Ravenous Role Playing

I’ve been beaten up, rode hard and put away wet this week by a series of illnesses. This lead me to miss Tuesday’s artifact posting. I’d love to post it now, but my energy levels are too low to make up for lost time. I’ll leave that as a missed opportunity of the past and move on. I’ll be posting an adventure hook later in the day.

I apologize to the few readers that I’ve collected so far. Things will be better in the upcoming weeks.

This is a long and rambling post, but it goes to the core of what makes me a gamer…

When I was seven years old, I saw the cover of Sword of Shannara peeking out at me from a pile of books at a garage sale. Being seven years old, I had I beg my grandmother for the quarter it would take to buy the book. Little did she know what road she would set me on when she tossed me that shiny little coin from her purse. Why did I want this book so badly? Two words: glowing sword. I knew that swords were used to kill people and fight mighty battles. I had seen it plenty of times on the television and in a few movies. I knew that Luke Skywalker

Sword of Shannara Cover

wielded a light saber, which is pretty much a sci-fi sword. Swords were cool to me as a seven year old. Okay. I’ll admit. Swords are still pretty cool to me several decades later. Nothing much there has changed. Now, the sword I saw on the cover of Terry Brook’s wonderful book glowed with power. This made it special. This made it unique in my eyes. If a normal sword could be used to battle evil and slay minions, then a glowing sword certainly could be used to save the world and slay powerful evil. This is why I had to have the book in my hands as quickly as I could. How little did I know that my thoughts would come to life between the first page and the last page of Sword of Shannara. This one book changed my life forever, and hooked me on fantasy reading from that day forward. The year was 1980 and a great many journeys began that hot summer day.

Fast forward a brief time in my life, and we arrive at the summer of my tenth birthday. I was in the Cub Scouts and selling Captain-O Greeting Cards out of the back of Boy’s Life magazines. I was doing it more to have something to do during the summer than to earn any prizes or cash. Then things changed. In the “prize catalog” I received with my salesman packet was a small icon indicating the cover of the red Dungeons and Dragons basic box set.

D&D Basic Set - Red Box

On it was a dragon fighting a guy wearing a shield, minimal armor and wielding, you guessed it, a sword. I knew I had to have it. While some of my fellow Cub Scouts were trying to sell enough cards to earn a free bicycle, I knew I had to have that box set with the dragon on it. There was no question in my mind that it was the coolest prize that could be awarded to a ten year old.

I worked for weeks to sell enough cards to get the box set, an RC car and a few other things that I’ve long since forgotten. I sent in my order form and dutifully awaited the day my dragon-laced box set would arrive. Weeks passed with great anticipation, and then the cards for my customers arrived. I knew my order had been received and I would soon be battling dragons, monsters and much more in this strange game called “Dungeons and Dragons.” Excitement filled me to the point that I delivered the cards to my customers in record time.

Then more waiting with held breath.

A week passed.

And another.

Just as I was losing hope and the summer was coming to a close, I received my brown box from Captain-O Greeting Cards. The mail man had scarcely gotten out of the driveway before I attacked the box with a knife and tore it open to reveal the contents. I was dismayed, though. It was time to go through the list of garage sales my grandmother wanted to go to for the day. Oh No! I wanted to delve into a dungeon and slay a dragon or five. Fortunately, my grandfather’s calm demeanor came through, and he suggested that I just take the box and books with me. What a brilliant idea!

I piled into the third-row-seat of my grandmother’s Buick station wagon (You guys remember those seats, right? The ones that face backwards. Yeah, one of those.) While my grandmother trundled around town, I colored in the numbers on the dice. As I marveled at the different shapes, sides and colors of the dice, I realized there were some books to be read. I pulled the pair out of the box and dove into the one that was on top. Fortunately, the PHB copy was on top (or the TSR people were very smart and knew that impatient 10-year-olds would be tearing into their products.) I spent the entire day consuming the books and creating my first character: Kinol. He was an elf, but I pictured him to be more like the warrior elves of Terry Brook’s books rather than the flighty and poetry-laden elves of Tolkien’s works.

In the end, I ran through the sample adventure (I still get scared with the GM pulls out a rust monster and I love magic mouths) more times than I can remember. Each time, I changed up my character a bit to see how things would turn out with a wizard or a warrior or a dwarf (if you remember, halfling, elf and dwarf were more class-like than racial options in the Basic rules.) Even though it was just me playing through solo games, I had a blast. This lasted for about a week, when I decided to introduce my fellow Cub Scouts to gaming. Unfortunately, some ultra-religious folks intervened and put a stop to my “witchcraft” and “devilry.”  Sigh.

