Skylla: Dragon Magazine #20 (and #5)

The first witch class that many people remember the best is the very good Dragon Mag #114 version.
It was the first one I remember seeing and using.

It was not long though before I discovered that there were other versions. In fact the 114 article mentions this.  I tracked down issue #43 (and 42, it had demons) and spent...well a lot on it.  That's how bad I wanted that issue.  It was worth it in my mind but I know I over paid.

The Witch in Dragon magazine has a nice long history.  The first version appeared as early as issue #5 (March '77).  It was basically an expanded NPC/Monster entry, but it introduced ideas adopted by every other witch class to appear afterwards; differences between good and evil witches, a mixing of clerical and magic-user powers and spells, and the High Secret Order.   I will go into these all in the detail they deserve in this and future posts.

The witch in Dragon #5 is an odd one for another reason. The editors claim that it was sent to them 18 months prior to publication.  So October 75.  There was no Dragon magazine then, just the Strategic Review which began in Spring of 75.  There is also no name on it. The claim is that it was sent to them anonymously.  It is possible I guess, though I also think it is likely that the authorship is known.   It had a number of new spells and magic items, but no advancement tables. This class/npc later appeared in the Best of The Dragon Vol 1.

Right now though I want to concentrate on the witch from Dragon #20 from November 1978.
For starters it is a complete class so that makes it ideal for comparing to my other classes.  It also marks one of the first of the Halloween themed issues.
This class was expanded by Ronald Pehr and based on the witch that appeared in issue #5.  This could also be one of the first examples of power creep in the game.  The witch gets a lot of powers (more so that other versions) and more XP per level than the Magic-user.
This witch gets spells up to 8th level. A split between the cleric's 7th level max and the magic-user's 9th level max.  The same thing I did for the Basic Witch.
The author says that the Witch has the same relationship to Druids as the Magic-User has to Clerics.
Witches in this variant are Neutral, but individuals can be good or evil.  Witches need a 13 in both Intelligence and Wisdom (I adjusted Skylla stats accordingly), they also need to have a minimum Charisma of 9.

Skylla from Dragon #20
Again I am making her 7th level, though 6th would have been just fine really.  If I had to name a Tradition for her it might the High Secret Order or even the Dragon Witch Tradition.

Not exactly Skylla, but really close

Skylla, 7th Level Witch "Enchantress" (Dragon #20)
Strength: 9
Dexterity: 11
Constitution: 10
Intelligence: 14*
Wisdom: 13*
Charisma: 12

Hit Points:  20
Alignment: Neutral Evil
AC: 4 (Ring of Protection +1)

Powers
1st level: Brew poisons, narcotics, hallucinogens
2nd level: Make a Bag of Holding
3rd level: Brew Love Potions
4th level: Dance of Seduction
5th level: Add Plus 1 to Charisma
6th level: Brew Truth Drug
7th level: Read Magic, Druid, Illusionist scrolls

Spells 
First: Give Wounds, Cure Wounds, Detect Magic
Second: Detect Invisible, Locate Object, ESP
Third: Charm, Phantasmal Forces

Magic Items
Ring of Protection +1, Dagger +1, Staff of Enchantment, Skull of Death**

Skull of Death (from Dragon #5): A huge charred bejewelled dragon skull to be worn like a helmet.
The wearer may mentally command any undead characters (up to three dice in number) at any range. Other powers imbued in the wearer are “The Finger of Death” and “Animate Dead”, and these two powers may be used repeatedly. The wearer will regenerate from combat damage at the rate of 5 points/turn, even if killed (unless beheaded).

A LOT more powers, but a smaller and very different selection of spells.
I also gave her the Skull of Death from Dragon #5 since that is what it looks like she is wearing anyway.

Other Skylla writeups

• AD&D Magic User (6th level)
• Spellcraft & Swordplay Warlock (7th level)

BAMF Girls Club Special Guest. You will never guess Who!

Sorry couldn't help it.  Either with the bad pun or posting this.

The next episode of the BAMF Girls Club is up.



Are you ready for the 50th?

Across The Sea of Years

A dual stated adventure across Time and Space for.... well that is what I don't know yet.

I have always toyed with the idea of running a game at a con, say like Gen Con where I have multiple days, where it is the same group of characters, or their reincarnations or their children, across time and different systems.   My systems of choice would be Unisystem and some flavor of D&D.  Likely Basic.

I have done similar ideas in Season of the Witch, where I took in ideas from different games to get a different feel.  Generation HEX was conceived as using a different system each game, but that never worked out.

