Sometimes Wikipedia really irritates me

I have a love/hate relationship with Wikipedia.
As an academic I like it because it is a nice starting point for any topic, but hate it for anything close to "real" research.   As a  teacher I would never accept Wikipedia as a source unless there were plenty of other sources to back that up.

As a gamer I like it since it usually gives me what I need fairly quickly. 

I also like the "every one works together" aspect.  But that also gets on my nerves.

Today though the wikipedia community is getting on my nerves.  Long story short, some articles I worked on are up for deletion.  Not only that, the editor that put nominated them for deletion chose to do it over Christmas where it is likely that he will get them deleted since no one can help me "save" them.

I used to be a very active editor on wikipedia.  I even donated money.  But it seems more and more that there are some people there with personal agendas to have articles they don't like deleted.  I just spent a a couple years waiting for one such person to get banned, and now others want to take up his crusade.

Maybe I'll just post stuff here instead.  The audience is smaller, but at least I get the feeling that it would be better received.   Though some of the stuff I work on wouldn't fit even the broad range of topics I cover here.

Merry Undead Christmas!

So Christmas has come to the Brannan house.  Electronics were had by all.  But I wanted to talk about what I got RPG related this year.

Castle Ravenloft Board Game
I got this as my "big" RPG gift.  It looks like a lot of fun and we are going to play it later today I am sure.  I grabbed my Strahd mini that I got a while back and put it into the box to replace the weak looking vampire it came with (he is fine for the "young vampire" they also have you use him for).  Tons of skeletons, ghosts and other things were included.  Got a dracolich and a zombie dragon too.

"Orcus" Modules
I got the last titles in the P and E series I needed.  E2 and E3 and P2.  I now have all nine of the "Shadowfell/Orcus" modules.
I know the reviews of these are mixed, but I wanted them all.

Beholder Gift Set
I also got the D&D Beholder Gift set, which comes with 4 beholders.  A regular one, an shadow beholder, a ghost and a frost beholder.  They are very cool and I can't wait to use them somewhere.

Now on to the other gifts!

Forgot to mention!  I also got a new book, "Vampyre Kisses" and a bunch of "Tarot Witch of the Black Rose" comics.

Merry Christmas!!!

Happy Hanuka, Merry Yule, Joyous Solstice, Happy Festivus, Happy Kwanza and any other number of holidays I have forgotten.

And Happy New Year!!

Played some AD&D 2nd Ed today.

Got home from half-day at work today and sat down and played some old-school AD&D 2nd Ed today.  My oldest wanted to try it out (I bought him a 2nd ed Monstrous Manual years ago so he wouldn't mess up mine).

Odd how it happened really, we were going to play D&D 4e Red Box, then it was going to be D&D Basic Red Box.  Finally landed on 2nd Ed.  Spent some time, though not as much as I thought, looking up some rules.  Spent more time just figuring out where I put the XP table for my witch.

It was a fun quick little dungeon crawl, no plot, no backstory, just kicking in doors and killing monsters.  Used some 4e minis and the map from the Dungeons & Dragons' Black Box.

All in all a good bit of fun. Doubt we will continue with 2nd Ed, but it was nice to give is a another try.

Jenny Everywhere

I was reading Old School Heretic's post on Jenny Everywhere the other day and thought it was a great concept.

Jenny Everywhere is a shifter, that is she can shift between the realities and interact with who knows who.  Whether there is one Jenny Everywhere that is very mobile or multiple Jenny's that have a vague awareness of each other is left to the individual authors.

Jenny Everywhere is also a public domain character.  Meaning anyone can use her in what ever project they have. You just need to include her license, as below:

"The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed."

It is such a cool concept, not just the open source of it (that is cool also) but a character that exists in every-single reality there is and can shift between them.

Regular readers should by now know of my love for the multi-verse.  It is a very cool concept I enjoy on principle but also how it has been employed in various sci-fi and fantasy publications.  My favorite might be the great Micheal Moorcock stories of Elric, Corum and the other Incarnations of the Eternal Champion.  Jenny would be a bit different I think.  While the Eternal Champion feels the combined weight of all his incarnations as it were, Jenny is freed by hers.  Reality is hers to roam because that is what it is there for.  In one of the comics I saw she fights against a force known as Chaos, but I don't think that makes her an agent of Law as we would have seen in say the Corum books.   Jenny is more like the Doctor really.
I have done something like this before. I have a witch character that is aware of all of her own past lives and future ones.  All within the same reality, but it gives her some insight to what is going on around her.

Of course the openness of Jenny is very appealing.  Something everyone can use and share and just a promise not to break her.

Here are a bunch of links I have been collecting to help explain who Jenny is.

http://jennyeverywhere.net/
http://www.jennyeverywhereday.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Everywhere
http://www.barbelith.com/topic/14484/from/35
http://www.barbelith.com/topic.php?id=15206
http://www.bjccreations.com/jenny/  The Jenny Everywhere Chronicles webcomic
http://exclaim.ca/Features/Comics/jennys_everywhere-hero_for_people_no_strings
http://theshifterarchive.com/ART/DianaNock.htm

What does all this mean for you the gamer?  LOTS!
Jenny, by definition is perfect in every game.  Jenny, by definition, is already in every game, she just needs to be stated out and given a plot.

For Ghosts of Albion I would imagine her as an american girl of possible Japanese lineage living in London.  She would be some sort of Steampunkish tech wiz (must be the goggles) and constantly speaking anachronistically.  So for example, even though she is not a time traveler per se I'd have her say things like "it sucks we have to wait 170 years for descent cell phone signal here." and then totally not explain why she says such things either in-game or out.  For her I'd use the super-science quality from the Magic Box, but limit it to steam-punk style tech.

