SPACE MARINES GET SOME

With the considerable hiatus the group has taken, I've had some time to think about the Deathwatch game John ran for us to fill in the gaming void. The game was quite interesting and a lot of fun for me as a player. Playing a character that is a hulking mass of genetic engineering, unnatural resilience and power, and a brain like a supercomputer - all of this wrapped in a tank-like shell of neigh-impenetrable power armor and sporting some of the nastiest weapons ever designed - was a nice change of pace from the roleplay-heavy campaigns I tend to run.

There were some pretty awesome moments that came out of it, but I'm glad it was a short-lived campaign. Not because it was bad, but because playing as these inhuman warriors turned out to be fairly far removed from the epic waste-laying and slaughter I had envisioned. Once we had enemies of similar ability and power to fight, the game quickly went from "kill EVERYTHING that blinks!" to "who here isn't dead and still has functional armor/bodies?".

Now, we as players could have probably done more to increase our survivability - but really we were all looking for astronomically overpowered mindless combat as a way to break up the more complex political campaign I had been running. All in all, it was a good experience and certainly something that would be worth playing again (but with a lot more player planning and tactical thought involved).

On Spell Components

So I've been seeing a lot of stuff about the use of spell components and whether or not they play a big part in the game. There seem to be a few basic opinions on this issue.

1. This group prefers to assume that a magic user has whatever they need to cast their spells, UNLESS the component in question either has a monetary cost or is extraordinarily rare/magical in nature, such as the components for the spell Repulsion:

The material component of this spell is a pair of small magnetized iron bars attached to two small canine statuettes, one ivory and one ebony. (PHB pg. 86)

In the case of some spells (generally those that are either very high level or a necessary part of the adventure) a small quest or some form of sacrifice or difficulty is presented, effectively treating the spell in question as a reward of sorts.

2. This group believes that spell components should be treated as ammunition - if the magic user doe snot take the time to at the very least visit an apothecary or go foraging then he has no way of replenishing his stock. In this case components are logged and tracked much in the same way that projectile ammunition or potions are. This is seen as a way to keep the powers of magic users in check by limiting their ability to spew powerful spells that require fairly simple components (Fireball, for instance).

3. This group thinks that spell components are extras - and therefore not necessary to the casting of spells. However, if a player takes the time to gather the listed components, they can be used at the time of casting to amplify or extend the effects of the spell in some fashion. The components are still used up in the casting, but this allows a magic user to keep a reserve of components for when his spells need that extra boost.

I'm a fan of the easy route, or opinion 1. It is generally assumed in my campaigns that the magic users have a catch-all bag of components that they can draw from, and I still have them go the extra mile to find, buy, or otherwise obtain components that are bizarre or rare. I've considered other methods of dealing with spell components, but the players seem to be okay with what we have agreed on and I see no reason to change it yet. Maybe in another campaign.

Inspiration

I've been doing a whole lot of inspirational reading the last few weeks, to try and find something I can twist to work with my AD&D 2e game. Though I read a lot of fantasy stuff, I don't find that material working its way into my campaigns. When I read things, a lot of my inspiration comes from the characters in the literature. The personalities and conflicts make for good starting points, and from there it is easy to piece together a fully-formed character. The boastful general that is secretly a coward? Jack Gladney from Don DeLillo's White Noise. The shy character that is terrifying in battle? Robert Cohn from Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. The insane, religious, sexist dictator? Commander Fred from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. There's so much material out there it can be hard to keep track of, but that's part of the fun.

One of my favorite characters of all (besides Capain Ahab, of course) would be Minister Hooper from Hawthorne's The Minister's Black Veil. Over the course of a few pages, the character goes from a kindly minister to a ghoulish presence amongst the townsfolk, a sinister character that is shunned for his choices in clothing. The character is so interesting and so well-written that he makes for a really interesting fellow to pull ideas from.

I've always had a hard time with settings, rather than characters. I can't design a city worth a crap, but I can populate them pretty well, I like to think. I get to introduce a character I've been working on for a while during tomorrow's game, so I'm pretty stoked about that.

For now, it's back to statting up some monsters. Boatloads of fun.

Brief Update

So we've managed to pick back up on my AD&D 2e game pretty well. The guys got right back into the swing of it after a 6 month (roughly) hiatus. It was a pretty big relief, as I was expecting it to be a difficult transition from Dan's 3.5 game and John's Reverse Dungeon minicampaign (both of which were excellent) back into mine, but aside from a few minor details the guys slipped right back into character and picked up where we left off.

