A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XVII

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XVII

I haven’t done a link post for a while, so this one is a bit bigger than usual. Maybe I should imply in the title that it’s some monthly thing instead of weekly. On the other hand I might just miss a self-set monthly deadline as well.

Free Stuff

Liminal Horror (itch.io)

Wanderer Bill’s Grenzland Fanzine

BLUELITE: A Holmes Basic Hack (Troy Press)

Random Tables

d100 – Magical Spears (d4 Caltrops)

d100 – So You’ve Been Brought Back From The Dead… (d4 Caltrops)

TTRPG Thought and Ideas

Joy and Devilry in the Films of Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer (Taskerland)

The Tactile and Generic TTRPG – Boardgamey tablefeel using bits and bobs (The Lizard Man Diaries)

Toybox Creativity: The Genius of Dragon Ball (Prismatic Wasteland)

The Benefits and Tradeoffs of Random Generation Tables (Grumpy Wizard)

THE KNIGHTS OF THE (OD&D) TABLE: Application to Arthurian Myth (I Cast Light)

Some thoughts on Charisma (Ruprecht’s RPG Blog)

The brilliance of unrealistic hit points (DM David)

Dungeons and Dragons may improve mental health (James Cook University)

FKR Simply Defined (Flintlocks and Witchery)

Your OSR Setting is a Deathworld (Den of the Lizard King)

Level Drain and Loss Aversion in D&D (The Psychology of Video Games)

The Truth About Magic-Users (Doomslakers)

Care and Feed of Hirelings (Back in the Labyrinth)

Literary Archetypes and Encounter Design (Welcome to the Death Trap)

Hobby History

‘Theatre of the mind’: celebrating 50 years of Dungeons & Dragon (The Guardian)

WHAT’S IN A NAME? That Which We Call A D&D By Any Other Name Would Delve Just As Deep (I Cast Light)

DM Aid

A forgotten 0D&D Rule for Fighters (Hall of the Grymlorde™)

Keep Dungeons Weird! (The Hungry Dungeon Master)

Asking The Right Questions (Worldbuilding By Bibliomancy) (dungeonfruit)

Morale & Guards & Patrols (Elfmaids and Octopi)

Way Shrines and Holy Sites as “Civilization” (Welcome to the Death Trap)

Nymphs in your Area! (Traverse Fantasy)

The Same Page Tool (Deeper in the Game)

New Campaign? Finish the Old One with a To-Do List (Alphastream)

How to Run a D&D Heist for Players that Love to Steal (Cats and Dice)

Beginning Of The End (How To Finish A Campaign) (dungeonfruit)

Tips and Tricks: DIY Dungeon Tiles (TTRPG Kids)

The Official OSR D&D Skill List (alch3mist nocturn3)

Four Interesting Reward Types in D&D (RJD20)

Player Aid

Ye Olde Fantasy: Family Matters (Aboleth Overlords)

How To Play A Cleric (The Tao of D&D)

Other Bits and Bobs

Rocksolid Light web gateway to rec.games.frp.misc and rec.games.frp.dnd

campaignwiki.org newsnet forum (available via web and nntp)

Dragon’s Lair (Vintage RPG Podcast)

Medieval Cappadocian dungeon design! (Eldritch Fields)

The only living master of a dying martial art (BBC News)

Bardic Inspiration

[Das Schwarze Auge] Some interesting social skills

Dancing girls at Cairo illustration by David Roberts (1796-1864).

I was reminiscing about skills in Das Schwarze Auge again the last few days, mostly while trying to think about ways of including the parts I really liked into my own DnDish houserule-monster of a ruleset.

Skills haven’t been part of DSA from the beginning. The original boxed set did not come with a proper skill system. Like DnD before some classes had special powers (e.g. the dwarf class had a “dwarf nose” that allowed them to find gold), but the first attempt at a skill system came with the Abenteuer-Ausbau Spiel (the extension set) in ’85. This was quite a basic system, although it did contain interesting bits that were left out of the system with the second edition. Others were developed later, out of other parts of the rules.

