Ravenous Role Playing

Man, I’m such a leech. I haven’t had time to comment on a single link in what feels like forever. It’s been a combination of things, but it seems like my Fridays are busier than ever lately. I may shift this post to Sundays and make it a “Sunday Seven” or something like that. Maybe I’ll retitle the category to “Leech Links” and it’ll free me up to post on Friday, Saturday or Sunday as I have time and see fit. Either way… here’s the links for the week:

500k Retrospective – Dungeon Maps
500k Retrospective – Urban Mapping
Revised and Expanded Long List of Old School Games and Clones
World Building Part I: Geography and Landmarks
Dead Sea Inspiration
Mythic Monday: Old Gods Never Die…

How was the overall offering for this year’s Free RPG Day? Very excellent, I must say. The highest grade was A+ and the lowest was C-. A good range and none were failing scores. Most of the books from this year received at least an A- or higher.

Here’s the breakdown of the final grades in the order that I reviewed them:
We Be Goblins (Pathfinder) / A-
Rescue Mission (Tunnels & Trolls) / A
Dragon Age Quickstart Guide / A+
Broken Chains (Black Crusade) / A-
Histaven (D&D) / C-
Hollow Earth Expedition / A+
Aspect / B-
Arcanis / A+
The Waking Dead (AFMBE) / A-
Castles & Crusades / A
A Day Late, A Shilling Short (WFRP) / C-
Prime Directive / B
Dungeon Crawl Classics / A
Final Sanction (Deathwatch) / A
Under the Rose (Exalted) / B-
A Nightmare at Hill Manor (WoD) / A+

I want to extend my most heartfelt thanks and gratitude to the organizers of Free RPG Day and the participating publishers. I may have been a little harsh on some of you at times, but I do thank each and every single one of you for giving me the chance to review the materials you worked on with every last drop of your blood, sweat and tears. Keep up the good work, everyone!

The average grade point average for this year’s Free RPG Day came out at 3.41375 on a 4.0 scale. That’s a solid ‘A’ grade, there.

Again, thanks to everyone participating in Free RPG Day (organizers, publishers, consumers, readers, commenters, players and everyone else.) I hope see you here again between now and next year’s Free RPG Day as I start reviewing various RPG materials that I come across. Of course, I’ll still keep on doing the Friday Five offerings as well.

Enjoy!

I’m amazed that I’m even getting the links out this week. I’m out of town at a writer’s retreat at the moment, so I should be working on my book. I did steal a little bit of time to get these links out to you, though.

Corridor Features
Draco Inadequatus: Beefing Up 3.x Dragons
easy peasy demihuman clan relations
Long List of Old School Games and Clones
7 Appalling Things I Witnessed at the Gaming Table

At 64 pages in length, this is a tome for a freebie! When I first picked it up, I thought I had two copies in my hand because of the thickness and weight. When I realized that it was a single offering from White Wolf, I was quite happy to have it in my pile o’ loot. I didn’t save this particular book as the last review (oh, btw, this is the final Free RPG Day review for this year) for any particular reason. It just happened to be on the bottom of the pile when I stacked them all up after scanning the covers for the images that you’ve seen here.

The first 28 pages of the book cover rules, Storyteller adjudications, character traits, skills, merits, combat, morality, derangements (these were especially fun!), and the basic seven steps of creating a character. I truly believe that a fresh character can be created based off of these 28 pages instead of relying on the four well-done pregenerated characters that are found at the back of the book.

Following these sections of the book comes the Storyteller section: the adventure. This section of the book runs from pages 29 through 53 and is some of the best, creepiest, darkest and most inspiring adventure work that I’ve seen thus far this year in the Free RPG Day offerings. Maybe I just like the dark stuff over the light and fluffy stuff. Who knows? Regardless, this really reached out and stroked my inner gamer with a glancing touch that left shivers up my spine. It’s good stuff. Even if you don’t like the World of Darkness setting or rules (I happened to like [but not love] both), then I’d suggest you find this somewhere on the Internet and give it a good, hard read. Even though there are no maps, there is a “flowchart” of sorts right up front that assists the Storyteller in how the flow of the game should go.

After the adventure is a three-page appendix covering how ghosts work in their basics. Why an appendix on ghosts? You’ll just have to play the game to find out!

