Redbeard's Ravings

That's Oso, my 13 year-old fur ball purring machine, expressing his opinion on Lamentations of the Flame Princess - Weird Fantasy Roleplaying. He likes it. 4 out of 4 mice. I think it is pretty kick ass myself, but right now my gaming time needs to be spent reading A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity which I've never run or played in before. Turns out my friends conned me into DMing for the mini tournament he's running. Rest assured, both Oso and I will express ourselves in more detail.

One of the gamers in our group is hosting a tournament at his house a drive south east of Seattle on Saturday, August 28, starting at 2:00PM If you are in the area and read this blog - send me an email at redbeard dot seattle on gmail. Here's the text used in the invite: You are invited to the 2nd Annual Old school RPG/BBQ summer party! I will be providing a 1/4 barrel of micro-beer, polish dogs, chips, and some soda. We will be looking to get enough players together to play 1e AD&D , with 2 DMs, and playing a tournament style game of the TSR module A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity. Pre-gen characters will be provided. All you need to bring is your dice, imagination, and anything different or additional you want to eat or drink. While I prefer sandbox campaigns to tournament modules, I dig getting inspired by seeing how other folks play and DM. Plus it should be an opportunity for a bit of a blow out, gaming wise. Odd things happen when game for over five hours, odd, fun things...

There have been a number of blog posts lately on universal mechanics. If I may, I'd like to present some guidelines to follow BEFORE you tell your players to roll. Now, I'm a fan of universal mechanics and feel they're one thing from latter permutations of DnD to import into old school play. However, a universal mechanic has some pitfalls. I say this as a DM that has played those latter permutations and is now running a game that harkens back to old school ways. I try to challenge the players, not just the characters. As a DM, I like the convenience and freedom of deciding how difficult a task is and having a framework to place that in. The essential elements of the framework are a scale of difficulties (including opposed checks) and measurement of character ability. During play this means that I can concentrate on creating, listening and adjudicating without pausing the game to look up a rule. The players also don't need to be confused unduly and have some expec...

James of Grognardia posted his campaign's take on demihumans and how they are different than humans with different stats and an ego problem. Below is my own take that we've used in our Greyhawk/Yggsburgh/Zagyg campaign. I surrendered to how players would play elves et al as humans with different stat bonuses, but wanted a rational for why demihuman communities and npcs would be different and separate from the mostly human setting, for tension to exist between isolationist elves and expansionist human nations. Each player with an elf or gnome would get a copy of this although it is written from the elf perspective. If I was to rewrite it I would make it more concise. If DM prepared setting material is over a page you run risks of making the campaign for the DM's self indulgence and not about the player's actions. Players won't read or remember more than a page anyway. A player's advice to me some campaigns ago: 'you've got a great campaign, but you...

As I've posted before , I've been disappointed with how ordinary the Wychwood encounters seemed as depicted in the Yggsburgh hardback. I've tried to flavor it more with fey quality ala Midsummer Night's Dream. For players in Yggsburgh, there is a one very big unstated spoiler from the Yggsburgh hardback. Nearly all the rest of the adventure is my own creation or my own import from other sources. The players seemed to enjoy the puzzle solving and negotiation challenges that the evening entailed. Having had bad experiences on both sides of riddle situations, I picked a riddle that was hopefully easy to solve for the six players; the alternative would be that a party of level 2-4 would have to fight an ettin. They did have the idea from the ettin's size and description that they didn't really want to fight the ettin, but they had alternatives besides the riddle; getting the heads to argue and running away. Fighting was certainly a choice - one that surely woul...

Another in a series of posts of monsters inspired by Amazing Monsters: Verses to Thrill and Chill a wonderful collection of whimsical monster verses. This is definitely in my Appendix N. I'd like more whimsy in the game, and I'd especially like a more different 'fey'; something more Midsummer Nights Dream or folk tale like than simply invisible pixies with darts. They'll be there too, for sure. One of my few disappointments in the Yggsburgh hardback was the 'Wychwood' encounters which amounted to little more than wood elves, satyrs and centaurs. All of these creatures could be all too easily interpreted as bags of hit dice with no mystery whatsoever; by the book that's pretty much all they are. I'll certainly be following Mandragora as he's already done real research into all this. So, here it is: The Zobo Bird Do you think we skip, Do you think we hop, Do you think we flip, Do you think we flop, Do you think we trip This fearful measure An...

I'm going to propose requiring a caller in our campaign. We never had a caller before, and I've never played with one. Even in a sprawling, old school sandbox with umpteen players , there were typically a max of six players in an expedition. Having a large group of of people that all want to show up and game is one of those "good problems." Usually. From our stable of 12 regular players (all adults) and a few occasionals, we usually get 8 and sometimes ten players. Running an old school system (Castles and Crusades), we still get several combats and a lot of exploration and conversation. 10 is just too much. Even without inter-party conflicts, there are just too many inputs on the DM, the table is too large, etc. We've had a couple of sessions where both co-DMs ran sessions (of 4 and 5) in separate rooms. But we don't always have that luxury, and it makes it hard on the DM that was looking forward to taking their turn at playing. And last week we ha...