Minnekünste (the arts of courtly love) was one that got lost rather quickly. It referred to the more general way to present themselves and was a catch-all term for doing all the stuff that might be expected from a knight in society. Minne (courtly love) is a big part of medieval German literature, and it’s both a sign of Ulrich Kiesow’s academic background, and the whole background of the setting (the whole name Aventuria was based on the medieval idea of Âventiure, the trials a hero had to complete in a heroic story). This was a game about knights doing knight stuff. You might not have thought so from the adventures, but that’s what it was.

Zwergennase (dwarf nose): This one was part of the class features of the dwarf class in 1st edition, became a skill in 2nd, was removed in 3rd, then came back as an advantage in DSA4. It refers to a skill of detecting hidden spaces and other oddities in the architecture that could lead to secret compartments/doors. Not unlike what elves could do in B/X.

Dancing: introduced in 2nd edition (which didn’t have courtly arts anymore) this is one of the most useful of skills there is. It covers both a way to make some extra money in the early game (dancing in the pubs or on markets), and impress people in the later one (at a court, or maybe a witches’ sabbath).

Gaukeln: this is one where we hit the difference between German and English. There is no single good translation of this one. Gaukeln is entertainment, not in the society sense, but in the juggling/fools kind of way. Playing tricks, performing feats with panache. Gauklers can be fools, jugglers, clowns, illusionists, stage magicians, mountebanks, or maybe even the modern professional wrestler. Originally the translation would have been minstrel, but that became mostly limited to musicians around the 16th century. This also a very good skill to have in the game, where it can provide some easy money, distraction, or just a reason to get invited into a noble’s fortress.

Zechen (Carousing): I don’t know how to say this, but this is one of THE most useful skills in DSA. DSA after all is a German game. This governs how well you can drink, how you can hold your liquor, and how well you can handle yourself even under the influence. This comes up a surprising lot in scenarios in 2nd and 3rd edition, and for good reason. This allows you to keep a cool head during social events, might win you a drinking competition, or might help you against the effects of some potions. I think like the courtly love above this also is one of influenced by German folk tales, as there is at least one famous story where the drinking skills of a mayor saved a town from Swedish invaders.

[Labyrinth Lord] Tomb of the Serpent Kings Session 1 (also MapTool)

[Labyrinth Lord] Tomb of the Serpent Kings Session 1 (also MapTool)

A while ago I started playing with some people on an online server. That was about the time when I decided that I should maybe be playing more often than just GMing. Unfortunately life intervenes a lot, and lately there haven’t been that many games in the main campaign to keep me busy. I am also co-DMing a Shadowrun game lately, so there’s that, but I am missing the OSR fantasy fare. So I decided to run a game on the server, specifically with MapTool, which I have been hovering around for a while, but never actually used. In fact I never used a proper VTT to play, so this would be a first.

I decided to use Tomb of the Serpent Kings for it because it’s nicely done and available for free, and I already had it played before, and Labyrinth Lord as a game system because that has been my basic system for a while (yeah, I never updated to OSE even though I use some of the material for it).

Game Report

The group consisted of 2 elves (Damion and Eltariel) and a MU (Frondo) with his torchbearer/muscle (Big Boris). They originally were rustled up by the local bailiff to apprehend the bandit Wild Man Roberts and his two not-so-merry-men, who were seen digging somewhere at a hillside a short way off.
The bandits were easily located inside a hole they opened in the hillside. This turned out to be a hallway going into the dark, with the bandits lying dead just a short way in. Having determined they were done in by a simple poison trap in the ceiling they decided to investigate a bit further (and do some not-graverobbing) when they encountered sarcophagi with clay statues of snake-men inside. Inside the statues were small amounts of treasure and snake skeletons (turning it to actual graverobbing). Also poison gas.
A large door at the end of the hallway was trapped by a mechanism, which they devised to disable with various methods, giving them access to a larger room with three wooden coffins. Soon enough those turned out to have skeletons of snake-like beings inside that started attacking the newly minted graverobbers. Unfortunately a series of good attacks cost the life of two of the party (both elves), and the unlife of two snakes, while Frondo and his torchbearer took off almost immediately.
Out of sight of the skeleton the two decided to rearm the trap outside and trigger it after baiting the last skeleton into it’s area. The giant stone hammer coming out of the ceiling took care of the last opponent.
Frondo returned to give his companions a proper burial (and loot their bodies), then turned back to civilization to collect the bounty on the bandits.

