The Dragon and the Phoenix: Episode 3

Episode 3: The Serpent of Destiny 

Episode 2: Dead of Night by ~WebWarlock on deviantART

December 13, 2002 Friday

The cast are transported to the legendary Thebes of the Gods. Here they learn that the god Set has been corrupting Willow with magic for his own nefarious needs. The God Osiris also has issues with Willow. The Goddess Isis intercedes when they learn that Willow and Tara’s battle with Leviathan was foretold on millennia old cartouches. Isis gives Willow an amulet to protect her from dark magic.

Story Arc and Game Design elements: Willow receives The Ankh to protect her from “dark magic”. Try to make some sense out of “dark magic addiction” to a group that has a collective 90+ years on writing about magic and witches. Do away with magic addiction rules.
Soundtrack: Santana “Black Magic Woman”.

Notes and Comments:I can't tell you how much I hated the magic addiction rules. Well, not the rules themselves, but the concept from the show. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid! It was everything I felt went wrong with the show. Playtesting rules for them was like polishing a turd.  We opted for a different metaphor.  We originally wanted to go with Taint from WitchCraft.  But for various reasons we didn't.  I think if I were to do this again I might go with Taint and the Ankh would still draw off the Taint from Willow.  The Ankh plays a greater role in the Willow-centric episode "Shadows in the Rain" later in the season.

We also wanted to add more mythos for other cultures to our game, this is the Egyptian one. Dealt with the whole Osiris nonsense. We began more myth building here and establish that Willow and Tara had been through other lives before and were together then too. Their connection to Leviathan via Set is also established.

Author Kirk Baldridge was one of the people that helped me with the Road Stories ideas and this was his second adventure.  His first was second season episode, Deep in the Heart. 
The cover was designed by Kitten artist Shinnen, whose work I have always liked.  The interior art was done by me and featured some Egyptian cartouches that detailed the events coming up in the series. These disparate events and prophecies became part of the larger Elder Prophecies which has appeared off and on throughout all my games.  Again basically saying that if a world does not have a living Willow and a living Tara it is doomed to be consumed by Leviathan.  Sorry for your world if this not the case. ;)

The plot kicks up next week in Episode 4 where we meet our enemy and Tara becomes a stripper.

What is Old School?

I read a lot of old school and OSR (not always the same thing) blogs.  I admire the passion felt by these players and I can understand where they are coming from even if I can't honestly consider myself part of the "old school movement".  After all what I share with these folks, outside of age, is we all started out pretty much the same.  As the years went by we all tried different games.  The main difference is that these players went back to those older games and I kept going on.

I love my old D&D books, I love my clones, but I also like Pathfinder and D&D4 and a slew of other games that are no where near D&D.  But this all has gotten me thinking.

What is Old School?

Is it just playing an older, maybe unsupported, set of rules?  Is it a DIY thing related to the first point?  Is it objecting to a rules-set? (cause I have to say that by in large the old school crowd seems to bitch more about D&D4 than the D&D4 crowd does about old-school).  Is it doing more with less?

What makes you want to play OD&D or one of it's clones, cousins or copies?

I'll be blunt about my reasons, it's nostalgia, pure and simple.  I like to play the older games because I liked them 20+ years ago.

Tell me your reasons why you play an old-school version of D&D (original print or clone).

Ken St. Andre responds to James Shipman

Long time readers here know of the whole James Shipman debacle.  Briefly he stole art and content and is selling it as his own.  Here are some links to bring you up to speed.

http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2009/12/outlaw-press-uses-stolen-art-and.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-from-outlaw-press.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/06/outlaw-press-is-back-and-still-stealing.html

Well there is new movement on this front, none other than Tunnels and Trolls' own Ken St. Andre.

Ken has posted and open letter to RPGNet

An open letter to James Shipman from Ken St. Andre:

James,

I received your package yesterday with some surprise. Received six copies of the revised Gristlegrim Dungeon. This dismays me, as I told you to quit publishing it back in January of this year when I broke with you. If this parcel was an attempt at a reconciliation between us, then I appreciate the effort you took, but I reject it. Our friendship and partnership is broken and done forever. I do not wish to collaborate on Gristlegrim or any other project with you. Not now! Not ever again! You had no right to add your material to my work. You have no right to continue publishing and selling it. Please stop!

James, you no longer have any right to publish or sell my works. We have no written contracts. We have no formal accounting of royalties. Your habit of sending money and or copies of the items is no longer good enough. Any informal agreements we may have made in 2009 and earlier are terminated on my side of the deal. I no longer wish to associate with you, either professionally or informally.

Find some other outlet for your creativity. Leave me, and leave Tunnels and Trolls, alone. I am rejecting any further association with you.

I hope this is clearly understood. Do not publish anything with my name on it as author. Do not presume to collaborate with me on my projects. Do not keep attempting to infiltrate trollhalla.com under false names--you are banned and unwelcome on that site. Do not attempt to rewrite the history of Tunnels and Trolls on Wikipedia or any other online sources. Do not send me money. Do not send me product. I do not want it from you. However, I am under no legal obligation to send back things that arrive unsolicited in the mail. I won't waste the money or the effort to send them back. I am not interested in theatrical gestures. I simply wish to terminate our association and to move on with other things in life.

