Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

Just so you all know.

The module, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is today's featured article on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

I worked a bit on this article back when the deletionists were trying to get all D&D related content removed from Wikipedia.  Some of them seemed to be on a crusade of one sort or another.

This is a great honor for any page.  Wikipedia has over 3 million articles and only 365 of them can be a featured page in a year.  There is even a Facebook page to celebrate.

So celebrate this classic module.  How?  Oh I don't know.  Mix some sci-fi in with your old school games.  I might need to run this one for my kids one day.  It is a lot of fun.

I remember buying this module in Springfield, IL at White Oaks Mall.  I sat on the floor of my parents van (yes kids on the floor with NO seat belts) reading this as we drove to some diner or something. I can't recall where we were going, just that I had this module and I ate it up.  Great memories of this one.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!

It's Independence Day here in the States.

Which is a excuse for Americans to play with fire all weekend, but that is cool.

It's odd we celebrate our independence from a country that is arguably one of our biggest friends and ally today.

Well I am celebrating all the same and so should you!

Revised Plan; Generational Mega Plots, Part 2

So.  I started to put my plan into action for the first major campaign arc I have planed out from square 1 and ran since the Dragon and Phoenix. My boys are excited, my wife will buy me adventures (how cool is that?!) and we will get going.

I told the boys that they can play two characters.  A character and a companion character via the 4e rules.  We need the extra characters because they wont survive otherwise.  So far we are going to have a Dragonborn Paladin, a Dragonborn Sorcerer, a Ranger with some thief skills and a "sword guy".  I am thinking the "Sword guy" will be a Warlord to get at the Leader role.  But we certainly need a Cleric if for nothing else than for undead battling.  Given that this is 4E I do want the roles to be covered.  So I have a defender and a couple of strikers, I need a controller and a leader.  The "Sword Guy" would work, but I am going to look into all the Leaders we have so far and see what would fit the best.  He would love a Swordmage, but that is a defender. Bard is a good choice, but I would really prefer a Cleric I think.  I like the Inovker as a potential controller too.

I am going to start to lay the seeds in my current game for this new one.  The 4e characters are the descendants of the 3.x characters.  So yeah I am likely to give 1st level characters a magic item each.  I  know some of you old-schoolers are cringing at the thought.  So some clues will be laid out about Tharizdun, the Raven Queen and Orcus.  I will have the Raven Queen kill Nerull sometime before the 4e game starts.  The result will be massive amounts of undead roaming the lands due to the "backlash of necrotic energies".  The Raven Queen is getting them under control, but this backlash has not escaped the attentions of Orcus and Vecna.  Orcus wants to use this time to kill the Raven Queen and put himself in her place.  She is still just a "godling" in age, but controls vast amounts of power.  Vecna wants her power pure and simple.  I can begin the 4e adventure with a story on how one horrible day all the dead got up and attacked.  There was a mini-Rekoning (ala WitchCraft RPG) and magic went crazy and now everything is new again.  Better than ramming a planet into my world.   If that is the case then I might want to run CM2 Death's Ride for the current 3.x group, build up to that.  Plus Death's Ride has something else I want, some great NPCs for the characters to fight as an arch nemesis.

The Raven Queen is going to be a combination of Death from The Endless, the Raven Queen of D&D world and the Morrigan of Celtic Myth.  So less like Xena becoming Death and more like Teen Titans' Raven becoming Death.  Or some combination.  I like the idea of the world's most powerful god being a teenage goth chick.  With her being younger it would help my kids relate to her more.

Some things to consider while I look over my adventures and books some more.

Revised Plan; Generational Mega Plots

I plan to come back to Cartoon Action Hour here in a bit, but I have something I want to get organized first.

So a while back I posted a plan for the adventures I wanted to run with my family using 4E.

Well since that time, some gaming has happened, some looking over various adventures and some tests on my part has brought me to the conclusion that I can't run some of those old school modules under 4E after all.  Certainly I am still working on my current 3.x adventures with my kids.

Now mind you, this is not a bad thing nor is it reflective of the modules, 4e or "Old School".
But it has forced me to change my plans.