Notes regarding MapTool

• MapTool worked great until it didn’t. At the end we had some issues when two of us got disconnected while the others still could see things move around. I think I should have restarted the server in that case, but as it was in the very end of the 2-hour time slot we just played out the rest without it.
• MapTool now has a function (marked as experimental) that allows to create a server and connect to it directly from other clients. No more futzing around with port forwarding in this case. Unfortunately maybe not as stable as it could be (see above). Still, the lack of such a function was one of the reasons I did not use the software before, as it would have been too much work to get it running with my network setup. Now that problem is gone, it literally has become a matter of creating a server, having players connect (they are prompted for a PIN), and their computers downloading the media files from my computer.
• Speaking of media files, MapTool allows to use media files from the players computers to use in the game. Those are also added to the campaign file automatically. In fact it even allows to run a remote server where the campaign file is stored, I just haven’t been able to try that one yet. But other than that? Want to have a new token? Drop a picture in the related TokenTool, make a suitable token, then just add it in a folder and use it as you will. Nice.
• I do find the use of MapTool surprisingly convenient. There are a few things that one can’t do in the tool (e.g. animated maps would be nice, but can’t be done in the current architecture), and some stuff that can be done but needs to be configured properly (no one has bothered to create a script framework for OSR games yet it seems), but I have a lot of options to show the players exactly what I want them to see. Still there are a few things that I still have to figure out.
• The dynamic lighting in the dungeon is of course the star of the show. One can add a vision blocking layer and have PCs walk through the dungeon and have them see whatever it is that they have a) lit and b) what they can see. This can make for some interesting tactical gaming where some monster or character can see some things, but cannot see others. I noticed that it also takes a lot of mental strain from me as a DM as I don’t need to track either light or walking order in this case.
• The other thing that helps a lot is the way one can organize a scenario here. Players can generally see 3 layers on the screen: tokens, objects, and background, and they can interact only with the first one. Another hidden layer is present, but is only available to DMs. This is useful, as it allows you to drop information (e.g. attached to a numbered token) at the appropriate places, and just call it up by going over it on the token layer. As it’s hidden it is not actually visible for players, and you can have your whole adventure in there, slowly following along as the PCs explore. Incredibly useful.
• That said, there was an annoying issue with players moving tokens over specific (invisible to them) GM tokens with information, and me not being able to access them then. I think this might have a button that allows DMs to get a hold of tokens under others. but if it has I haven’t found it yet.
• Not every part of the lighting system is perfect though. I still can’t make head nor tails out of elevations and depressions. I don’t quite know what to think about them. They don’t update in ways that I would expect from either. I would for example depressions with a light source inside expect to be lit inside, but they aren’t. The lighting system also takes a little to register someone has updated settings. More than once we got stuck in a place with a newly lit lantern not lighting anything because we didn’t move.
• Doors are one of the things I will have to get into more. It is possible to create movable doors, but how is still a bit of a mystery to me.

Notes regarding Labyrinth Lord

• we were playing by the book, but that might have been a mistake. The game might need to become a bit less deadly, so next time we should use the splintering shield rules, a death and dismemberment chart, and some rule about helmets I should first figure out (stock LL doesn’t seem to have a bonus for helmets
• one house rule I already used for XP is XP for exploration: every new room discovered/mapped gives 50xp
• I do wonder if I should have used Labyrinth Lord or maybe have gone even more minimal with White Box Fantasy.

Notes regarding Tomb of the Serpent Kings

• I already played this one with another online group at the beginning of the pandemic. Unfortunately that didn’t last long, and we never managed to get to some of the more interesting parts of the dungeon.

Note: I did post a previous version of this article on the campaignwiki.org newsnet forum.

