Ordinary World

Ordinary World

Ordinary World was the working title of a new game I was working on.  It was going to be modern supernatural and use this new system I was developing that I had code named "The Power of Three" system.
The basic premise of Ordinary World was the players would be playing supernatural types just trying to get along in a world that didn't believe they existed and considered them monsters.  In a way sorta like "Being Human" the RPG, but also elements of all the things I like in modern supernatural fiction.

I wanted to have the experience of writing a new game from the ground up and I wanted to do something in a realm I am really familiar with.  Trouble is every time I would bring this game up to friends they would remind me I already did all of that with Ghosts of Albion.

So sometime this past Summer I shelved Ordinary World.

No sooner had I done that than I had this great idea for an Old-School game that I was calling Monster Mash.  The rules would have been Labyrinth Lord compatible and instead of heroes you would have played the monsters.  In particular the old Universal Pictures Monsters, so vampires, golems, werewolves and ghosts.  I would have made it compatible with The Witch since one of my big influences for this was the video to the Rob Zombie song, American Witch.  I thought it might have been a fun beer and pretzels sort of game.
In truth I probably came up with it while listening to Hellbilly Deluxe one too many times.  I even had an adventure partially written "Dr. Satan Needs Blood!".

Last week I was still thinking about these two when I had an idea of bringing them together.  When it also dawned on me that I had other WiPs, some from the earliest days of this blog.

Generation Hex was this really cool, awesome idea I had  for Unisystem/True 20/Mutants & Masterminds or whatever system I happen to really enjoy at the time.  Simply put it was a game to play kids in a magical school.  Since that time this sort of thing has been better done by Witch Girls Adventures.

I also have material laying around for Licensed properties that never saw the light of day and I am now the owner of again (the RPG material, not the properties).  One was d20 and the other True20.

So.  What's a guy to do?

Well the natural thing is to bring them all together under one system to do the one thing they all kinda of were doing anyway.

A few caveats though.
I want to use an old-school system.  I think it would be a great addition to all the material we have out there now and NOT redo something everyone else has already done.

I want to be able to play any character I want.  If I come up with an idea or see something in a book then I need to have a system that can do that.

While it is an Old-School game, I don't want to forget about the advances made in other games. There are a lot of great games out there and they are great for a reason.  This my chance to distill that into a new game.

So. Look for more information coming from me on this.   I think this is one I will design live on the blog.  Posting ideas, sending up files for playtests.  Things like that.

First thing I need to figure out.  What system should I use?

White Dwarf Wednesday #38

Sorry about missing last weeks WDW.  The end of October is crazy for me.

One note before I move on.  James at Grognardia is covering Imagine Magazine on Tuesdays.  Imagine is the sister magazine to Dragon that had a limited run in the UK starting in 1983.  So roughly the same span I am doing with White Dwarf now.  I had also planned on doing Imagine as well, but James is already doing it, so I'll just comment on his site.
You can read his first three entries here: http://grognardia.blogspot.com/search/label/imagine%20magazine
The nice thing about this is I noticed I had some holes in my collection so it would not have been as complete as my White Dwarf run.

On with the show!

White Dwarf #38 opens up February of 1983.

I think we see here a bit about what James might have been talking about in Imagine from June of the same year in regards to censorship.   The cover for WD#38 features a bloody sword, a severed head, and a topless woman.
We follow with seven pages of ads till we get to the first page proper. The editorial is brief one of idyll remarks on the growing popularity of RPGs and what the next year will bring.  D&D is now referred to as a "brand".

