Platonic Solid

Developing low tech character sheets is a great way to explore user experience design. For such a foray, I chose to create a sheet for Swords & Wizardry Complete. It's very much an experiment and a work in progress. One goal is to provide as much affordance to the player as possible, all the way from basic through expert. The sheet should help introduce new players to the game while remaining useful as their S&W expertise grows.That route runs through simplicity, more specifically, the ability to customize the core sheet by hand. Old school games like Swords & Wizardry tend to see a lot of house ruling. The character sheet has to have flexibility built-in in order to accommodate things that may not be anticipated during development. Also, can one sheet be used by all classes as-is while fulfilling all the necessary functionality? As the designer, I'd like the sheet to look like something more than an artifact of play at the game table. If it could be seen in t...

The Eldritch RPG Kickstarter was a success! Now to put a few finishing touches on the character sheet.

At the time of this blog post, the Eldritch RPG Kickstarter has 60 hours to go. A little help getting it across the finish line would be awesome.

Once upon a time, I created an alternate character sheet for the Eldritch RPG. Dan asked if I'd update it for the revised edition's Kickstarter . I was glad to. Here's a peek at the combat page: What's seen in the KS update is a work in progress but it's pretty close. There are a few finishing touches left.  Check it out!

Oh, cool. Dan has revealed a new stretch goal - a  Shaintar adventure for Eldritch . Sean Patrick Fannon of Evil Beagle Games has agreed to pen a bonus adventure for the Eldritch RPG in PDF format upon this Kickstarter reaching the goal of $4500. Yes, this is in addition to the free adventure I'm throwing in, AND in addition to the online character and monster generator at $4500.   He will write a short work set in the world of Shaintar (roughly 20 pages), showcasing Eldritch RPG's flexibility and adaptability to other worlds. It will also serve as an excellent introduction for fans of Shaintar to introduce the world to their players, regardless of game system. This extra adventure shall be granted to all pledge levels from $15 up!  C'mon, let's get this thing done!

Liked The Riddle of Steel? Have you seen Song of Steel ? Song of Steel: Edges

My copy of Torchbearer arrived on Saturday. And wow! I love it. The Pete Mullen cover is fantastic. The overall production quality is higher than the already high marks set by BWHQ. The book itself feels great in the hands. Now it's time to light some torches and embark on adventure for loot! Pics to come.

I'm glad to see that Dan has launched the Eldritch RPG: Revised Edition Kickstarter campaign.  It's a heck of a good game. The exclusion of monsters, traps, and treasure in the original book did ding it a bit. Even so, we've had a lot of fun with Eldritch. The Kickstarter will set things straight. I liked it enough to create my own character sheet , so no empty rah-rah-you-should-back-it! stuff here. After our first spin, here's a look at some of what I said about Eldritch: The combat was very rapidly resolved and very, very descriptive. It's an interesting take not to roll to hit but to roll to see how much "potential harm" the target must mitigate. As points were whittled from the various defense pools the narration flowed. @RPG.net The game has structure but isn't rigid. As GM it feels okay to wing it which is nice. But the system doesn't force that kind of style. It just doesn't feel like you're going to destroy the session by ...

Last Sunday, I ordered the Swords & Wizardry hardcover direct from Frog God Games. It arrived today, the following Saturday. Talk about service. I've been playing S&W for a few years, starting with the WhiteBox and Core books from Lulu. When Complete was released back in 2010, for me, it jumped to the front of the S&W pack where it was competitive with other games that I like such as Castles & Crusades, feature-wise anyway. While Complete saw a lot of play at the table, I didn't feel compelled to get the physical book. Then along came the S&W Kickstarter with the Errol Otis cover. Oh, boy. Barely. Held. Out. I was hoping that the book would show up at my local game store. No such luck. Finally, I asked if they could get it in. Nope. So, off I went to the Frog God website and placed my order. A year after the Kickstarter that tempted me so, Complete was finally on my doorstep. It exceeds all expectations.

A big part of why I like Swords & Wizardry so much is that it's a great baseline for hacking, for making it my own. On the other hand, I find approaches like the Siege Engine in Castles & Crusades pretty nifty. So, we set out to put together a check system using the venerable D6 in sync with the spirit of S&W itself. The mini-project has been dubbed "Roll A D6." The default assumption is that the GM leans on RAD6 when it looks like a situation could go either way, 1D6 with a 4+ target. But how in the world does that scale? Here's how... Assign a level to the challenge at hand. The guideline is, at what character level is a 50/50 chance appropriate? Subtract the active character's level from the challenge level and you get the challenge's target number modifier. Add this modifier, plus or negative, to 4. Here's the formula: Modifier = Challenge Level - Character Level TN = 4 + Modifier How about an example? Dresan, a 1st level fi...

When I first ran into this thread over at the Troll Lord's forum about Castles & Crusades being incomplete, I thought the original poster was a bit off his rocker. But I began to think about the subject a bit. I went back and looked at the 4th printing of the players handbook (I own 3 copies of various printings) and noticed something. I've been a fan of C&C for a while now but, other classic fantasy games, Swords & Wizardry in particular, have tugged at my sleeve. Was it because they seemed simpler? I don't think so. Because they were newer than Castles & Crusades? No, though that might explain why I checked them out in the first place - continued discovery. Was it because they seemed to better encapsulate the old school D&D experience? Yes. Wait a minute. Castles & Crusades covers all of the bases of my early gaming experience; all of the classes, experience points, combat and hit points, and saving throws. So how can this be? One of m...

Imagine a world without the word 'fiddly.' That's all.