We're still in Ravenloft, and the characters have found a bunch of really ancient books in an underground library, while trying to figure out how to combat the highly addictive edible slugs (which happen to be the only food available) and being tasked with organizing and cataloging a prehistoric armory.

I'm hoping to get out of Ravenloft within the next two or three sessions, so hopefully I can pull that off and get into the real meat of the campaign as I have it planned so far.

In other news, James (Theeves Cant Spell) and I have begun work on our yet-unnamed post-apocalyptic utopia epic. Maybe we'll post some chapters or dialog when we get further into it. It's shaping up pretty well and we're really optimistic about it.

That's all for now, back to Transporter 3 on Showtime.

On Naming Characters.....

I know lots of people have trouble with names, but there are many easy ways to pick up some quick names for characters and NPCs, or even locations. Here's a few that I've learned over the years from some good people:

1. For somewhat modern-sounding names, a good place to pick up names is the spam folder in your email. I know a lot of people don't go in there, but there are some gems if you have the patience to look. Just a few from my spam folder, right now: Dena Lorna, Albert Faith, Karie Sammie, Jack Marietta.

2. For a name that sounds a little out there or fantastic, look to works both out there and fantastic (especially if your players won't go near it anytime soon). Now, I'm not saying that you should name all of your dwarves Gimli or all of your wizards Harry Potter, but in classic tales there are some great names. From Beowulf: Hildeburh, Aeschere, Herebeald. From The Canterbury Tales: Wilkin, Janekin (Jenkin), Alisoun (Allison), Phoebus. From The Iliad: Menelaos, Andromache, Priam. From Le Morte d'Arthur: Baldwin, Tristan, Urian, Mark. (And of course, Merlyn/Merlin!) From The Divine Comedy: Megaera, Cagnazzo, Apulia.

 3. Name your characters after things or noises or something. We've had many characters named silly things like Scribbles, Crunchy, Thouch, etc.

It's a lot of fun to find new ways to name your characters, in some cases more fun that playing them. :)

Follow the rules, kid

So, here we are in Ravenloft. Wait, what?

I get turned into a lizard and die, find out I have a mansion, have said mansion broken into (not a proud moment) witness a brutal mass-murder at the hands of a peaceable country bumpkin, and find myself swimming in some bizarre, trans-planar doppelganger bullshit, all within the first few weeks of knowing these assholes? And now this? If I hadn't seen that Rugmoth guy summon giant horde-slaying statues, I'd be cursing his name right now, for lack of the name of another god.

Granted, I find that running around with these guys is sharpening my skills; you know, trying to steal shit from under the nose of a fledgling paladin and a thief-hating magical midget has its challenges, but still, is it really worth it? I don't have a choice in anything I do, much less did I have a choice to charge headlong into mists what make everyone crazy, or the trees what make everyone crazy, or the asshat crazy shopkeeps what try to kill you. Gods, screw this place.

Straightaway out of the mists we found ourselves getting poisoned by the locals. Some crazy fucking lady in a farmhouse, don't ask me. I put on my best manners, though. Ericker made sure of that. Even when I was puking all over the table and myself, he was all "Don't steal anything, you filthy little kid." or some other such paladin nonsense. Were it up to me, we'd have gotten the information that we needed at the point of a blade. But then, the last time I didn't listen to them, I got turned into a fucking lizard.

After trying to talk to the mute crazies in town, we got a map and get the fuck out... and immediately walked into a crazy man killing forest that only half of us could see. Oh yeah, and there where giant cats that tried to kill all of us. Great. Good thing we have a psychopathic statue-wielding half elf in our party to literally break their faces off.

On the plus side, we do have that stupid wrinkle bag, Theophitits in our party, so I'm not the most useless pile of shit in this gaggle of retards, and at the end of the day in this insane place, at least I have that.

A character for every system I: Mouse Guard

I decided to do Mouse Guard because.....it kicks ass. I rolled up a Patrol Leader named Faolan, I would really like to run this game at some point. Here you go.

Group updates for the new year...

So, due to some work schedules and all that, we're not entirely sure when we can get the whole group together to play our 2e campaign. I've been going through a lot of my old gaming materials, and the nostalgia for some good old superhero roleplay. I've decided to run a Mutants & Masterminds game for the group, which has gotten a pretty good reception. We decided to run M&M on days where one or more people can't make it to a game. So far, Dan has created a large-sized guy with super-strength, crazy melee abilities, and limited teleportation. John's character will be an insane inventor who has a helmet that transforms him into a superhero. No word on the other guys' characters.

