Arneson Gaming

 

For whatever reason, this little game I wrote has suddenly become of interest around the world. Creators has translated the game into Portuguese, Czech, Italian, and now French!

Check it out here: https://mattjackson.itch.io/arneson-gaming

Lawman: western scifi silliness

 

I got pointed to this game by my bro Bill and honestly I am just loving it. Western bounty hunter space zooming around space to apprehend criminals. What is not to love?

It is rules-lite, which means all you 5e/Harn/Gurps lovers will run away scared, but the way this runs appears to be quasi-FRK-adjacent so it is landing right on my doorstep at the right time. 

Apparently this was a kickstarter that funded but the cards failed to materialize, so I am thinking maybe I should make some. Whatcha think? I dropped some words into MD and got some pretty cool images that fit the theme:

The Evolution of Gaming, or Why My Thoughts on Gaming have Changed Drastically Over Time

I have been thinking about this for quite a long time and though I am not an eloquent man, I thought I should put these random and chaotic thoughts down in pixels. A sort of 'My journey in creative endeavors' or some such. This is somewhat rambley and covers a lot of random thoughts/ideas. I feel my thoughts on gaming have come full circle in a rather strange way, but somehow I am back where I started (at least I hope so). Some may view that as bad, or some may view it as good. I think it is good. You can be the judge, but here I am. This may also piss some people off as they might view this as me attacking what they are doing. Maybe I am.

G+ ushered in a massive communal environment, where we were all creating and sharing, building lots of ideas and sharing them freely...excitedly creating things for the good of us all. This was a great time in the hobby and I repeatedly see people referring to this as a 'Golden Age' and I wholeheartedly agree.

At some point this turned in 'I can create and make funds from this', and suddenly everyone and their brother stopped creating for free and turned to creating for money. I participated in this and had a Patreon for about a year. I slowly became disillusioned by this as greed leached into the hobby and the majority turned from creating "because that's who we are" to "creating to make money".

Related to this, at this time our hobby took a massive turn in mentality. 

Let me explain. When we were kids, back in yonder days, those who created did so for their game table which comprised of us and our friends who we knew very well. We made things we enjoyed making but also things we would use fairly quickly at our tables. Very few of us created things we thought we could sell, or even thought someone else might use/enjoy. None of that mattered. We created for us. But when money came into the picture, most of us created for others. I think this is important to note, as I think the hobby changed drastically. 

The reason I bring this up is that I had an epiphany in the last couple of weeks when I realized part of what was holding me back from playing was that I was creating things for my game, always with an angle that I would share it for others to use. 

While for some, this might be a tiny thing to make note of, but for me, this was significant. 

The realization that I had changed my viewpoint on creating for the hobby for others and no longer for myself (and my table). I also realized this was holding me back from creating. I was putting others concerns, likes, wants, needs, ahead of my own. I was always creating things - even playing games - with the intent of sharing with others, putting their enjoyment equal or even ahead of my own enjoyment. Views, downloads, clicks, shares, etc were a driving motivator for what I was doing. When I approached a new idea, first and foremost was the thought "Will others find this useful?" Which was quickly followed by "How to present this so others can use it?"

In any case, I needed to say this, get it off my chest, if you will and I am going to try to play the games I like, in a way I like, but more importantly, for ME. Put me before others in my game.

After all, this is MY table.

UPDATE:

If you caught Erik Tenkar’s video where Joe roasted me for about twenty minutes, you may have come to the same conclusion as they did, that my post is some sort of anti-capitalistic post, which it is not.

This was what I sent them:

I think you guys misunderstood the point of my post, I likely did not articulate it well. The point was not anti-capitalist, it was that the capitalist angle changed the way we approached and created things. The angle affected the approach, and in my opinion, the results.

 

Blade & Haversack

Long time, no speak. Been busy, living life, working, etc. Not much time left for gaming stuffs. Recently chatted with a fellow I have known for a long time named Talon and he was telling me about his latest release, an RPG based on the old Sword and Backpack system, a decade old game that espoused the idea of rules-lite and GM-on-the-flyism that we all loved about Dave Arneson style gaming. Talon (link) took the system and created a d20 based setting called Arsenic & Old Lace (link) which I really liked. I have always thought S&B was cool, but as it is d20 based I never was really on board with it, my love of the d6 was just too powerful. So an idea was born while I sat bored at work. Thus, Blade & Haversack was sparked. Talon later informed me that had written Sword and Backpack Twin Cities Edition (link) for that exact reason! I took a slightly different angle, but still utilized the elegant d6 for my version. So, here you go, Blade & Haversack! 