Even though I was following development, I wasn't planning on getting Numenera but, a thread over at TheRPGSite changed my mind. With the FLGS preorder, I received the PDF for free. I'm only about half way through character creation so I can't comment too much about the book at a whole but, wow. It's impressive. The first thing that has stood out to me was, of course, the art. It's great and fits the theme of the game very, very well as it is extremely evocative. Monte's opening short fiction perfectly sets the tone. The next thing to stand out for me was the game design aesthetic. It's right up my alley: 3 main character archetypes, 3 attributes/test types, etc. While working my way through the book, I'm imagining running D&D with the system. I'm also seeing Wuxia type action. That jumped out at me when seeing the Glaive (fighter) tiers. Well, back to reading.

For the upcoming campaign, I've been sifting through bits for options. I'm pretty sure that I'll be using Weapons Mastery from the Rules Cyclopedia. From Castles & Crusades, I think I'll port over Class and a Half. It's the best multi-classing option that I've ever seen. Pick a primary class and a secondary class. Mash 'em up and go.

I've got a game brewing and I think that I'm going to use Swords & Wizardry Complete as the base but sprinkle in some spice. The most potent being Mentzer Weapon Mastery. It looks like the first thing to do would be to re-scope Weapon Mastery from 36 character levels to 20. Other than that, it looks straight forward. Heck, in a way, S&W Complete's Fighter sort of provides a hook to WM's enumerated abilities through the parry maneuver. I also think that a character sheet update is in order.

Wow. While I didn't originally have the book back in my fist go-round with D&D, I did have the series of boxed sets, I'm reminded of why we had the approach to the game that we did. Compressing the expansiveness of basic into your head all at once is quite a task. Even though I found some of the sections a slog, underneath things like where we're told about the correctness of having a certain amount of magic items by so-and-so level and what-not, there lies a really small and malleable core -  Red Box!

By the time that the D&D Rules Cyclopedia hit the streets in 1991, I was drifting away from the hobby and completely missed its release. Besides, late in my first gaming epoch, I was playing very little D&D and was mostly focusing on other "more advanced" games. Being curious, a few years ago, I bought the Rules Cyclopedia PDF when it was first put online by Wizards. It had a technical glitch that prevented it from rendering correctly in my PDF viewer. That, unfortunately, likely colored my perception of the book itself. After giving it a few quick flip-throughs, I just wasn't impressed by what I saw. What was all the hubbub about, bub? Fast-forward a few years. I've churned through as many different retro-clones as I could get my hands on; settling on Swords & Wizardry. It's a fantastic game. Beyond the nostalgia, I've come to really appreciate D&D. Spurred on by (re) discovering AD&D 1st edition through the reprints, I couldn't ...

The other day I picked up the Advanced Fighting Fantasy Heroes Companion . The new types of magic, spells, talents, and so on are top notch but, it's the company rules, domain management, and mass battles that really grab my attention. With these bits, Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2 can easily hang with D&D when it comes to comprehensiveness in one fantasy game package. You really get the sense that long campaigns are possible with AFF. In short, it is absolutely excellent and packed full of value. I'm not sure when we'll get a chance to play since my core rulebook is still in storage since the fire but, I'm itching to play. I've got a hunch that I can wing it from the reference charts. Until then, I'm using the companion's Wilderness Map Generator for our upcoming Rules Cylopedia game.

A few weeks ago, a fire broke out in my house. Even when you don't lose everything it's incredibly disruptive. I used to think that those who burnt their own homes for money were miscreants. Now, I think that there's something very, very wrong with them - miscreants still. It hits a gamer and book lover right in the heart when he has to sift through the damaged items to identify anything salvageable. Writing off old books like the Robotech RDF Manual that I carried around back in junior high is tough. A lot of great memories linger with that one. But I was able to salvage the Zentraedi Sourcebook. I was hoping that the restoration company misidentified my 1st edition WEG Star Wars Sourcebook's rough appearance from use as damage from the fire but, no luck. It was soaked through and through. Some others got put on the damaged items list but these are the ones that really stand out for me right now. New games also made the list. The big gold BRP book got soaked as...

Have you all seen the Crimson Exodus Kickstarter? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1070382475/crimson-exodus-2nd-ed-fantasy-roleplaying-game A while back I mentioned Fantasy Dice, the 'generic' fantasy game that was extrapolated and updated from the standalone Crimson Exodus rpg. Well, the Radical Approach team is back to not only fold Fantasy Dice back into the mix but to make Crimson Exodus itself even better. Crimson Exodus is a great setting already. With the polish that Claus is envisioning, it'll be even better. I believe in the project enough that I'm blogging about it from temporary housing after a house fire.

I never meant to be writing this post. I never intended to buy BareBones Fantasy. My intention was to slow down my game buying habit in order to focus on the ones that I already have. I almost held out. I really did. That is until I saw Zachary the First's review  over at The RPG Site . But still, I was able to hold out a couple of more days. Then I cracked. After buying the PDF I sat down and gave it a quick skim. Even after such a cursory look-through, I felt like I got the gist of how to run the game though I didn't feel much fire under my seat to run it. My wife sat down and made two characters and afterward asked to play. The first character is a scholar cartographer out to remap the world as much of the known world that has been obscured by the decline of civilization. The second character is a warrior-leader accompanying the mapping mission. We sat down to play a mini-session to make sure that we understood enough of the ins-and-outs. The setup was a chance e...

After getting my head wrapped around AD&D 1st Edition's combat system, I've gone back and re-read Castles & Crusades and Swords & Wizardry's initiative and combat systems. In the case of S&W,  all the presented options. In the past, I glossed over those sections with the thought, "Yeah, yeah. I know how to do this." Turns out that I missed some things. Did you know that in Castles & Crusades that, in the first round of combat, longer weapons/larger creatures get to act first in the the first combat round even if they didn't win initiative? Did you know that combat round segments are presented as an option in Swords & Wizardry Complete? I should have known. I've become a keener reader.