[Review] Stirring the Hornet’s Nest at Het Thamsya

This is a 28 page “temple-crawling adventure” written by Munkao ostensibly for Into the Odd and Cairn (but actually largely system-agnostic), and set in the South-East Asian inspired world of Kala Mandala. I don’t think transferring it into other settings should be that much of an issue, as long as one can come up with a reason why there’s a vaguely Asian-coded monastic community around to set this at. My personal setting is set around a sort of crossroads of cultures so I have absolutely no issue with that), and this might fit in great in some of the areas I haven’t worked out that much yet.

The mission as it is is not one that lends itself to the usual loot and pillage gaming: Het Thamsya is a fledgling temple school in a larger collective, dedicated to the path of Automata. The founder of this school has nearly finished a decade long meditation, but giant (belying the title) wasps have created a nest in the back of the building while everyone else was busy not disturbing the meditator. Your mission now, if you should accept it, is to carry the meditating monk out of there, without waking him.

The complications arise from the guards set by your mission objective (automata of various kinds), the wasps, and a bunch of other intruders that have entered without anyone knowing. Interestingly the wasp nest is detailed much more than you’d think, and there are things going on in there that are way more complicated than what you’d expect, as there’s some bizarre bio-horror twist lying in wait. Which makes for a fascinating chart of faction relations based on the instincts of the wasps and the commands left for the automata and how they interact with one another.

I do feel like I am missing some context for the world of Kala Mandala, as I am not quite sure what some of the things reference. On the other hand it’s easy to just plug in whatever association comes up and go with it. The scenario offers a compelling mission and plenty of complications to make for some interesting play. I think this might be interesting to play with multiple groups to see how either of them make it through.

RPG Magazine Recon pt. 1 – Dragon Magazine 63, 74, 104, 114

Bob Walters 1982, published without context in Dragon 63

Dungeons and Dragons was published 50 years ago, and almost immediately afterwards ‘zines and magazines appeared to give players and DMs more material to work with. And even beforehand things were published in Diplomacy zines and even mainstream magazines.

And there have been a lot of attempts by fellow bloggers to go through these magazines systematically, although in a lot of cases they focused almost exclusively on the holy trinity of Dragon, Dungeon, and White Dwarf. Which after all were the biggest RPG magazines there were in the English language.

So I decided to write down some articles when I find them. Mostly as a way for myself to remember them (I keep coming across useful articles that don’t quite fit with what I am working on, only to half-remember them months later when I could use them). But also because some stuff should not be forgotten just because it’s only in some magazine published halfway across the world 40 years ago.

I am going to use a small rating system for now:

A – for good articles with good game use

B – for articles with some use

S – for articles that are so good they could sustain a whole campaign or at least multiple sessions on their own

H – for articles of historical interest but maybe no actual game use

C – for campaign specific articles with barely any use outside that particular campaign

F – for fiction of note

I – for some general interest stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else, also stuff that is neither good nor bad but maybe has an interesting idea

J – for jokes, cartoons, and humor of note

T – for things that are so terrible I just have to point them out

That… should be enough for now. I don’t think this will be done systematically as I mostly want to note down when I come across some stuff. If an article is not on the list I didn’t think it was interesting.

So lets begin.

Dragon 63 (1982)

G. Gygax, Featured Creatures: Deva, p.5 H – preview to MMII I guess
G. Gygax (?), Where the Bandits are, p. 14 C – details on the Bandit Kingdoms in Greyhawk
Tom Armstrong/Roger Moore, Bandits! p. 23 B – bandit NPC class, I mentioned before I have reevaluated the use of those. This one might be a bad guy, or it might be Robin Hood. I can see some use for that.
Roger Moore, …but not least: The humanoids. Goals and gods of the kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, & gnolls, p. 25, B – some interesting ideas for minor gods and spiritual beings of the humanoids. Might be useful for fleshing out some humanoid tribes. Misogynist vibes though.
Larry DiTillio, Chagmat, p. 33, I – adventure level 1-4, arachnid antagonists, very mediocre dungeon, overwritten, slightly misogynist vibes (why do spider care about abducting maidens specifically?), but has an old one-armed swordsman NPC I wanna steal
G. Gygax, A Couple of Fantastic Flops, p.72 H – Gygax trashes the Schwarzenegger Conan movie and promises a D&D movie with the quality of Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark by 1984/85. Gee, I wonder how that turned out?