So for the "Dragon Slayers" game I am running I'll add some of those classic modules.  The characters are all right around 13th level now, with one just on the verge of 10th.  The ultimate goal of this game is to defeat Tiamat in the "Graveyard of Dragons". What can I say, my kids like the old D&D cartoon.    The rules are under 3.x edition, which has an odd mix of D&D 3.0, with some 3.5, minor bits from Pathfinder, BESM d20 and Star Wars d20 (the revised one that came out after Attack of the Clones).

Also some of these modules are going to be played by me under Pathfinder in either my "Big Kids Group" or the "Little Kids Group".  Currently the LKG is going through "B2 The Keep on the Borderlands".  I have already used bits of "X1 Ilse of the Dread" and "B4 The Lost City".  I know that in the one of the Pathfinder groups we will go through the GDQ series at some point, most likely the Little Kids Group.  I will be running "C2 Ghost Tower" under the Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space game.

After that those characters will retire and their descendants will complete a new Quest.  The defeat of Orcus.
I'll run this one under D&D 4E and I do plan on it taking many years.

I am not 100% certain how the adventures will pan out, but I do want to use the D&D4 ones for ease.

• H1 Keep on the Shadowfell
• H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth
• H3 Pyramid of Shadows
• P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens
• P2 Demon Queen's Enclave
• P3 Assault on Nightwrymn Fortress
• E1 Death's Reach
• E2 Kingdom of the Ghouls
• E3 Prince of Undeath

Part of this is my desire to have them battle Orcus at the end. Plus I like to overall plot of involving the Raven Queen vs Orcus and Orcus getting a hold of some ancient artifact of Tharizdûn.

Those modules will get them from 1st to 30th level.  But I might want to add a couple here and there.  Not sure yet since I have not read them all in detail.   I also know some people have had issues with these modules, both in terms of how they fit together, plot and playability.  So I want to get things that are out now, and then tweak them as I need.  Afterall, if this is about fighting Orcus who gets an artifact from ancient Tharizdûn then I can lay some ground work in my 3.x game now for that.

So after all that I have some modules left over.

• B3 Palace of the Silver Princess, levels 1-3 (using bits from both the "Green" and "Orange" versions).
• L1 The Secret of Bone Hill, levels 2-4
• X2 Castle Amber, levels 3-6 (place it in the Shadowfell, which is the new Ravenloft anyway)
• I6 Ravenloft, levels 5-7. That is if I don't use it as a convert Ghosts of Albion adventure. Use some of the Ravenloft campaign/world setting stuff here too.
• S2 White Plume Mountain, levels 5-10
• I10 Ravenloft II, House on Gryphon Hill, levels 8-10.
• S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (with some of the info from the 3.5 update), levels 6-10
• WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, levels 5-10
• S1 Tomb of Horrors, levels 10-14 (though I might just wait for the new D&D4 version)
• S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, levels 8-12
• CM2 Death's Ride, levels 15-20. 

Then there are these modules:

• H1 Bloodstone Pass, levels 15+
• H2 The Mines of Bloodstone, levels 16-18
• H3 The Bloodstone Wars, levels 17-20
• H4 The Throne of Bloodstone, levels 18-100

Like the E series for D&D4, these send you to Orcus's layer to defeat him.   Of the lot, H4 would be the best one to use, maybe as a buffer between E2 and E3.   The others seem more suited for the Dragon Slayer's Pathfinder game.    Of course, I could convert the H1-H4 Bloodstone series to feature Tiamat instead of Orcus.   S4 and WG4 are linked and deal with Iggwilv, her Demonomicon and Tharizdûn.  They are good to set up the history of Orcus and Tharizdûn.  They can happen in either game. In the 4th Ed game I'd stick it in between H and P.  CM2 Death's Ride has some cool stuff in it. Good to set up the whole Orcus wants to be a God thing in the 3.x game.  Plus it would give me a good arch-nemesis for the characters to fight throughout.

The Ravenloft ones would be great for the Sunsword (a good weapon against the undead) but there is the Board Game coming out and I want it.  Plus I'd rather run Ravenloft these days under True20.  So I might have to find something similar.  If I use the new Tomb of Horrors then I could place a good aligned sword there.  There is a D&D4

There is a lot to do and figure out here.  But I see this as a good thing. Look at all the time I have.  I can plan out a mult-year arc of adventuring that would take my kids all the way to college.  Wouldn't have died to have done something like that?