I hereby reclaim my rights to anything I ever gave you to publish. In particular, I assert my right to the novel Griffin Feathers which consists entirely of my own work with some input in the short sections of the book from the members of Trollhalla.

I am forwarding the "royalties" that you sent me to Jeff Freels, the artist whose work you have re-used to illustrate this version of Gristlegrim. He deserves compensation for his work.

James, I am not angry at you, and I do not hate you. I simply will not associate with you ever again. For several years we were, I thought, very good friends. Outlaw Press did a lot for Tunnels and Trolls. You know why that time has ended. Let it go. Move on.

James, I will be publishing this letter in open forums on the internet, so that all the world can see how I feel, and how I react to what I can only believe are attempts to manipulate me and to gain control of Tunnels and Trolls. If you have no ulterior intentions, then forgive me for being suspicious, but I no longer feel that I can trust you.

James, you have your own unique style of creativity. Please go and do your own thing, and stop messing with me and with Tunnels and Trolls.


Sincerely,
Ken St. Andre

He also posted it over on the Big Purple, http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=12781787#post12781787

I need a Dracula Chess set

“So be it that he has gone elsewhere. Good! It has given us opportunity to cry `check' in some ways in this chess game, which we play for the stake of human souls.”
 -Van Helsing in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

So I have started to re-read Dracula again.  Something I like to do every so often. Inevitably I get back to something I have always wanted, a Dracula themed chess set.
What I want is the Franklin Mint to come out with one so I can agonize about it for years and finally find one on eBay.  But to my knowledge they never have made one.  The closest I have seen is a Scooby-Doo chess set.  So I want something nice, a show-off piece.

So far it doesn't look like anything like this exists.  I have found one ancient blog posting about it, but that is it.
Plus, when it comes right down to it, I am not a chess junkie.  I enjoy the game. I know it's importance in the communities I frequent (education, psychology and gamers), but I don't play very often and when I do play I do it only causally.

But this is something I'd still like to have.
I would make it a traditional chess set (no alternate rules) and I have had the pieces in mind for years.
Black
King - Dracula (obviously)
Queen - Lucy in her vampire or "Bloufer lady" form.
Bishops - Dracula's other brides (yeah missing one)
Knights - his gypsy henchmen
Rooks - Castle Dracula
Pawns - Wolves (with bats maybe)

White
King - Van Helsing (again an obvious choice)
Queen  - Mina Harker
Queen's Bishop - Jonathan Harker
Kin's Bishop - Dr. Seward
Knights -  Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood
Rooks - Seward's Sanitarium
Pawns - Holmwood's dogs.

I like how these fill out honestly.  Though I do need a place for Reinfield.  Maybe as one of the black Knights

I might have enough D&D minis to do this with, at least on Dracula's side of things, but not really for Van Helsing's side.

I guess my search goes on.

.

Labor Day

It's Labor Day here in the US.

Hope everyone here enjoys the long weekend.

The Dragon and the Phoenix: Episode 2

Episode 2: The Dead of Night

Episode 2: Dead of Night by ~WebWarlock on deviantART

November 13, 2002 Wednesday 
A group of necromancers (the Order of Six) is using zombies of people killed by the cast, including Ben/Glory, and a shape shifting spirit to try and unlock a portal to Leviathan’s plane.
Story Arc and Game Design elements: Monster of the week (mostly). Necromancy rules for Cinematic Unisystem. Establishes that Tara keeps a Journal that she writes in religiously. Also introduces the Codex Albius and the first of many cults.

Notes and Comments: This adventure was written by Garner Johnson based on a draft he was doing for a story. It was designed as our playtests of "Monster Smackdown".
We featured a weak shape shifter as our first among many jabs at “The First”, but mostly we wanted to deal with some glaring issues, such as why some people get do all the killing of normal humans they like and never be held accountable for it (Spike, Buffy), while others are treated like pariahs (Faith, Willow).
We also wanted to do a “zombie” episode since we were all getting into AFMBE by this time and really just wanted a monster of the week one. The title was my idea and Garner objected, but he saw it my way after spending a week trying to come up with something better.
The episode itself doesn't advance the arc much save for the fact that we established that others are going to be interested in what is going on here.  This was part of my "your characters do not live in a vacuum" philosophy.  This was stage building.
The idea was to have the characters have to deal with the deaths, accidental or otherwise, that they have caused, but it didn't quite work out like that.  The players saw zombies and zombies had to be destroyed.

Tara's journal writing was one of those things that seem to come out of several different places at once. Lisa (our Tara) and Sass (our Willow) both talked about it. Later on it was reinforced when we began work on Ghosts of Albion and Tamara Swift also kept a journal. In fact the Journals of Tamara Swift became magical tomes in their own right, as did the Journal of Megan Maclay would in the next season.

Yes. I know there is a typo in the cover. I have been meaning to fix it for years.

Those Meddling Kids, Part 2

So I have some links to share!

Allyson Brooks the author of MK sent me some character sheets to share with you all!
Character Sheet
Wild Card Sheet

Reader Bruce Hill sent me a link that includes both the Character sheet and a second adventure.
http://www.kidzworld.com/article/4962-meddling-kids-introductory-role-playing-game-review

There is some good life in this game still!

Thanks Allyson and Bruce for the links.