I still continued to play on my own and I created tons of new adventures for me to run through, and I would pretend, I didn’t know what was behind the door that lead to the 10×10 room. Two years passed and I landed in Jr. High (7th grade for those of you in a different educational system) where I met J.P., Marc, Van, Joe and Martin. We formed a gaming group and had a blast playing before school, during lunch, during study hall, after school and on the long bus ride home. During this time, I also picked up the different box sets that TSR churned out (and everyone thinks Everquest pioneered the “expansion module” concept into game. Pshah!) In the end we were playing characters of all sorts of different levels and power. We created our own races, classes, monsters, encounters, spells, modules and so much more. More importantly, we were creating memories that would last us a life time.

The first steps of my fantastic journey started in 1980 followed by sprinting into the hobby  in 1983 and I’ve not slowed down one bit since that time.

Many thanks to the dozens of people that I’ve gamed with over the years, and many more thanks to the brilliant game designers that feed our hobby with new material on a monthly basis. Everyone keep rolling those d20s and may you always find a glowing sword in your piles of treasure.

I’ve been hooked on Burn Notice on USA Network since day one. It’s in its third season, and I highly recommend the show for any role player. It’s a great example of how clear thinking can overcome incredible odds. It’s more than just a natural 20 on a bluff or diplomacy check. It goes to show that a great plan of action can pull the PCs butts out of the fires the GM puts them in.

The show has inspired me to dust off my complete collection of Top Secret S/I and see if I can emulate the show to some degree. I’ve always run TSS/I games in the past with the players being active ORION agents, but thinking about the game from a different angle, I can totally see how the game would be just as fun with a burned or retired set of agents. Loads of fun.

Now to see if I can convince my group to do something “a little different,” but first I need to put some thought into a campaign arc.

Sorry for the brief artifact this week. I’m at a conference for work this week, and have very little spare time for a proper post. Please forgive me. I know I could have written this in the past and scheduled it for release on the proper date, but my preparations for the conference ate all my time before leaving. I’ll try to make it up to you with better artifacts in the future.

This reddish-yellow nail clipping is rumored to be taken from Baphomet by a lucky strike with a vorpal weapon. The nail clipping can be placed in the middle of a trap or pit and animals will always fall prey to the snare. The more animals caught with the Nail, the more bloodthirsty and meat-hungry the PC will become until they have taken on the aspect of a raging berserker. If the Nail is held for too long, the PC will slowly begin to transmogrify into a minotaur and become a demon-beast under control of a demon lord, perhaps Baphomet.

If the holder of the Nail merely traps and slaughters animals for the sheer enjoyment of doing so, the Nail will abandon the PC. When the Nail leaves the PC it will merely vanish from whatever pocket, pouch, purse or other container the Nail is kept in.

To destroy the Nail, it must be soaked in holy water blessed by a priest of Bahamut, and then struck with a Hammer of Thunderbolts.

Today’s review is about Hero’s Bane from Claymore Entertainment.

The book opens with a brief overview of the eight ages of the history of the world, Ela’Tain. The information in there was very brief and hardly relevant to learning the system. It was also poorly written. Sure, the grammar and spelling were correct, but the ideas behind the different ages are very sophomoric and had no real unique twist to them. I would have loved to have seen the same background done with something that intrigued me into wondering how the world was unique.

Free RPG Day 2009 - Hero's Bane Cover

Following the brief history lesson came an even shorter description of the races. All of the generic races in most fantasy systems were present along with a few others. The few others were interesting enough to keep me engaged and made me want to keep reading.

Next was brief overview of the classes, and they were all the generic types. Each time a hint of uniqueness filtered into the text, it was stolen from me by the repeated use of the words, “the system will be revealed, when the full game is released.” What I was really looking for, apparently, has not been written yet. I hope they pull off what they are going for in the final print because the taster given to me in the free book is quite bland.

Once world, races and classes were established, the next part of the book explained stats, skills, combat, experience points and a brief bit about magic. The information here was quite confusing because of a basic RPG mechanic that the authors seem to be missing. Everywhere in the book, they claim that 2d10 results in a number between 1 and 100. The de facto “2d10″ in role playing is two ten-sided dice rolled and added together for a range of numbers between 2 and 20. It took several reads of the rule system to figure out that where they stated “2d10″ they really meant “d100″ or “d%”. This is something I hope they rectify in the final book before going to print.