Though I do need to figure out a way to get more dragons into the 4th Ed game for my oldest.

Now this is my attempt to bring Old Schoolers and New Schoolers together.

NEW SCHOOLERS:  What things should I be aware of when running the HPE series?

OLD SCHOOLERS: What classic, epic modules are a "must run" for a group of kids that were not even alive when Clinton was in office, let alone Carter.  What memory of "D&D" is a must have?  Barrier Peeks?  Tomb of Horrors?

Clarifications on Games being Played
- "Dragon Slayers" is a 3.x game that I play with my two sons and sometimes my wife joins us. The goal of this game is to defeat Tiamat.
- "Big Kids Game/Group" is a Pathfinder game where I play a Paladin.  In this group are my kids and the DM's kids (6 players, 1 DM)
- "Little Kids Game/Group" is a Pathfinder game where I play a Witch (same witch as I do in Dragon Slayers).  This is the group with the Problem Player.
Both Pathfinder games have the same DM.
- "Untitled 4th Ed Game" is a 4e game where the players are the same as Dragon Slayers, but the characters are their children or descendants. The goal of this game is to defeat Orcus.

Orcus is mine!!

So I got my Gargantuan Orcus today! And I am ready to sick him on some players.

There is Orcus next to Aspect of Orcus and the figure I use for my paladin.  It is very cool.
I already stated up Orcus for Unisystem, and I was comparing his 3.x stats with the newer 4.0 stats and it looks like he got weaker, 3.x had less hitpoints, but more hit dice than 4.0 does.    Anyone notice this?

Anyway there was something else I noticed while taking the pictures.

Left to right: Destroyah, a little Destroyah, Aspect of Orcus, Orcus.
The sizes are just about exactly the same.  I can have a Destroyah and an Aspect of Destroyah in a game.  I think if I did that I'd go with the idea that Destroyah is female.  Orcus' mate maybe?  More like a rival demon.

BTW that 6.5 Destroyah lists for 12 bucks.  We got it for 6 at Toys R' Us.  The little Destroyah came in a pack of a bunch of Godzilla monsters.

My fellow Eden Fan, Majin Gojira, has done up Angel/Ghosts of Albion stats for Destroyah (and others) over at the Eden boards.  I have also seen 3.5 d20 stats for Destroyah, but I think these are a tad high, though in line if she was an Elder God and not a demon.  She does seem to be more in line power with the likes of Cthulhu.

Of course as I am writing this my two boys are trying figure out what they need to fight both of them.

I remember being a young munchkin too!

Cartoon Action Hour, Season 2: Review

So a while back I picked up a game I had known about for a while; Cartoon Action Hour. I had heard a lot about it, how it was perfect for umlauting cartoons like G.I. Joe and Transformers and even He-Man and Thundaar. Well I'll be honest, I didn't watch many of those cartoons as a kid. I know of them, yes, and I watched episodes here and there, but my preferences were running much more to fantasy and slowly into horror and cartoons were not a good source for that then. But I wanted to get this game to see what the big deal was and to see if it could in fact do all these different kinds of stories. So I bought it.

 Well. It lived up to the hype.

Cartoon Action Hour: Season Two (CAH:S2) is an updated version of the earlier Cartoon Action Hour. You don't need the first game obviously to play this one, but it does come with conversion notes. Both were written by Cynthia Celeste Miller of Spectrum Games, a name that often comes up when people talk about Genre Emulation and Indie Games. Her other efforts were "Slasher Flick" and "Wild West Cinema", both games I also know of, but don't (yet) own, and like CAH, both come highly recommended. In addition to doing the writing for this game she also did all the layout, and she is also a drummer in a metal band, Slaygound. That is pretty cool if you ask me.