Andy Slack is back with Part 3 of An Introduction to Traveller. This time covering Scenarios.  I always thought it was interesting that most games had "Adventures" and Traveller had "Scenarios".  D&D/RuneQuest/T&T characters sought out their adventures, but Traveller characters (to me) always had something happen to to them.  I think this was my weakest point in Traveller.  I was still thinking of Traveller in terms of D&D.  Reading this article (and the next one) again made think back to all the great SciFi shows I loved at this time; Doctor Who, Blakes 7, Sapphire and Steele. They all could have been Traveller Scenarios (with some tweaks I guess).  It also made me think of another show that was popular at the time that really was, in my retrospect, the perfect model for a Traveller game; The A Team.  Think about it.  Instead of 4 guys from the Army, they are now Space Marines and instead of a van it's a small, but tricked out, space ship.  It really would have worked.

Next up is Open Box.  Phil Masters hits us up with a review of "The Traveller Book"  I have very fond memories of this book.  It was my last ditch effort to finally understand and play Traveller.  In retrospect again I actually made a good choice.  It was designed as a new game to introduce new players to Traveller.  Masters gives it 9/10.  It remains to date my favorite version of the rules.
M.L.Rowland gives us Dicing with Dragons, one of the first books about RPGs I can recall.  RPGs were finally getting big enough that there could be books talking about them.  We were on the verge of the big "Satanic Panic" of the 80s and D&D was going to get pulled into that, but we were also just fresh from seeing "E.T." where the kids played D&D (or something like it).  It was a good time for this book.  Rowland praises it for covering it's subject but downgrades it slightly for the sample game included for a total of 9/10.
Oliver Dickson also gives us some FASA books for Thieve's World. Traitor and The Spirit Stones. They get 7/10 collectively.

Fiend Factory is an interesting one this issue with Faerie Folk.  All sorts of interesting fae creatures that look like they were taken out Brian Froud's 1978 book "Faeries".  I say this with some level of conviction since I have gone to that book many, many times for my own books (notably Ghosts of Albion) and I recognize all of these creatures.  Frankly I would use any of these as is in an AD&D game now. It also seems that White Dwarf's on-again, off-again love affair with Monstermark is finally off for good.

Oliver Dickson and Bob McWilliams introduce us to Questworld for RuneQuest.

Lew Pulsipher takes on the herculean task of presenting the Mines of Moria/Khazad-dûm in AD&D terms.  Some interesting choices are made (Gandalf is a Cleric, Aragorn is a Ranger/Paladin) but what strikes me most is that outside of the trappings I am not sure "how" this is Moria vs. some other dungeon.  The sense of size I got from the books (and later the movies) is not here.

Microview is back and Noel Williams talks about some the tasks that computers can do in an RPG game.  Many of which we can take for granted these days, this was the wild west back then.  I even think back to the programs I wrote for the Tandy Color Computer back in the day that did a number of these "donkey" task Williams talks about (dice roller, rulebook, record keeper) as well as number no mentioned (monster database, combat simulator).

Oliver McDonald gives us "Monsters Have Feelings Too" which basically gives us tips on how to have monsters act intelligently.  These ideas have creeped into various games over the years till now it is sometime difficult to tell the monster stats and PC stats apart.  These are not exactly "Tucker's Kobolds" but calling "McDonald's Orcs" is not too far off.

Letters includes a couple of backlash's against Don Turnbull's letter on his distaste of the Necromancer, one of which is Lew Pulsipher. A letter asking for more adventures for other games. And a fairly detailed one on his dislike for AC equaling a chance to be hit.  Stepping outside of all of this for a bit I think we have all established that AC is an abstraction on damaged causing hits, not hits in general.

RuneRites has Lords of the Spirit worlds.  Something between mortal and man.  I think I used this for AD&D back in the day.  Demigods were humans that had been born with god-like power, "Saints" were ascended humans and spirit lords were still something else. Despite it being a "Runequest" article there is not much in the way of crunch.

Treasure Chest has some new spells. Most seem useful.  Maybe for the Necromancer.

We follow that with the Classifieds.  Nothing as interesting as last months. The final 9 or so pages are ads.
The difference in the ads between White Dwarf and Dragon is the same as I remember of UK and US television.  In the US the ads (commercials) are through out the show, in the UK they are at the beginning and end of shows.