This idea though is two plan a game that takes place in the past, present and maybe future.  Each game is seperate unto itself, but builds a bigger story.

One idea I had was a adventure named "Synchronicity" where characters from Ghosts of Albion meet up with their counterparts from Buffy.  But that is only one, albeit long, game. Plus the system for Ghosts and Buffy is the same.

Another game I have played before is Blight for Ghosts of Albion.  It takes place in 1847 and is an unofficial sequel to my Dark Druid for Buffy (that takes place in an alternate 2001). There is a third adventure in the mix, All Souls Night, which was always designed to go with my Eire game.
I would retool Blight just a bit.  But the Dark Druid is designed for new characters, so the big bad introduced is not all that big and bad.  It works though if I run them in something like a past life regression.

The other idea I had was an adventure around the rise and fall of Elizabeth Bathory.
D&D for when she was alive and you have to stop her (though to be 100% fair, an adventure like that screams LotFP), Ghosts of Albion when she is prowling the streets of Victorian London, and something else (Call of Cthulhu maybe) for later.

I have also over the years toyed with the idea of Doctor Who, Star Frontiers, and Alternity (yeah I have been thinking about this one for a while) for the future.  I think the idea came to me when I wanted to run a hunt Jack the Ripper and I thought back to the old Star Trek episode "A Wolf in the Fold" and to the movie "Time After Time".  Jack the Ripper is still an interesting idea. A time traveling serial killer/entity could make a fun opponent.

Lots of ideas really, but nothing has really jelled yet for me.  Once I have the right story idea and roll for the characters then the system will be easier to decide on.

Anyone done anything like this before?  What did you do and what did you use?

White Dwarf Wednesday #88

April 1987 brings us White Dwarf #88 and thankfully very little of the silliness that plagued Dragon mag in the month of April.  Mike Brunton even parodies this (a little unsuccessfully) in the editorial page.  But before that let's get to the cover.  I like it.  It is named "Dragonlady" by David Gallagher.  I can't see a date on the cover, but it looks older than 87.  Love the whole punk rock look of the Dragonlady.

So there is a fallacy in many gaming circles that "older" = "better" for some games.  That is certainly not true with this issue.  There are a some stylistic changes that bring it closer to the modern WDs, but time wise it is still closer to the WD of the late 70s early 80s than it is with the ones of today.

Briefly in things that interested me:

Open Box covers H2 The Mines of Bloodstone module.  I have the H series. And I desperately wanted to make them work, but they really don't.  Everything that is disliked in the adventure is magnified in the last of the series, H4.  I went through H4 and I might run it again someday with some the information from the previous modules (H1, 2 and 3), but I wont use this module for many of the reasons listed here (time wasting encounters, killer funhouse style dungeon, ill-planned Battle System tie-in, way too much treasure).

Some reviews on various books for the big tie-in Supers games, DC Heroes and Marvel Super Heroes.  This was a golden age for Supers games in my mind.  I wish I had played them more, but at this point I was wrapping an epic AD&D game and working all the time for extra money for college.

The Paddington Horror is a scenario for Call of Cthulhu by Marcus Roland.  It doesn't seem bad and I do seem to remember this one begin planned when I checked out the SIU Strategic Games Society.  I remembered because it was an example of an adventure I knew I could get my hands on.  Plus I always thought it would be funny if the cover had that kids  book Paddington Bear only with tentacles.

Hm..some Judge Dredd stuff.  Miss the days when the ads were all at the end of the magazine.

Fate Points in Warhammer.

New cards for Chainsaw Warrior (also reviewed in Open Box) my issue does not have the cards.

A RuneQuest III adventure.  Not dual or multi-stated.

There are some pages about assassins for AD&D.  Not too different than things I have read elsewhere.  Must have been something in the water back then.  My favorite character at the time was an assassin.

A little on Blood Bowl. A game that looked really stupid to me in the past, but now I kinda want to play.

Ending with Letters and ads.

Ok so. Not a great issue by any means.  It's only saving grace in my mind was it did not fall into the stupidity that Dragon did every April.  But I'd take Nogard over boring any day.

Pathfinder: Advanced Class Guide Playtest

The newest public beta test for Pathfinder is now up. The Advanced Class Guide Playtest.
http://paizo.com/products/btpy92zi?Pathfinder-Roleplaying-Game-Advanced-Class-Guide-Playtest

This new book introduces new classes that are a combination of two other classes.
Very similar to what WotC was doing with "hybrid" classes back in the 4e days.

I liked the idea of hybrid classes to be honest, take a little from two classes and combine them into one class.