CAH is divided into "Channels" and not Chapters or Sections. Clever huh. Channel 1 (which we didn't have in the 80's but that is ok) is the obligatory "What is role-playing" and a definition of the cartons we will emulating; the Retro-Toon. The book goes one to explain why the Retro-Toon, and not say toons of the 90's and more. For example this game really focuses on the black and white morality of the toons of the age. G.I. Joe was good and Cobra was bad. End of discussion. While you certainly could play a bit more loose with the morality of the game (the He-Man episode "The Witch and the Warrior" comes to mind as one where evil may not be so evil. BTW also written by Paul Dinni. Mr. Dini and I will be in "witch-aholics anonymous" together one day. ) I would say don't. That is missing the allure and appeal of this game. Miller takes a bit of time and page space to break down why and how these toons worked the way they did and I think that it would be an injustice to run the game differently. Not to say your game can't be "dark", but this is not World of Darkness nor is it even Buffy.

Channel 1 ends with the best overview of 80's cartoons I have ever read. Frankly I'd love to see more of this, but this is fine as it is. Nearly worth the price of the PDF alone. Well….sorta, it is good, but we still have the whole book to read.

Channel 2 is about creating the series. This is an important step away from the normal Player make Character, GM makes World process of many games. In CAH:S2 everyone has to work together (see that!), so the GM makes the world first, with of course input from the players. Then when the world is defined the players can start on their characters. What does making a world, or a Series, in CAH:S2 mean? Well typically it means what sort of show are you going to do? Will this be soldiers fighting a multi-national terrorist organization? Robots from another planet? A hulking barbarian in world where magic and technology collide? All these are possible and there is even a "Character Sheet" for the series. I liked this sheet and I can see using it to plan out say a Buffy RPG or Supernatural season; it is flexible enough to use in any game. I love it when I get something like that. Once that is done and the tag line is created ("A Real American Hero!" or "More than Meets the Eye!") then it is time to create our stars.

Channel 3 is Character Creation. Character creation is a point buy system based on a number of "Proof of Purchase Points", with the amount allocated set by the GM when she makes the series. Guidelines are given. There are no set traits a character has or can have. Players need to come up with a concept and then they build that into a list of traits ranked 1 to 5 (or so, again set by the GM). So a "gigantic transforming robot" might have the following traits: "Robot 1, Transform 3, Plasma Gun 3" and then something that makes him unique "Leader of the Transbots, AF 4". This unique feature or features is called an "Action Feature" and it comes into play later. Think of G. I. Joe, Snake Eyes was the Ninja with a Sword so his Action Feature might be "Sword master, AF 6" since he never talked that is a negative trait "Never Speaks, X2". Miller does provide a list, but is very much against providing one. The purpose of the character creation is to find out what the character can do; not create a bunch of numbers to define them.  
I also liked this character sheet quite a bit.  The one from CAH 1 I think had more detail, but this one is great.  Now here is point of serious untapped potential.  Nearly any character from any game can be converted to a CAH:S2 character in a few simple steps.  Take Eric from the D&D cartoon.  We have stats for him thanks to the box set of DVDs, but in CAH he has traits like "Brave" and "Magic Bow, AF, 5"  So for his combat rolls he gets +5 and Snake Eyes above gets +6.  See, two different cartoons, two different series and concepts and we can already pit one against the other.  Cynthia Celeste Miller has written the Geek Rosetta Stone!

Channel 4 is Rules of Play and it is pretty simple, but good stuff. I want get into all of it since that has been covered elsewhere, but I like the "Setbacks" and the return from "Commercial Breaks"; again something I could see using in Buffy or one of the Anime RPGs I have reviewed. The dice mechanic is based on a d12, so nice to see it get some love. Roll a d12 add the appropriate trait and that is it. Sometimes there is a target number, sometimes there is a contested roll. The mechanic is not difficult. In fact I think the best way now to do "Animated Unisystem" is swap out the d10 for a d12. You can add "Oomph" to a roll like Drama Points, or you can have an issue with one of your "Sub plots". For the Snake Eyes example there is the issue with his former master and his arch rival.

The interesting thing about this is, it is on the same level as BESM 3.0 or even OVA. Use one to get ideas for the other, or combine them all for an Anime fueled 80's style retro-toon of mammoth quality.  Add CAH:S2 supplement "Going Japanese" and you are set.

Channel 5 is for Game Masters. It has all cool new rules and ideas for this game. How to run commercial breaks, sub plots, allies, hazards and threats.