The below is just a sketch, barely thought out in-between goings ons at work last night, but I think there is enough to use. I have been doing tiny single-journal games when I have 15-20 mins here and there the last week (may post about that later) and I think this is just about the correct 'weight' of a system to use for this sort of adventure. 

Blade & Haversack

Roll 2d6, roll a 6 or higher to succeed for Average challenge (or tasks), 9 for Hard, and 11 neigh Impossible for uber hard challenges. If it is related to your profession (be it fighting, trying to swindle an alien, casting spells, turning undead, piloting your space cruiser, etc) you roll an extra d6 and only use the two highest die rolls. If something seriously hinders you, roll 3d6 but only take the two lowest die rolls.

In a successful challenge (including combat) the obstacle will take 1 damage/stress point. Some instances will do additional damage/stress (large weapons, creatures, spells), the GM has final say. Some equipment will absorb damage (armor or special defenses). Enemies (or obstacles) will have a number of  Stress Points, when all are exhausted by damage the enemy is dead/defeated. Treat obstacles in the same manner as ‘enemies’. A secured treasure chest may be secured with a Tough Lock [ ] [ ], thus it would take two successful checks to overcome the lock’s SP.

Example character:

Choad [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
Feral scavenger
Ruger 9mm - 4rnds
Sword
Flare
Net

Example enemy:

Gath Necro [ ] [ ]
Ghastly Death Wizard
Black Blade of Doom
Special:
Death Blast: Black energy shoots out, if target hit it ignores all armor and induces a Hard challenge or target becomes paralyzed for 1 turn.

A new land to plunder! YouTube!

 Ok, I have done it. I have stepped in the realm of YouTube. May Tyr guard my path.

Check out my channel here, subscribe today!  ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHOO3zEIOmPRs73z02IvSTA

Episode one:

Episode two:

Notequest: First play through

If you read this blog you likely know that I have been messing around with solo games and trying multiple ones that I come across. I recently saw this one on the Solo Reddit page (a shockingly ok place actually). I've had this for about a week and simply been too busy to play. This morning I finally had a chance to try it out and I want to say I enjoyed this quite a bit! Link to purchase game.

While having a little breakfast I quickly made a character, a task that takes exactly two rolls and then began creating the dungeon I was going to explore, three more rolls. Grindor the dwarven guard was ready to plunge the depths of The Prison of the Dying Vow!  ;-)

I have read from other that have played that the game was deadly and I did have many close calls but honestly if you approach this from an OSR viewpoint, you CAN survive. Do not try to push the risks. Do not try just one more door. GTFO and rest, heal, and regroup.

Grindor came close to dying a few times but I was able to enter the prison twice, each time returning with just enough coin to rest, heal, and resupply. I watched a handful of videos on YouTube (see Lone Adventurer's videos and the excellent videos from Ithaquas Bane) and learned the basics, along with some thoughts on some rule clarifications. Using this knowledge and, honestly, my OSR mindset of not forcing every battle and knowing when to run, I left the dungeon multiple times. I had a couple of short trips to the dungeon which helped me gather a few extra coins and eventually a magic weapon. The fact that you have to reroll on the Monster Table when you go back but not the Open a Door table means there is less risk to sudden death but a better chance of Loot (see next paragraph), means you run less risk of dying while increasing resources. These short trips allowed me to gather enough coin to enter the dungeon with the idea of going down to the next level. I was able to get a magic weapon as well as a scroll with a pretty powerful spell that allowed me essentially two free attacks (entering the room through an unlocked door then the spell taking away the attack) and my magic weapon allowed me to quickly neutralize the boss monster, a medusa.

Edit, in answer to Steve's question below.

The rules state that is you leave, 'you will have to roll on the Monster Table for each empty room you enter'. Thus, when I returned I did not roll on the Opening a Door table but I rolled on the Monster Table for each room I entered when I returned. I did NOT roll on the Room Content table as I had already cleared the room. The Loot I gained was only for the monsters I defeated. I was very lucky in my return visits, rolling either the Orc Leader, 2 Orcs, or the Fungoids, each that come with Loot when slain. 

Looking at the rules, and taking them verbatim, I did not roll for monsters when I entered an empty room while leaving the dungeon, only upon returning. If you look closely on my map below, you can see I went back to room 5, 6, and 3 (which line up with the encounters on the left...marking each subsequent encounter (9,10, 12, and 11, I entered room 1 but found it empty so I continued to 3).

