the “CKG” since it is so heavy on tweaking. Put that on the To-Do List! Damn, I don’t really even have time to play just now…

~AoB, High Adventure Games

HAGIS Element – The TriDie

In getting back to developing and describing HAGIS, let’s talk about the main mechanic randomizer…the TriDie. Torben Mogensen, esteemed RPG Mathematician of DoomTM,has been discussing this very mechanic in his recent article on RPG.net. Torben (and Woodelf….where, o where art thou, Woodelf?) were the first to propose this mechanic to me on the Yahoo RPG Create board.

 

 

 

Let me explain….no, there’s no time….Let me sum up. Rather than tell you how I got to where I am, let me tell where I am at now for HAGIS randomizer mechanics:

The base system randomizer involves rolling 3 dice of the same kind and taking the median (mid) value. The other two dice (the High and the Low values) are not directly used for randomizing normal contests (i.e., the vast majority of contests use the Mid value.

[That being said, the Low and High valued dice are used directly for special contests; when they are triggered. I’ll talk more about that later, for now let’s focus on the median, the mid value.]

For several reasons (which we can get into in discussion or as part of a future post), current HAGIS development is using 3 d20’s for this operation. The following plot shows the probability distribution for the mid_3d20:

Any thoughts?

In a future post (or an update to this post), I will get more into the “grits” of the whats, hows, whys of the HAGIS default system. Also, I will step out of the theory lab and apply it for a real-world use, gaming with my wife (and brother too). The game is loosely titled: HAGIS:  Mythos/Mythos Files/Cthulhu Files/The Quest to fulfill my wife’s expectations……(no comments there, thank you).

~Adaen of Bridgewater

D&D 4?

I’ve followed the D&D development from Purple Basic D&D/1E AD&D thru D&D 3.25 (we’re playing 3.0 with some of the 3.5 ideas that we like and that don’t upheave our long-standing campaign thrown in for good measure). Though I’m still smarting from the 3.5 release…I mean, was that really necessary?, I’m still hoping that the promise of the 4.0 edition (still d20, but different) pans out. Here’s the news of the month for table top gamers:

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition coming in 2008
Posted 2007-08-16 19:24:29 by JoyceGreenholdt

BREAKING NEWS An Anonymous Reader Reports: by Joyce Greenholdt
Editor, Scrye magazine

Wizards of the Coast announced at Gen Con Indy Aug. 16 that the much-rumored fourth edition of the seminal role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons will be released in May 2008. However, several D&D support products

scheduled for earlier release, including January’s Classes and Races book and the April adventure Keep on the Shadowfell, will be 4th Edition previews.

The transition to D&D 4th Edition begins in April with a new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures starter set and the Dungeons of Dread booster expansion. Older D&D minis will need updated stat cards to be used with the new editon rules. Wizards plans to release converted cards for figures in Unhallowed, Night Below, and Desert of Desolation via the company’s website, as well as updated cards for select “all-star” figures from previous D&D Minis expansions.

For the role-playing game, the 4th Edition Player’s Handbook is scheduled for May release, followed by the Monster Manual in June and the Dungeon Master’s Guide in July, with additional volumes to follow. D&D 4th Edition will continue to use the d20 game system — according to Wizards of the Coasts designers, the 4th Edition rules will be an “evolution of the system, not a revolution.” 4th Edition play is designed to be faster and easier for the Dungeon Master to adjudicate. Each character class will have a specific, defined role within an adventuring party, and the designers’ goal was to give each class interesting options for gameplay at every level. Character races have undergone a similar overhaul, with at least two new player races included in the Player’s Handbook, and the core rules now go up to level 30 for characters; with the levels divided into three tiers: heroic for levels 1-10, paragon for 11-20, and epic for 21-30. One goal was to avoid having a single “sweet spot” — a specific range in levels where everyone wants to play. In D&D 3.5, this tends to be levels 7-13. For Dungeon Masters, the new edition includes new ways to build encounters by giving every monster in an encounter a role to play, and addresses or removes “game-stopping” rules like grappling in combat….(cont)…

A new edition, that seems about right assuming we don’t consider the 3.5 (we get a new edition about once/decade)……YMMV

~AoB