Grade: A+ / This is a well-written piece. When I got into it, I was expecting 60 pages of fluff and 4 pages of crunch since it’s a White Wolf production. I was pleasantly surprised to find it evenly balanced and very exciting.

Wow. This Free RPG Day adventure for the Exalted system by White Wolf jumps right into the adventure and keeps on running. I was a little taken aback by this development as I was expecting some form of introduction to the game, the system, the setting or the general feel of the game system. None of that was to be found, so it took me a bit to get into the adventure. There was quite a bit of assumed knowledge on the part of the book, so I found myself lost from time-to-time while grok’ing the adventure.

Despite the fact that I felt lost at time (and I’m sure that if I knew the Exalted genre/feel/system/etc. that it would have been fine,) the adventure was well written, very thorough and looks like a hoot to play.

After the 23 page adventure concluded, there were five pregenerated characters for use within the system. The characters were prefaced with a short blurb about their power level, so that an existing group or Storyteller could inject this adventure into an ongoing Exalted campaign or series. That’s a key piece of information considering the power level for the adventure is quite a bit higher than the “just beginning” level that is normally found in most freebies.

The five characters are packed with crunchy knowledge, but very little fluff on how the character’s attitudes are supposed to be played. This is kind of odd coming from White Wolf which is known for their top-notch fluff. (If you don’t know what I mean about crunch vs. fluff, then hit Google and type it in. There’s a wealth of information [and opinions] on the matter.)

Grade: B- / They didn’t include rules or enough information for this to be a stand-alone, but the writing is so well done that the grade gets a bump up from the standard ‘C’ that I give folks that don’t allow me to run a freebie stand-alone.

Sorry folks. No time for commentary this week. Just some links. Enjoy!

Missing some D&D players? Try these six rarely-used alternatives
Detritus of the Dungeon
Location, location, location
Houserule: Hands!
Magical Mishaps Redux…

This book is set in the Warhammer 40k world of the Dark Imperium vs. the even Darker Hordes of Evil… or something like that. It’s based off of the premise that everyone in the party is an elite Space Marine that has been chosen to enter the ranks of Deathwatch. You may be thinking that with everyone being a Space Marine that it’ll be hard to differentiate one character from another, but based on the sample characters, this is not the case. Each of the four pregenerated characters are very distinct from one another in their abilities, equipment, attitudes and backgrounds. It’s quite impressive how Fantasy Flight Games and Games Workshop can take something as generic as “Space Marine” and turn it into a role playing concept where everyone can be unique.

The first few pages introduce the concept behind the role playing game and then follows the four, well-written characters. After the characters comes the usual rules summary that can be found in most of the Warhammer 40k type RPGs. There are a couple of extra pages of rules regarding Hordes and how to run them as well as a couple of pages about Demeanors, Space Marine equipment and their typical gear.

Following this is the adventure. Final Sanction is a well-written adventure that flows nicely from plot point to plot point. I like it quite a bit. I’d love to delve into some of the finer points of the adventure that impressed me, but I can’t do so without spoiling the game for potential players. Let me just say that if you like any of the Fantasy Flight Games/Games Workshop settings, rules, encounters or adventures, then you’ll enjoy this one as well. Again, there are no maps to be found. (What can I say? I’m a visual person.)

Grade: A / Would be an A+, but without maps to help my tiny brain tie it all together, they lose out a bit.

The stylistic settings of this DCC production really brings me back to the early days of role playing, but with a better twist. In the “olden days” we’d move from room to room killing off whatever random critter the GM had stocked in the room and collecting whatever treasure he had deemed necessary for the area. I’m so glad that my role playing efforts have evolved beyond the simple dungeon crawl that made no sense. Goodman Games has done this with their dungeon crawls. They are sensible, elegant, packed with traps and puzzles and require thinking as well as good dice rolls to overcome and succeed.

The “Core Mechanic” page didn’t really explain too much about the game, but it did set the scene with comparisons on what to expect if you’re a “new school” or “old school” gamer (my words, not theirs.) This is a good setup and explanation. No room was given over to the rules because DCC beta PDFs are available from their web site for free. While I love to see rules summarized in Free RPG Day offerings, this is acceptable to me because the download is free and easily obtained.