Appendix 1 (dropping the style for a bit. Was UHF 1 too obscure?) We are given three complete series to run as our own with stars, enemies and even faux 80's television histories. "Warriors of the Cosmos" fills the Thundaar/He-Man void, "Strike Force Freedom" is the obvious nod to G.I. Joe and "Transbots" is about, well, Transforming Robots. With all the bases covered here (more or less) GMs should have not problem creating their own series.

What Else? Well there are conversions for Cartoon Action Hour 1. The bickering between the evil Kargorr and heroic Bravesteel is entertaining; very much in the vein of Space Ghost Coast to Coast I felt.

All in all this is a crazy fun game. Easy to learn and play. Some thought has to be put into the series and then the characters to get the full feel, but there are plenty of characters and series in the book. Plus this is a game that screams for splats. Do a series bible up, list some potential traits, add some ready to run characters with histories, put it all in a PDF and there you go. I am surprised with the flexibility of a game like this the Miller has not included some sort of Open License for it.

So in the tradition of RPG Net:

Style: 5
This game is stylish as all get out. Proof you don't need an art budget of thousands to get your point across.

Substance: 4.5 to 5
The funny thing about this is the subject matter can be a bit fluffy, but this game does such a great job of emulating it. I would like to have more examples; say something like Scooby-Doo or even a magic-centric series.

Name: Cartoon Action Hour: Season Two
Publisher: Spectrum Games
Author: Cynthia Celeste Miller
Category: RPG
Reviewed: PDF
Pages: 145 (including covers)

Like OVA, CAH:S2 takes a very simple approach to emulate their medium perfectly.  By begin simple it allows either game to go after all sorts of genre.
 
Links

• Spectrum Games
• Cartoon Action Hour: Season 2 page
• CAH: Playset, the free, online, playable demo.
• Cartoon Action Hour Fans Yahoo Group.  Tons of great material here.

Blogs you should Follow

So, my brothers were in town all weekend so I didn't get a chance to prepare any new material for this week yet.

But instead I thought I use today for something my brothers pointed out to me.  I follow a lot of blogs.
Maybe too many really, but there is so much cool stuff out there and so many interesting insights that I keep following more.

So I wanted to share with you all some of the smaller, lesser known finds.  Now just cause I am linking these and say not someone else's blog does not mean I like these better or even best.  I may not know the other blog you are thinking of, or I might not just have anything I want to say about them yet today.

So here are some I like and think they worth checking out.

Swords Against the Outer Dark
http://swordandsanity.blogspot.com/
Old School D&D + Old School Cthulhu.  I like this blog beasue it has this cool almost 70's occult revival + pulpy dark 30s vibe to it. It updated often and always with something that can be used.  Reminds me of a bit of the games I liked to run back in the day.

Daddy Grognard
http://daddygrognard.blogspot.com/
Another cool Old School blog with a lot of content.  It's blogs like that that make me think "man we should get all the coolest content together into one PDF."  But I think someone does that now anyway.

ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog
http://oldguyrpg.blogspot.com/
Ok, this one really doesn't need me to tell people how cool it is.  But ChgoWiz is a local guy and I have seen his games a few times.  He is back in the Blog scene and frankly I like to hear what he has to say.

Asshat Paladins
http://asshatpaladins.blogspot.com/
I like this blog because it is a cool eclectic mix of things.  He covers a lot of systems and games styles and averages a new post a day.  So not too bad really.  Everything is tagged for easy reading of the archives too.

Destination Unknown
http://unknownzine.blogspot.com/
Not just a song by Missing Persons another cool, eclectic mix of things.   All sorts of topics are covered and there is even a weekly video blog entry.

Rhonin's Ramblings
http://rhoninsramblings.blogspot.com/
Thoughts and posts of a 30+ year vet of the game scene.  Greg may be the only person I know who has played more games than me.  My DM for my current Pathfinder game (which he will post actual play reports, so you see how I do as a player.) and, hopefully, his postings on how do re-make the Marvel Universe as D&D 4 characters.

So there are just a few.
Like I said, these are ones I like.  There are a lot more.  Hopefully I'll talk about them soon too.