I see what are the beginnings of the White Dwarf I remember so fondly.

DTRPG Red Cross Hurricane Sandy Relief

Once again DriveThruRPG is offering a bundle of RPG products to donate money to the America Red Cross for Hurricane Sandy Relief.

Your $20 donation gets you about $500 worth of RPG pdfs. So please check it out.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/107618/Red-Cross-Hurricane-Sandy-Relief-Charity-Bundle-%5BBUNDLE%5D?affiliate_id=10748

Vote

Normally I try to keep my political beliefs out of this blog.

But I will say this to my American readership.

Vote.  Get up, get out and vote.

It isn't just your right, it is your civic duty.  Our country depends on an informed and involved electorate.

Ghost of Albion Review!!

The newest Game Geeks is up and look what Kurt Wiegel has reviewed this week!



Quote: "Do you need Ghosts of Albion? Yes you do."

and

"You can not possibly go wrong with Ghosts of Albion."

If you recall he had reviewed this before.


Quote: "The best modern urban fantasy game you can use."

I am THRILLED TO DEATH that this game still gets all of these positive reviews all these years later.

I love all my Witch books, but Ghosts will always be very, very special to me.

Fantasy Art: Stainless Steel Dragon

I am not feeling so hot today so I went shopping on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow from some dragon art.

In my search a company called Stainless Steel Dragon came up and they have a few products.  I had a few bucks burning a hole in my pocket so I decided, what the heck.

The first thing I grabbed was the Ultimate Fantasy Photo Art Collection.
I grabbed it because it came up in a search for "Dragon art", there are no dragons in it. That was something of a disappointment, but I kept on going, after all there are a 150+ pages here.


The art varies from semi-serious, to cheesecake. It is all photos with fantasy style trappings and backgrounds. There are some topless women here (and me, fair is fair), but it is all of an artistic sort.

There are not many images here I can use in my games, but the ones that I can seem perfect. There is an African-American male vampire in this is perfect (and they must have also thought this since we get a couple of him), but my opinion was changed with the picture of the "witch" on page 101. Again it is a case of the right thing at the tight time for me. NOTE To publisher: I appreciate the names of the models, but is there anyway to know what page they are on? Ok, just who is the model on page 101?

The models are all attractive and we get a variety of types, genders and ethnicity here so that is certainly a plus. One of my first thoughts was there are a lot of good visual images here for a Ravenloft game or some other dark fantasy.

There are also 24 pages of "character sheets" featuring the various models (again the witch on 101 is back on page 150), plus a blank and a back page. Suitable really for most games, but certainly a FRPG in mind.

So while it was not exactly what I was looking for and I also like to buy art I can reuse somehow, I can't fault the publisher any of those.

Great fro printing out and using in a game as a visual aid. Or if there is a character you really want to detail then it's perfect if the character you envision is here.

NOTE To publisher 2: maybe small thumbnails of the pictures on the character sheets might be good on your website? That way if someone sees something they like they have a good reason to buy this.

In truth you get a ton of images for $5 (when on sale). Can't really complain about that.

EDITED TO ADD. You can find some of the images on their website, http://www.fantasyphotoart.com/
I found my witch and picked up the jpg for a buck.

I also checked out some of the other images on DTRPG/RPGN to fill in for other characters.  Here is what I grabbed.

Fire Witch
Blue Moon
Water Nymph I would like to have one of this model as a witch/warlock too.
Succubus
Sword Maiden

All are huge HiRes images.  Most are right around 2542 x 3386.

I had actually picked up AoV: Fantasy Art (Reflections of Voldaria) in some sale a while back and forgot about it.

Looking forward to more.

Here There Be Dragons updates

With The Witch out and EW in the hands of the publisher it is time to move on to other projects.

I want to talk about "Here There Be Dragons" for a bit.  We paused on this last year to give my son time to concentrate on his school work.  Over the summer things were just way too busy and then I needed to finish the Witch.