There are not one, but two, adventures included in this offering and both of them are very well done. The Portal Under The Stars is a great adventure, but is very deadly for the levels provided. I haven’t played a game in a long time where each player needs 2-4 characters in order to successfully finish the game. I do remember those with fondness, though. They’re great games where risks are rewarded and stupidity is punished.

The next adventure, The Infernal Crucible of Sezrekan the Mad, is a straightforward dungeon crawl, but there’s a twist in the game (I’m not going to give it away here) that requires the players to think things through rather than approach a “kill ‘em all and let the gods sort it out” attitude. I like this quite a bit.

Oh. I forgot to mention the maps. I’m not sure who “DKZ” (I think the last letter is a ‘Z’) is, but his (or her) artistic style in creating the maps is wonderful. If you have a chance, snag this booklet just for the maps that are included. It’s a great piece of artwork that is also completely functional. I’ve seen many maps that were done with a “high art” style that failed to be usable by the GM, but this is not the case here.

Grade: A / These two adventures are a great introduction to DCC. Why not an “A+”? Mainly because of the Zocchi Dice that are used in the system. I already have too many dice and don’t need a system that will add more oddities to my collection.

The DMPC Question

The DMPC is like a PC, but is run by the DM. I’ve done this before and it was nearly disastrous. The group ended up creating a party without an arcane spellcaster, and I felt like I needed to fill the gap because of the way the prepublished adventure was designed. They needed an arcane caster to complete the adventure, and I didn’t feel like spilling the beans to the group or forcing someone to play something they didn’t want to play. Instead, I ran a DMPC in the group. In the end, I (the DM as PC) was the hero of the adventure because my “PC” was the only one that could complete the final, vital steps of the adventure. It totally stole the glory from the group, and I’m very sorry for that. I doubt that I’ll ever again do this.

My Top 5 FRPG Artists – Number 4 – Peter Fenlon

These are some fantastic maps by Peter Fenlon. I had seen some of them before, but seeing them all in a single web collection showed me how impressive his work is.

The Architect DM: Nations as Character Backgrounds

One of the better games that I played was telling the players that they will be adventuring in nation X, but banning them from having a background that started in said nation. I told them that the final stages of their background would draw them into the nation. It was a hoot! Each person had their own culture, language and expectations about things should be done. The role playing involved was top notch! I can’t wait to do something like that again.

A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies

In a tight spot as a GM? Maybe these eight items will be just right for you as advice on how to get out of the fire and back into the frying pan!

In Anticipation of GenCon: Convention Tips 6 for Players, 6 for DMs

There are tons of pieces on advice on how to stay clean, healthy, happy, engaged and entertained at a conference. This is one such post. I’ll probably always link to these types of posts because conventions can be really stressful on the heart, mind and body. Anything that makes the trip smoother is worth a read.

When I saw “GURPS 4e” in the top-left corner of this offering, I got very excited. Finally! Something from Steve Jackson Games. Alas, it was not to be. This used stat blocks from GURPS and the PD20 Modern systems, but did not include any explanation of the rules or systems. This really disappointed me in the freebie, and then I realized that the Amarillo Design Bureau wasn’t here to sell me a game system, but a setting. I’ll forgive them for splitting me up between GURPS and PD20M and not giving me any rules to hang my hat on.

This sixteen page book included sporadic information wrapped around several sample characters. There were seven characters included in the booklet. Each character came with a background and full stat blocks for GURPS and PD20M. However, each page that contained a character also contained a small bit of vital information for the GM. It’s like they took spare space from each page and scattered charts, randomizers and other GM information wherever they could find some whitespace. This meant it prevented me from photocopying the prebuilt characters and handing them out. It limits the usefulness of the book because of the time investment necessary to get the stats to the characters. Of course, I could always get my group to build out their own characters using one system or the other and then run the mini adventure.

Speaking of the mini adventure, I really like what I see. It’s free form enough to allow the GM to make quite a few decisions on his own to cater the adventure to his/her particular group. I also like the details given for the three optional ships provided as well as the deck maps right in the middle of the book. It’s very well done.

Grade: B / Good adventure, but can’t be run by itself. It got a higher grade than other books that did this to me because of the free form quality of the adventure.