One house rule that Lone Adventurer mentioned he made in error (I did as well) was that damage rolls over to enemies. If you are fighting two goblins with 3 hit points and you do 5 damage, you kill one and the extra damage rolls over to a second goblin. This makes battles between your one character and groups of monsters a little more survivable. Sure sure, some will say that is cheating, but the game is still deadly.

I have only two improvements I would suggest. One, I would be to make the Reward Table a 2d6 instead of a d6. The shortness means if you return to the dungeon multiple times like I did, you tend to get repeats frequently, but that could just be a side effect due to my style of play.

The other improvement I would suggest is, well, I think a self-inflicted issue. In many of the fights you encounter you will find nothing. Many of the rooms are essentially empty, full of coffins but lacking any sort of reward. This meant winning a fight or clearing a room had no reward, and felt 'pointless'. I think this is simply a holdover from playing D&D for so many years. In D&D you get treasure, get XPs....get something for defeating monsters, so to get nothing made it felt empty. I have another house rule for this I am working on and will post it later.

Final thoughts. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed playing this and will run a few more sessions. A couple thoughts on the game:

o Torches are the true economy of the game, use them, then leave the dungeon and resupply!

o Use torches smartly, use them to remove the chance of traps (one trap can kill you instantly)

o If you do not break the door down or not set off traps, peek into the room so you can make an informed decision and have a chance to run instead of walking into a deathtrap. Heal & resupply, then come back to the room!

Grindor's character sheet (you can find these in the Notequest FB page)

And the playsheet of The Prison of the Dying Vow. Map in the center, a quick 'key' on the right for room sizes, and a record of the battles on the left. I actually goofed at the end when instead of immediately encountering the Boss Monster upon coming down the third set of stairs, I immediately rolled a 4th set of stairs! Releasing there was nothing in the rules about this, I quickly backed up and went to the boss fight.

Arneson Gaming

I guess FKR is suddenly cool because some dude named Ben started talking about it, now the little kiddos are fawning all over it. Welcome, we have been here for quite a while.

I made this (oddly) on September 11, 2019 and I honestly cannot recall if I shared it or not. I have uploaded it to itch so you can have it stored in your 'library'. This was my attempt to create something a modern player might accept that is still close to what Dave played. 

So yeah, this probably isn't even close.

Check it out here: https://mattjackson.itch.io/arneson-gaming

Go watch Secrets of Blackmoor, might learn a thing or two.

Don't Die!

 

Creating...still. Maybe I will make more for this. Pocket games? Print and play? Who knows, almost bedtime for me here. Maybe tomorrow.

Bored.

 

I am bored with fantasy RPGs.

I know, I know. I get this way about once a year or so, but seriously, I am tired of the same old tropes and want something new. Something unique, something strange, something different.....

The Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag, play update

THE CAST O' CHARACTERS:
CURRENT ROSTER
Vance - Yozzat, a dwarf
Joe - Olwen Door-Hinge-Bane, a human ranger
Tim - as yet unnamed new character
*Steve - Dimzad Shatterstaff, a dwarf
*Bryan - Brad, human fighter

THE GRAVEYARD
Able Artone, human fighter - (Christian)
Macros - long-living magic-user (Joe)
Brother Adelmo - cleric (Tim)
Vox - human barbarian (Bryan)
Janos - halfling (Jason)
Harold Flynn - halfling badass (Vance)
Shelzabaz the Magnificent - magic-user (Steve)
Caradoc - ??? (Vance)

HIRED HELP
Bint (kobold)
Usee (kobol)
About ten kobolds who died to avenge their people!
Garth the human (dead)
Izzy the elf (dead)
Too many retainers to count and I cannot recall their names

This is sort of a recap, get you up to speed, sort of post. My general thoughts on how things are going, how I run my games in Roll20, etc. A bit of a ramble, but perhaps others might find it useful to some degree.

ON USING GoCC:
I have been running GoCC since early July, a full six sessions now (which is actually a pretty good run for me) using OSE. I tend to run a rather loose game so I am not a dead-stickler to rules....more of a 'what works in the moment' rather than stick to the rules raw method. I have pretty much stuck to the adventure as written, only adding slightly more treasure, a few traps, and adding some magic items to a BigBoss. I think this is actually one of the strengths of this adventure. It is pretty lightly written, affording a DM enough information that you could run as-is, but this also allows a DM to add bits here and there without effecting the main adventure but giving it enough to 'make it their own'. 