Be we are back.  One of the things we want to do is come up with a good dragon statblock that covers the Old School feel we wanted but also includes all the information we want to get out about dragons.  I also want to retain as much good information from the SRD as we can.

In the 1st Advanced Era dragons had 8 age categories.  In the 3rd Edition/SRD era there are 12.
The age categories are also significantly different.  In earlier editions of the game the differences were not great.  In the newer versions there is quite a bit of difference between a Wyrmling and a Great Wyrm.
This can be seen in the SRD here for Blue Dragons.

There are plenty of good and open under the OGL stat blocks for dragons. OSRIC has one, Labyrinth Lord Advanced Companion is another and slightly different. The stat blocks in Castles & Crusades are also open and try to merge the best of 1.x and 3.x in their own way as well. In fact they even fit 12 age categories into 8 rather well.

Additionally Dragons should have more spells as the age, have more treasure and be more powerful, not just harder to hit or kill.

So here is a rough draft of a dragon stat block for a Blue Dragon.

Blue Dragon
Frequency: Rare
No. Appearing: 1d4
Size:  See below
Move: 90' fly 240' (AA: level II)
Hit Dice: typically 8 to 10
Armor Class: typically 2
Attacks:  1 bite, 2 claws or magic
Damage: 1d6 / 1d6 / 3d8
Special Attacks: Breath Weapon, Dragon Fear, Magic Use
Special Defenses:
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: Very
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Treasure: ????
Chance of:
- Speaking: 40% + 5%/Age
- Magic-use: 20% + 5%/Age
- Sleeping: 10% + 5%/Age
- In Lair: 20% + 5%/Age
Level/XP: See Below

Breath Weapon: Lighting Bolt, 100' long, 5' wide, line
Spells: As Wizard of level equal to HD

Age	Size (length)	HD (hp)	AC	Breath Damage	Breath Range	Level/XP
1	4'	4 (18)	5 (15)	4d8	40'	4/
2	8'	6 (27)	4 (16)	6d8	60'	6/
3	12'	8 (36)	3 (17)	8d8	80'	8/
4	20'	10 (45)	2 (18)	10d8	100'	10/
5	25'	12 (54)	1 (19)	12d8	120'	12/
6	32'	14 (63)	0 (20)	14d8	140'	14/
7	48'	16 (72)	-1 (21)	16d8	160'	16/
8	60'	18 (81)	-2 (22)	18d8	180'	18/

Age Category		Age Years
1	Wyrmling	0-10
2	Young	11-25
3	Juvenile	26-50
4	Young Adult	51-100
5	Adult	101-250
6	Old	251-500
7	Very Old	501-1,000
8	Ancient	1,000+

These tables will be tweaked as we go along.

Not sure if this is the final version, it is though a working one.
I put in the the average hp on a d8 per HD since I also had the idea that HD could stay the same (say 10) and a dragon gets it's age category in hp.  So Wyrmling would have had 10 hp and an Ancient dragon 80 hp.  It works for the Blue here, not sure about the rest; I think it might.

Did not calculate the XP yet.
Still have no idea how I want to do treasure.  Should I use LL Hoard Classes or list out like in OSRIC?


Credit where credit is due.

Section 15 of the OGL.

System Reference Document copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

OSRIC copyright 2006-08 by Stuart Marshall, adapting material prepared by Matthew J. Finch, based on the System Reference Document, inspired by the works of E. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and many others.


Advanced Edition Companion, Copyright 2009-2010, Daniel Proctor. Author Daniel Proctor.



Hypertext SRD, 2005 Jans Carton.


Castles & Crusades: Monsters & Treasure, Copyright 2005, Troll Lord Games; Authors Robert Doyel and Stephen Chenault.

Blue Dragon: Here There Be Dragons, Copyright 2012, Liam and Timothy Brannan.

All material is open under the OGL.