Dragon Magazine 74 (1983)

Leonard Lakofka/Brad Nystul, Bureaucrats and Politicians, p.8. I (maybe J) – two NPC classes, overwritten and not very useful, although both read more like a joke I don’t quite get
Ronald Hall, Landragons. Wingless wonders of a faraway land, p.12, B – creature feature about wingless dragons, notably the third entry manages to mess up the notation for inches and feet so bad it requires multiple rereadings
Lewis Pulsipher, A player character and his money…, p. 50, A/H – first appearance of the silver standard conversion, otherwise lots of ideas to part the PCs from their money

Dragon 104 (1986)

[OH wow, I was thinking about it, and there was absolutely nothing notable or useful in this issue. The closest was this:]
Christopher Wood, A plethora of paladins, p. 45, I – expands the “holy warrior” archetype from Paladins and Anti-Paladins out into the other 7 alignments. All are NPC classes and all kind of useless. I don’t see any immediate use for this.

Dragon 114 (1986)

Bill Muhlhausen (and others), The Witch, p.8 I – this is the at least third incarnation of the Witch NPC class. Unfortunately it still is barely usable as the class still is predicated on being an evil overpowered demon-worshipper.
Nick Kopsinis/Patrick Goshtigian, Grave Encounters. Creatures that lurk in cemeteries and crypts, p. 22, B – bread and butter article with graveyard encounter tables
Margaret Weis/Kevin Stein, Running Guns. Ground Vehicles for the BATTLETECH game world, p. 78, H – I’d rate it higher, but seriously all that is covered in the core rules by now
Randal S. Doering, High-Tech Hijinks. Integrating technology into an AD&D game campaign, p. 84 B – a bit overwritten

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XVI

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XVI

100 Village Notable Features (OSRVault)

d10 Graveyard Dressing (Azukail Games)

d12 Mysterious Vapours & Miasmas (Elfmaids & Octopi)

DnD turns 50 and something else turns 200 (Playing at the World)

‘The hobby is only just catching up to what Greg did 40 years ago’: Pendragon 6E, ‘ultimate’ edition of an RPG legend’s masterpiece, reclaims its crown (dicebreaker)

Using TTRPGs to change the narratives around Autism (Roll for Kindness)

Tips and Tricks: DIY TTRPG zines and booklet props (TTRPGKids)

Save the Day: How Young Chinese Are Role-Playing Their Way to Wealth (Sixth Tone)

How to make a monster (Medievalists.net)

Grimoire Of The Pale (d66 spells) (Another Hamsterish Hoard)

A Generator for New Words, Or: Automatically Grafting Prefixes and Suffixes Garned from Wikitionary (Archons March On)

Symbols & Lost Languages to Guide Your Campaign (Dice Goblin)

Flavortown: Why A Soldier Is A Rogue Not A Fighter (Renaissance Woodsman)

Bring Out Your Dead (The Dododehecadron)

Uniquely Undead (Dyson Logos)

Bringing Back the Magic (Magician’s Manse)

Creating monster behavior instead of monster abilities (The Luminescent Lich)

Knots (A Procedure For Elegant Jaquaysing) (Dungeonfruit)

Dungeon Walls, Ceilings & Floors (Elfmaids & Octopi)

The Miners of Redhorn (Mediums and Messages)

[Video] The BBC on D&D in 1983

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XV

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XV

In the beginning I thought I’d manage to make this a weekly kind of article. But sometimes I barely get a morsel of content for it, sometimes my cup runneth over…

Free Stuff
Hardly something new, but the classic Barbarian Prince solitaire quasi-RPG is available for print and play (and if I remember well it has been since at least the aughts). Of course it also can be found online in reissued versions, so if you’d rather have that go for it.

The Highest Level of All: The Story of Fantasy Wargaming, is a free pdf download at CMU Press dealing with the history of the eponymous (if a bit incongruously titled) Fantasy Wargaming roleplaying game system. Yes, it turns out you can write whole books not only about DnD.

