The Other Side blog

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Building a Shared World

There are so many cool projects and products out now that fly under the loose banner of OSR.

It occurs to me that there might be enough to fill an entire campaign world.

For locations there is Dolmvay, Gamington, The Shrine of St. Aleena, Dunsmouth (and more from LotFP), Blackmarsh, Castle of the Mad Archmage, Dyson Delves I and II, The Majestic Wilderlands, Verloren, and Vornheim,

For monsters (important to give the world a nice unique feel) we have, The Big book of Spiders, The Cartographer's Guide to the Creatures of Eira, Realms of Crawling Chaos, Teratic Tome,

There are even campaign worlds with built in rules (visa-versa) like Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea and Adventurer Conqueror King System.

Plus all the material from James Mishler Games and others.

This is just the stuff I know about. What else is out there?
Has there been enough published "OSR" material to populate an entire campaign guide ala the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk?

Has anyone tried fitting it all together?

Monday, March 17, 2014

I had wings once...

They were strong

But they were stolen from me.

Yeah I am a geek. Get off my cloud man.

Fighting Fire the Ernie Gygax Benefit Adventure

Recently Ernie Gygax lost a number of personal items due to a fire in his home.

To make matters worse Ernie was laid up with CHF.

While insurance can replace some items, others were irreplaceable and frankly the shock of loss is a lot.

To help out the gaming community has offered something, this time a system neutral adventure "Fighting Fire".

The idea is simple, a third of the money goes to helping out Ernie.

The adventure itself is 32 pages (minus cover and title pages) with some NPCs. It is edition agnostic (neutral in their words). While they could have used something simple like Swords & Wizardry to give it some crunch, there isn't anything here an experienced gamer could run in about hour of prep time. In fact while typing this I have gone from wanting to run this at as an "Old-school" adventure with something like Basic D&D to maybe running it under 3rd ed. instead.

The adventure is a simple, if tongue in cheek, one. Defeat the evil fire wizard.

There is a lot of self-referential material here. So knowing a little bit about the gaming industry and some of the people involved over the years will help you see some of the inside jokes. But if not the adventure does not suffer for it.

It is described as a fairly simple adventure and it doesn't disappoint on the that regard. Easily dropped into any game and any campaign.

A lot of the art and maps come from various sources. I personally think it is kind of cool. Everyone contributed something to this.

While I can be accused (and rightly so) of waxing too nostalgic at times, I like the idea of the town of Gamington. I also like the idea of adding it to my own world as a place where old adventurers go to retire. They bring their treasure hoards and retire in style.

In any case, this is a good cause and worth the money spent.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

March Madness OSR Challenge! Part 3

I want to thank Tomb of Tedankhamen for hosting this.

Here is part 3 of my list. Hope you enjoy!

16 Which RPG besides D&D has the best magic system? Give details.
Ghosts of Albion. Which is a total cheat on my part since I wrote it. But seriously. I love the magic system in it. I might never top that in my writing but I am sure as heck gonna try. The system is flexible enough to cover D&D like spells, Mage like powers and even the innate magic of supernatural creatures.
Outside of Ghosts my favorite magic system is the one from Eden's WitchCraft RPG.

17 Which RPG has the best high tech rules? Why?
Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space. Mostly because it hand waves the tech rules. Games run the risk of looking very, very dated when it comes to tech. Look at Traveller, ShadowRun or even Kult. Doctor Who plays it simple and therefore it works so much better.

18 What is the crunchiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?
Maybe GURPS or even D&D itself. I like most games to be honest so to me enjoyment is more a factor of the playing rather than the rules.

19 What is the fluffiest RPG you have played? Was it enjoyable?
Monsterhearts. It is quite fun, but not for every audience. Also Monster of the Week is in there; similar mechanics.

20 Which setting have you enjoyed most? Why?
Anything in the Victorian age. I love the time period and it is great for all sorts of conflict. You can play class vs. class, modern vs. old world or even magic/supernatural vs. science. The world was new to explore and people had the means to do it. It was an exciting time for nearly anything you would want in an adventure game.

21 What is the narrowest genre RPG you have ever played? How was it?
70s Black exploration. The games that suited it best were Solid! and Damnation Decade. I played a hippie witch from Berkeley. Interestingly enough this was an extension of my Chill game from the 80s. I normally am not a fan of the 70s, but these games were great.

22 What is the most gonzo kitchen sink RPG you ever played? How was it?
Back in the early d20 days I was playing with my son. We used D&D 3.0, Mutants and Masterminds, BESM d20, Star Wars, Silver Age Sentinels and anything that wasn't nailed down. We had a blast.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Friday Video: Satanism Unmasked Dungeons & Dragons

I am obsessed with the 80s Satanic Panic. Here is another little turd from that time.

Christians talking about how morally deficient and evil D&D is.

)

Why is that these people get their facts so wrong?
Not just the really wrong shit of satanism in a game, but they can't even get the basic facts right.

...Satanism is not part of Witchcraft and visa versa.
...Those are not the words from "Shout at the Devil"
...NecroNOMicon, not Necro"NOME"icon.
...no suicides due to D&D.
...what the hell is a "training 'prim-er'"?
...interviewing prisoners. Always a good source of "credible" information.

I could go on. But what is the point. Here is a great podcast from "The Thinking Atheist".

)

And this gem, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jrMoVWl5KA

Ok. How about this.

Shield of Faith
(Basic Era/Labyrinth Lord/Basic Fantasy/S&W)
Level: Cleric 1 to 7
Range: 5' in front of the Cleric
Duration: 1 round per level
By means of this spell the cleric focuses their faith into a tangible shield that will protect them from harm from creatures the cleric can consider "Evil". Typically this is a creature of Chaotic alignment (or Lawful for a Chaotic cleric) and an "outsider" or supernatural creature. This includes (but not limited to) undead, djinn, effrit, demons, devils and any type of spirit. Sometimes even faerie creatures.
The spell reduces the attacks of these creatures at a number of hp per the spell level. So a 5th level cleric using a 2nd level Shield of Faith would be able reduce 2 points per attack for 5 rounds.
The cleric must present their holy symbol when casting and they cannot attack.
Material Components: The clerics holy symbol.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

A to Z Blogging Chat

I am taking part in today's Blogging A to Z chat.

A to Z Chats are going to be scheduled on Thursdays from 1 PM to 2 PM Eastern U.S. Time and from 8 PM to 9 PM Eastern Time U.S.

Yeah, I know some people are tired of blog hops, challenges, circle jerks, whatever.
But that is not why (or who) I do these for. Last year I had people outside of our own corner of the web post or email me and had no idea that RPGs, let alone D&D was still "a thing". One woman even ended up with S&S, Basic Fantasy and some other books on my recommendation for her husband who had played in the 80s but no more.

So join me on Twitter, @timsbrannan with hashtag #AZchat.

Today I am contemplating a theme change for the challenge.
Something that I think will work better for everyone here.