Her "shifter-ness" comes form her ability to remember/know of her other incarnations and her ability to create high tech gadgets out of steam-age materials.

Jenny Everywhere

Attributes
Strength: 2
Dexterity: 3
Constitution: 4
Intelligence: 5
Perception: 4
Willpower: 4

Life Points: 40

Qualities
Attractive 1
Hard to Kill 2
Superscience (Steampunk tech, from the Magic Box book) 3
Nerves of Steel

Drawbacks
Honorable 1
Minority (woman, Asian looks (it is the 19th century after-all))
Mental Problem (Mild Recklessness)
Out of Time (like Archaic, but in reverse)

Skills
Armed Mayhem 2, Art 2, Athletics 3, Engineering 6, Fisticuffs 1, Knowledge 7*, Languages 3 (English, French, Japanese), Marksmanship 1,  Notice 2, Occultism 1, Physician 1, Science 6

The create a steam punk item Jenny rolls her Intelligence + Engineering or Science  + Superscience or 5 + 6 + 3 = 14.
A success means she has made something, the SLs tell us how well she has done it and if it does what she wants it too.

Could my Answer be in the Realms?

I am moving my 3.x game over to a 4e one soon.    I have been buying up the Essentials books and some modules and I generally have what I think is a cool idea for campaign.  The world is fleshed out and I know what I am going to use and what I am not.

Except there is one little-bity problem. So much of what was true in my 3.x world no longer "works" under 4e.  Or rather it works so differently now that it is hard to see it working the same way when I was playing 3.x.  Then there are other issues.  My kids want to play the children of their D&D 3.x characters and these characters have some serious magic.  And there is the whole killing Tiamat thing they want to do.   How do I explain the changes?

Turns out the answer was under my nose this whole time.  In the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide.

I was never a fan of the Realms.  I considered it to be a pretender to Greyhawk and not a very worthy one at that.  I picked up the 3.0 Realms Guide when it came out and I liked it.  I felt it was a good book and all it really was missing was monsters.  The new 4e campaign books are a good model too.

But what I like the most about the Realms book is how completely gonzo it is.  Smash two planets together to get one world! I love that!  Spell plagues? Bring it on!

I know I have talked around all of this before in many posts, but it is time to make it more real I think.

So what will I include from the Forgotten Realms book in my Game World?

First, well, it is going to be in the future.  I am going to say about 25 to 30 years.  Not 100% sure, but long enough to have the world changing events happen at least a generation ago.  The Characters of this game have only know the world as it is now, never the world before.

Next, there will be a Spellplague.  The defeat of Tiamat and the Ascension of Asmodeus are just parts of that.  I am also going to have Raven Queen in my game and she just killed Nerull.  There will other things of course, but it was a series of Cosmos-shaking events that left the world changed.  The Fey-wild is now easier to get too, as is the Shadowfell (previously only known as the Plane of Shadow).  The main effect for the PCs is that some of the old magic no longer works.  So there is a quest for sources of "Old Magic" or even "True Magic".  With this, some older magic items are now useless.  Of course the spellplague was chaotic so some normal items are now magical.  There is still magic to be found out there "New" and "Old".
Living things touched by it have been altered.  There will be spell scarred.

The ancient Astral empire of the Tieflings, Bael-Turath, has crashed into the world.  Here I am taking inspiration from the 90's TV show "Alien Nation".  Though this is a "magical crash" so there are now lands where there are ruins of the Tiefling society that seem ancient and always part of the land.  Bael-Turath had warred against Asmoedeus and the devils for countless centuries.  Part of Asmodeus' ascension was to reclaim the power that emperors of Bael-Turath had stolen from the Nine Hells.  The tieflings are now a broken, homeless race with members now fond all over the world and many still in the Astral Sea.

The Blood War is over.  With Asmodeus' Ascension and the Reckoning of Hell, the long war with the demons is over.  Asmodeus even managed to conscript entire demonic species under the auspices of Hell.  With the the power he gained Asmodeus broke the paths through the Astral that the demons and devils used to attack each other, effectively blocking demons from being able to enter the Prime Material.  If a demon wants to get to the Prime Material plane it has to go through Hell first.  By the time of the new game the distinction between "demon" and "devil" is a loose one in most peoples minds.  Plus the entire race of yugoloths were sacrificed in the process, with many seeking refuge in either the Abyss or Hell.
Asmodeus covets the Material World and wanted to bring Hell into it.  Here he failed, but managed to get it much "closer" metaphysically speaking.

One repercussion of this though is demons now focus on the Prime Material.  While it is harder for them to reach it now, many still do and with out the Blood War to contend with it is possible that more demons than ever are now attacking mortals.   This is something Asmodeus wants.  He has placed members of his cult in areas to fit demons and rally humans to his cause.  As the game progresses the influence of this cult will be more readily felt. To combat this the Gods will be using the mortal realm as their battlefield.

I think this is a good start and gives me a good idea of what my end game needs to be too.  Lolth, in one form or another will have hand in all of this too.  Events that began in my Shadow War of 1st Ed are now coming to a head.

Now I need to figure out who the main bad guys are and what they want to get out of all of this.

ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog: Using my DM skills for "good"?

Please read this!

Use your D&D skills to fight real world evils.

ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog: Using my DM skills for "good"?: "This is an odd post to write because it's not as much about gaming as it is about the exercise of my skills in creating alternate realities ..."