The Serpent-Song Hymnal (I Cast Light!) – A collection of tables for B/X-style games

Aventuria – Mythical Stories Soundtrack by Ulisses Spiele (drivethrurpg) – Nominally for Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye, but really should fit most games

Random Tables

100 Mushrooms and Their Effects (dndspeak)

100 Interesting Rumors (Or Potential Plot Hooks!) (OSRVault)

100 Dungeon Graffiti (OSRVault)

Dungeon Non Combatants in and out of Combat (Elfmaids & Octopi)

d100 Ways for villagers to react to armed adventurers (Elfmaids & Octopi)

d100 Village Weirdos (Elfmaids & Octopi)

3×10 Initiation Rites (Eldritch Fields)

d100 – Boastworthy Bounties & Intriguing Enticements (d4 Caltrops)

D20 Reasons Why Werewolves, Devils, Wights, And So On Are Vulnerable To Silver (Archons March On)

D100+ Pulp City Names in the Vein of Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and So On and So On (Archons March On)

D20 Things That Might Go Wrong If You Have Too Many Hirelings (Archons March On)

GM Aid

Too Precious Encounters (The Alexandrian)

Four Tips to Drive Role Playing (Rise Up Comus)

Action: Reaction Rolls, Take Two… (Pits Perilous)

My Stocking Procedure (In Places Deep)

From Random Encounter To Intentional Antagonist (I Cast Light!)

How to never describe a dungeon! (Old Skulling)

Villain’s Schemes: Mayhem (Brandes Stoddard)

Dumb Duels – a Reasonably Engaging Dueling Minigame (Beneath Foreign Planets)

Ideas

The Isle of Wight: Planning the Sandbox (Trilemma Adventues)

Reimplementing Outdoor Survival (Traverse Fantasy)

Wilderness Levels (Methods & Madness)

The Problem Grows – Domains and Rats (Fail Forward)

Time, Gear, Skill: Sneaking (Dice Goblin)

OSR: Psychic Powers (Remixes and Revelations)

Theory

Wargames, storygames and RPGs (Methods & Madness)

John Romero’s Level Design Rules for DOOM (I Cast Light!)

The Underground Maze or Primordial Stack (All Dead Generations)

Situations and Resolutions in the original game (Chgowiz’s Games)

That is a Dragon (Blood of Prokopius)

Hobby History

Zock Bock Radio had an interesting episode on Zakoldovka, the first quasi-RPG published in Soviet Russia, just before that state broke up. Due to the subject matter this episode of this German podcast is actually in English. The rules for this game also can be found translated under Zakoldovka.com (and in my opinion they read as if someone encountered Talisman and Dungeons and Dragons and put them together.

Those Who Cross the Boundaries May Be Attacked: Gamers Hating Other Gamers (Tom van Winkle’s Return to Gaming)

Campaign Starter: The Retinue

Here’s a campaign starter I was thinking about using at one point soon:

You are the hired help. You start as grunts, torchbearers, henchmen, wizard apprentices, etc. And you followed the stalwart adventuring party on their greatest adventure.
And then you watched as those shining heroes battled the evil dragon king in his fortress of doom, and you saw how the heroic knight held off the dragon’s breath with his shield, you saw the arch-mage blind the beast, and you saw as the last ditch effort of the elven bowyer struck a last defeating blow in the dragon kings’ heart. Victory was theirs.
And the celebration lasted all of seven seconds.
Then the dead dragon crashed into the castle, ripping everything in its path with it into the abyssal depths.
Including your employers.
You are now struck behind enemy lines, in the middle of a wilderness, weeks away from civilization.
Welcome to level 1.

I should work that into a game soon. Maybe as a one-shot or a mini-campaign.

Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XIV

Extracted images from 1688 maps (itch.io)

D20 Things that can go wrong with too many Hirelings (Archons March On)

OSR Psychic Powers (Remixes and Revelations)

About those girls and guy playing DnD (Sarah Darkmagic)

…and again (Grognardia)

The Quieter Moments (Bastionland)

Dungeon Doors on 3d8 (Clerics Wearing Ringmail)

Neo-khuzdul (The Dwarrow Scholar)

Ringmail Medieval Battles (Clerics Wearing Ringmail)

D100 City Streets (d4 Caltrops)

D100 Anywhere but the tavern session starters (d4 Caltrops)