I specifically chose this product to start my game for two main reasons:
1) It could be ran as-is, with only a quick read through. I am busy, have serious attention difficulties. I thought by using this lightly-written adventure I might be able to get past this. I have a notorious and dreaded history of starting campaigns and then killing them off when I get bored or the-next-big-thing catches my eye. I did not want to invest, or have my players invest, tons of time in a new campaign only to screw it up and kill it.
2) The reasons stated above about the adventure being just enough to run, but with enough space to add personal touches.

I think this adventure is 'deadly', and could actually be more deadly if I used everything in it. For example, my players have been very luckily with only one encounter between the village and the gatehouse (a 3-4 hour trip on foot). (more on this below)

With GoCC, you get quite a large play area. There is a regional area with five, FIVE, sub-areas that are all ripe with possibilities.The PDF says that it is a "mere 3 hour march to the gatehouse" from the village. Calculating this out with the average hiking speed (according to Google) of 2mph, that means the gatehouse and village site on oppose sides of a typical 6 mile hex. Plenty of space to drop in whatever your hearts desire.

/ matt's tangent on wilderness exploration
I know I have made this argument before, about how large a Six mile hex really is and how much land it encompasses, but I enjoy doing this, so here goes. I recently went hiking and whitewater rafting in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia (yes, during COVID, sucks to be you folks that live in the big cities on the east and west coast). We went whitewater rafting just below the Olympics rapids used for the '96 Olympics. We put in at the white dot and got out at the blue dot, the captain of our boat said it was about a 3 mile route and it took us about 3 hours to cover as we floating down a rapidly moving river.

clickie to enbiggie

Here is another way to look at just how much area a six mile hex encompasses. Here is a photo I took on the trip from a scenic overlook high above Lake Parksville Lake. Notice the boat speeding away down there. If you think it would not take you literally an entire day to search an area of two square miles for a small dungeon entrance, I would posit that you have never hiked a day in your life out in the true wilderness.

clickie to enbiggie

And here is the six mile hex superimposed with an angle showing approximate viewpoint from the photo above. You can see the length of the lake is roughly two miles. Compare the area of the lakeshore inside those two lines with the above photo.

clickie to enbiggie

USING THE VILLAGE:
As I said in my previous post I have stuck to the early D&D mantra of "Keep them out of the city" (from B2 In Search of the Unknown) and strictly made the village of Kalynn a place to recoup, sell, purchase, pick up retainers, and then scoot them out of town quickly. However, I have sort of felt the hole left by little 'role-playing' this causes and am likely going to expand the interactions in the villagers because I have some ideas for expanding the play area of the adventure. The areas around the village, along the various routes to the gatehouse are chock full of opportunities for more adventure!

To accomplish this I am moving from David's map to my own. Here is his map. Adequate, useful, and great...if a bit square, next to my re-purposed map. A few more locations, and frankly, I am partial to my own work.

 

ON USING ROLL20:

The adventure is written for White Box but really this has not impacted the game at all. I do a little prep in Roll20, basically adding in tokens and copying over a few stats from the OSE SRD, just what I need to run the game. A quick note on the data I enter here. While those colored circles probably line up with something from a character sheet, as a DM I find that useless. So I set them up for quick in-play use. Red makes me think of blood, so I put Hit Points in there. Blue, for whatever reason (maybe blue is good guys in the Army and good guys bring armor to the battle...?) reminds me of armor, so I put the Armor Class in the blue circle. Green is left over, so I put the main combat damage in there. Having these number readily available with a single click has allowed me to speed up our combat.

In the expanded token settings, I usually copy over the entry from the SRD like below. While this is not usually necessary, this takes out any guessing or pausing for me to look up a creature's stats during the game. I find this also comes in handy because I tend to prep in advance, sometimes FAR in advance. Our current exploration of the second level of the dungeon in GoCC I put together one Sunday afternoon back in early July. So for my old, feeble mind to remember that these little fuckers suffer an additional +1 of damage from silver weapons would totally have been forgotten (never came into play actually). For BigBoss battles, I find this set up invaluable as I can list spells, special abilities, and magic items here. I will often also drop any treasure into this GM Notes section.

Another tip: If you are running something that has numerous monsters, stat them up then simply copy them. This way you never have to enter the data on another token. I do often go in and change up stats a little here and there just for variety. Now though, I realize my players probably never even notice that! Ha! Total waste of my time!