Anyway, Dan and I are about to head out to a concert, bt I'm going to give you an item from my Tobor campaign.

I can't find it though, so nevermind.

New Year's Madness.....nah.

2010. A new decade or something.

I'm going through some of my old gaming notebooks right now (cleaning out the gaming bookshelf) and I've found a few funny things from games past. Since there's nothing else for me to really write about, I'll share a little bit.

Rodin: Rodin was a human cleric from a D&D 3.0 game ages ago. He managed to live until level 8 (quite a feat in that particular campaign). Rodin's claim to fame was that he was terrible with any weapon he wielded (a gross understatement) and he could never manage to stop himself from getting impaled. He met his end at the hands of a modified troll creature that hurled a spiked chain THROUGH a layer of plate, the cleric's body, and another layer of plate. The troll then proceeded to swing Rodin around and slam him into every painful surface around.

Renkjar: Another D&D 3.0 character, Renkjar was a half-orc barbarian who was terribly afraid of heights. He could only use greataxes effectively, but often found himself using whatever he could find easily. His claim to fame was massacring a small kobold army, dual-wielding a chair leg and an empty tankard. Renkjar was also a clumsy fellow, and once took out his entire party while they were trying out an experimental zeppelin-like airship. The ship was boarded by some guys riding bats or some such, and Renkjar grabbed a sword and charged at them, trippng and sending the greatsword straight into the weak air bag. The attackers broke off, the ship fell into a forest, and the party never made it out of the wreckage. Renkjar, however, survived. He finally met his end trying to scale the wall of an evil noble's keep, only to fumble horribly and hang himself in his own climbing gear.

Titanium Nuke: A Champions character, Titanium Nuke was a power-armored brick, with horribly customized mechanical powers including the Megaton Punch. With his hands emanating a controlled field of radiation, armored enhancements, and natural strength, the Nukester could hit enemies with enough force to implode their entire family tree. The rest of his abilities were fairly useless. His movement was slow, his flight sucked, and he was only really good at punching things. Titanium Nuke was responsible for destroying his entire team as well as their headquarters when he was experimenting with his armor and clapped his hands in frustration.

Slash'n'Burn: A Mutants & Masterminds character often called "SB", this guy was a combination of the worst superhero archetypes. He was an experimental warrior with weapons contained in his skin that he could use Wolverine-style. These included elbow blades, fingernails, wrist blades, knee blades, etc. While he could only have one set of blades out at a time, his combat style evolved to allow him better control over which part of his body would be used in his next attack. He could flow from elbow jabs to kicks, withdrawing one set of blades and projecting the next in the time it took for the attack to connect. Secondly, he had impeccable control over fire. He eventually learned to create fire, and then to utilize his creation ability in small bursts, wrapping the blades with flame. This guy actually lasted a long time and I really liked him, but he was accidentally killed by his teammate Cryon (a guy in a power suit that had several different ways to freeze people, such as liquid nitrogen sprayguns) during a fight against our team's arch-nemesis, Deathshade.

Testicles: It's pronounced testicleez, much in the way Heraclese and Peraclese are. This was a D&D 3.5 character, a paladin/fighter multiclass who wore no armor and fought unarmed. I made this guy because it seemed like something the guy DMing would hate. Testicles had a large selection of mobility-related feats, allowing him to leap forward 30+ feet and land huge attacks at the end. He spent most of combat leaping around, crushing enemies from above into smoldering craters. I eventually got fed up with the gaming group and we parted ways, so Testicles only lived for about 3 sessions.

Havelock Dakka: A Hive-World assassin in one of the first real games of Dark Heresy I'd ever played. We didn't have time to do much, since it was only a session or 2. His claim to fame was shooting a party member less than a yard from a PC arbitrator. The arbitrator failed every skill test to notice the lasgun shot, but saw the body of said party member virtually explode. Havelock smoothly explained that the other guy shot him in the leg, then mysteriously exploded. The arbitrator again failed every skill test and somehow believed the story. Keep in mind that this whole event happened in the confines of a room of a ship's barracks, just slightly larger than a hallway. Havelock and the rest of the team met their ends when the party began arguing in a dropship en route to a planet's surface. They began firing at each other from their strapped-in positions, and someone shot open the airlock. It was not a pretty way to go.

That's all for now, but there's a good amount of character sheets left. I'll post more at a later date.