The 4e approach made it feel like each character was unique, the Pathfinder approach makes it feel like it is a new class.

I am sure there are things in this that people could adopt for their old-school or osr game, but for me I am more interested in how to use it my Pathfinder game.  True, I am running near the end of my 3.x game, but I am currently playing Pathfinder.

Yes. There is a "hybrid" of their witch class in here. The Shaman combine the witch with an oracle.
Neat idea, but not what I would have done.  If you are going to combine a witch and an oracle then I am thinking "Sybil" is a better name. Though given that it focuses on spirits, "shaman" is not really that far off.

I am going to read over it more but this might give me the framework to try out a class I have been wanting to play for a while; The Green Witch.  A Green Witch combines the best of the witch and druid classes into a potent divine spellcaster.   Back in the early 3.0 days I had it as a multi-class path.  Later I tried to make a Prestige class for it, but I didn't like how it worked.  Not sure what to do with the Druid's Wild Shape ability just yet, but I think I have an idea or two.

The druid Nature Bond and the witch Patron would get rolled up into one concept.
Likewise an Animal Companion and Familiar become one.

I am thinking something very Miyazaki influenced. With a dash of neo-paganism (maybe even Eco-Pagan) and animism.  Though I would like a different name.  "Green Witch" is great, but not evocative enough of it's druidic background.  Yeah, yeah I am introducing "Tree Hugers" to D&D, but a tree huger that will kill you if you mess with their forests.

Another Clone, but is this the Rosetta Stone?

There is another retro-clone game out on the market.  Fantastic Heroes & Witchery.
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=63759

Now, while I enjoy clones I am not sure we need yet another one.  So I took a look at this.

FREE PDF: http://www.dcrouzet.net/temporary/Fantastic-Heroes-Witchery_screen.pdf

Print: http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?type=&keyWords=dominique+crouzet&x=-1004&y=-8&sitesearch=lulu.com&q=

First it is really attractive has some great layout and some very cool old-school art.

Plus once I started reading through it I recognized the art and finally the name of the author/artist.
It was made by an old friend Dominique Crouzet.
Dom had helped me back in 2000 on the original Netbook of Witches and Warlocks.  We had also submitted a game world (Shadow Earth) together to WotC.  They went with this other world, Eberron.
(Some of what was to be Shadow Earth lived on in Eire and in Eldritch Witchery).

What I think is best about this game is in how it tries to be the middle ground between the pure old school games of Basic and 1st/2nd eds, but also the newer 3.x games and the OSR games.
Critics will say there is nothing at all new here. Sure, but that misses the point I think.

What we have here is a game framework that can either be played as a game (and it looks like it is a fun one) OR used as a Rosetta Stone when translating other game products.

Dom put a lot of work into this.  This isn't some "cheap copy and paste job on Lulu". It is a fully playable game with ideas that are very familiar and some new ones as well.

The current PDF is free and there are print versions on Lulu.
And it is pretty much 100% compatible with The Witch.  Just use the Wizard advancement table and replace "Signature Spell" with "Ritual Spell".

EDITED TO ADD: Dom actually uses The Witch as an example on page 393.  He says:

Lets take for example the witch class from The Witch by Tim Brannan (this is a PDF ebook available on rpgnow.com). In this case you could distribute its special abilities as follows: “Least, Herb Use” at 1st level; “Lesser” at 3rd level; “Minor” at 5th level; “Medial” at 7th level; “Major” at 9th level; and “Superior” at 11th level.

I completely concur!

I wish Dom nothing but the best on this!

Winter is...well not here just yet

I tried. I did. And I failed.

I tried watching Game of Thrones and didn't make it past the first 4 episodes.  I might try again.
I just tried reading the book and only got about half-way through it before putting it down in favor of picking up the Hobbit again.

This weekend in Illinois was a good metaphor for this. Winter had been coming then it was in the 60s (with tornadoes) all weekend.

Recently I had been a big Conan kick thanks to +Jason Vey and I was impressed on how good they were now reading as an adult than when I tried reading them as a kid.  I had hoped that GoT was going to be similar in that respect (better than I remembered).  No such luck.

Though I love the imagery of a long winter coming after a period of long summer, I would have thought the people of the world would have been more anxious about it's coming.  Maybe in later books.  Still though I could not help but think this was the same planet from the 4th Doctor's Key to Time episode, The Ribos Operation.  Something I am planning on using in my current AD&D game.

Maybe I should try to reread Jack Vance now.  I actually enjoyed what little I read of the Dying Earth books.