DEADLINESS:
So this game has turned out exceptionally deadly. In a marked difference to most of my previous games, where -- don't tell my players this, I tended to take it easy on the and flub dice rolls occasionally so the game was not deadly -- with this game I switched to rolling in-game in Roll20. I rolled real dice off-screen and if I rolled a 6 on damage, I reduced it to 4 or something so PCs were not dying around every corner. Now, I stick to rolling in Roll20 with results visible to all. So, this campaign I have murdered a PC every single session we have played.

In my defense, and as the saying goes, "DMs don't kill PCs, players kill PCs through their choices". They made some silly choices. Why is that mage on the front row? You stood your ground as a ratling mounted on a giant  rat charged you (together they have a HD of four)? Tossing burning flasks of oil in close company? 

CURRENT STATUS:
We have been going strong for the last two months now with six (we think) sessions. We have had to miss a few session here and there but I have mostly had a strong, stable group of three players with an occasional one or two extra join us. I went into this with the mentality of "If two show up, I will run" because many of my campaigns in the last three or so years have died partially due to lack of player interest (probably due to my own lack of interest) which caused them to not be dedicated and show up to the game. 

The current group of usual players seem to be enjoying it, as am I, and I hope we will continue for the foreseeable future. 

Wow, that was a bit rambly, but maybe some will find it interesting.

The Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag, set up post

 

I have been running GoCC by David Bezio now for about two months, a total of six sessions (or 8 depending on if you could the first two session when I used my homebrew system). I am using Old School Essentials and I thought I would toss up some of my thoughts on using this adventure and a few comments on using OSE as well.

The first important point to make is that, like any other Dungeon Master out there, I am making changes as we play through this, tailoring it to my group, my style, and how I like and think works best. I have reworked the various maps in the original PDF to my own style and for ease of use in Roll20, hiding the traps, secret doors, etc. I have also reworked the original village, regional, and the maps from David's other release, the Phoenix Baronythe Pheonix Barony. Below is my reworked 'barony' map, I redid the map because I wanted to be able to expand/edit the setting as we played. I contacted David regarding the placement of GoCC in this setting (there were enough hints in the PDF that I thought it might be located in the original Barony). David verified this but did not disclose where exactly he placed it. So I placed it in the northern mountains. I also renamed the village from Caoilainn to Kalynn (I think David was just making fun of the RPG fantasy trope of adding vowel to names and spelling it in the most difficult way possible, I got tired of trying to spell it or say it). I also renamed the Phoenix Barony to the Marshall Barony, I just did not like the name.

I also redid the regional map, it has not been completed but I did it for the same reason as above with the barony map. I planned a few other locations than the primary adventure location of the Gatehouse, adding a cavern/dungeon in the top left, as well as adding a mysterious island in the middle of the river.

For the first sessions I used the existing village map in the adventure, but I recently realized I want more locations in it as I want to expand the role-playing in the village a little (felt a little short to me). I have decided to repurpose an old map of mine from 2017 and populate with a mix of the locations from GoCC and my own write up for this village. This will be fleshed out in an upcoming issue of Old School Zine.

The second important thing is that I am using OSE for my game instead of White Box. Now, I LOVE White Box but most of my players prefer OSE, no big deal really as most things slide over nearly perfectly and are compatible. Any DM with a little experience should be able to convert on the fly. 

I have also added some to the adventure in the form of different monsters, a few new magic items, and in the last encounter, I upped the big baddie's power and capability slightly. The main reason for this is that the players had 'carefully' avoided this encounter for a couple of sessions and I felt this had increase the tension, the payer seemed worried enough about the coming battle. So I gave the guy some magic items to give him a little more surprising power.

NEXT I will go over quickly how the sessions have played out and my thoughts on the adventure thus far....

Games: Lunch Box Heroes

I have decided to start using my blog again a bit more and recently I have gotten into a game writing feeling and this caused me to check out my previous attempts at writing games. Releasing that these were not available on the blog any more, I decided to start re-sharing these simple games. First up is Lunch Box Heroes.

I made this game a few years ago when I had the idea that someone could carry this around with them, pull it out, and run a quick session over lunch. Not sure I was successful or not but it I had a good time time writing it. Instead of using dice, it uses coins to determine success or failure mechanics.

Link to PDF:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=10sxTahnZ-cHEWz21tMbsqPy4T39hxJvy