Halfway through the book, the adventure “Trail to Esavar” began. On the right-hand side of the first page of the adventure was a text box that grabbed my attention. There I found the following words:

Hero’s Bane can be a brutal system where any character can die in almost any encounter. Be kind to your players. Instead of killing them in the very first fight with a critical hit, make them lose consciousness and let them be revived. If you kill the characters too fast, the players will not have a good time. Dying in a random encounter can be disheartening and it is up to you, the GM, to make the game enjoyable.

This is where I stopped reading the book.

If they know it’s not fun to die in random encounters because of a single set of unlucky rolls, then they should change the system to not allow this to happen, or make the odds of it happening so very rare that the event will become a story for the players and GM to tell for the rest of their role playing days. A base system that allows for random death is a poor system. Again, I hope this is something that is fixed between the free version and the final version of the game.

Grade: C — I know this may sound like a harsh review, but I’m just being honest with you about what I see in the book. This is Claymore Entertainment’s first effort at creating a role playing game, and I applaud them for their efforts thus far. I just hope they pour many hours of play testing into the game and fix some of the core problems that I saw with the free version of the game. Good luck to Claymore and their team of developers. I hope to see a quality game come out of their efforts.

This article in The Telegraph really made me laugh because it reminded me so much of the happiness dictates The Computer hands down in Paranoia’s Alpha Complex. If you’ve ever played Paranoia before, you need to read the article for a good laugh. If you’ve never played Paranoia. I suggest you visit DriveThruRPG.com right away and search for “paranoia” to find the latest and greatest material to lead you away from your Commie lifestyle.

Today’s strip on PvP is absolutely hilarious. It had me laugh so hard, I damn near fell out of my chair. I think I sprained my spleen while I was at it (don’t worry, it’ll heal.)

What made me laugh so hard was the fact that I’ve been in this situation before. One of our regular gamers, Kelin, hooked up with a new girlfriend (who would eventually become his wife a few months down the road.) We, being good friends, invited the girlfriend over to join the Ravenloft game (this is 2nd edition D&D at the time) that was being run by Jim. Jim is the best horror GM I’ve ever had the pleasure of gaming with, but that’s another story.

Kelin’s girlfriend wasn’t too enthused about gaming, but she decided to roll up a cleric since we told her there would probably be lots of undead and clerics rock against undead (that is, they used to, but that’s another story, too.)

We got through the character generation process and got to the deity portion, and she wrote down “God through Jesus.” We all paused for a few moments to carefully consider how to explain things to her, and Jim jumped right in with the exact same conversation you’ll find in the comic I linked to. However, Kelin’s girlfriend didn’t want to “roll for” creating Christianity. She just said something along the lines of, “I create my own religion that follows the righteous and true God, and that’s that.”

Well, she lasted a few sessions, and then bailed. She was more of a roll-player (as in, when do I get to roll my dice?) instead of a role-player (as in, can I talk my out of Castle Ravenloft?) and none of us were really sad to see her go. However, when she left, so took Kelin with her. He gamed with us on-and-off (more off than on) for a while and then vanished all-together. We were sad to see Kelin go because he was a great player.

I’m going to have to change the way I handle the site. My original plan was to post an adventure hook every day, and do some reviews on random days, and then an artifact on Tuesdays.

Ain’t gonna happen. Sorry.

I made these plans while I was on vacation from work, and I figured I had plenty of time for daily posts. It turns out that when I’m not on vacation, I don’t have as much time as I thought. Go figger.

Instead….

I’ll be posting an artifact on Tuesdays, and an adventure hook on Thursdays. The reviews of other materials will come as time permits, but I hope to do one a week, which will probably land on Wednesday or Saturday depending on the week. I may also post on Sundays how my RPG group went the night before, but we’ll see how that idea floats with my busy weekend schedules.

Look for a new hook tomorrow!

Greetings.

My name is Hungry. I like to eat role playing games as a hobby. No. Not the books. I enjoy consuming different systems, taking in their tastes and analyzing their flaws, strengths, differences, spices and, most of all, any unique hints of creativity they may have.

If you want to join me in my culinary treks through role playing geekdom, feel free to follow my RSS feeds, or visit the site regularly. I’ll take you through some history of role playing as well as samplers of fresher tastes that you may enjoy along with me.

Sure, there are going to be some sour patches in the otherwise sweet world of role playing, but I test those out as well. Don’t worry. I won’t hold back. I’ll glad let you know when and where I find a poor tasting system or environment for role playing.

I hope you enjoy your time with me.