The Other Side blog

Saturday, February 6, 2021

It's D&D, Not Pie

It's D&D, not pie. You can have as much as you want and there is still more.

Friday, February 5, 2021

#FollowFriday and Kickstart Your Weekend: Zine Quest 3

One of the things I loved about small cons in the 80s (and really, those were the only ones I went too then) was the little indie Zines. Small, cheap (a bonus for a broke high school student) and packed with all sorts of strangeness, they had all sorts of appeal to me.

Granted they were not all good, but they had a sense of, I don't know, love about them. This was before Desk Top Publishing was even taking off yet so often these were Xeroxed, hand stapled affairs.

While it might be easier to get Zines out to the masses, the sense of love is still there.

This is why Zine Quest was made and now we are at the beginning of Zine Quest #3 over on Kickstarter and the choices are overwhelming.

There are plenty of OSR and D&D 5 choices as well as plenty of other indie games in the truest sense.

Trying to track them all is a bit more than I want to take on by myself. Thankfully there are good resources to help us all.

Hero Press / I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters

If you come here then you know "the other Tim" from across the pond. Hero Press is my go-to entertainment blog for all things RPG, Superhero, and more. Go there. No qualifiers, just go there. But he is also covering the Zine Quest projects he likes. You can also follow his Zine Quest tags.

Over on the Facebook side of things his group, I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters will be featuring even more Zines and project owners are encouraged to post links to theirs.

Gothridge Manor / RPG Zines

Tim Shorts (yes another Tim!) is also keeping everyone posted on Zines. He has been talking about them on his blog Gothridge Manor (also a great blog!) and his Facebook group RPG Zines. This is pretty much Zine central and worth your time to check out. Like Tim, Tim has a Zine tag for his blog as well.

But where Tim Shorts rises above the other Tims is his own contribution to the Zine project.
Be sure to back The Many Crypts of Lady Ingrade on Kickstarter.

Tenkar's Tavern

If you have been in the OSR any amount of time you likely know about Tenkar's Tavern blog/podcast/Facebook group. Tenkar is also covering Zine Quest with a lean to the OSR zines coming out.

You can also follow the #Zinequest3 hashtag on Twitter.

There are more launching every day in February, in fact, one launched while I was writing this post that I want to back. So expect a Part 2 next week!

Thursday, February 4, 2021

Star Trek: Mercy and BlackStar Characters

One thing I wanted to accomplish with the recent Character Creation Challenge was to create characters that I could use in my War of the Witch Queens campaign AND get ideas for a multiverse of witches.

But that is not the only thing I wanted from it.

I also wanted to see the differences between various Star Trek-like systems in order to find good NPC for my BlackStar and Star Trek: Mercy games.

Of course, my main source is going to be the challenge founder Carl Stark at Tardis Captain's blog (and of course his Star Trek RPG page).

Reading through all of these (and it has been great!) I am more convinced now that my Star Trek Mercy game needs to be a FASA Trek game while BlackStar can be something else; most likely Star Trek Adventures.

Star Trek: Mercy

As I have mentioned previously Star Trek Mercy will take place aboard a Federation Hospital Ship. Its mission is a bit like Doctors Without Borders; they fly into dangerous situations with the goal of helping. While it is a Federation/Starfleet ship I am going to open up character choices to any and all Star Trek races. So humans, Vulcans, Andorians will be expected, but also Romulans, Klingons, Deltans, even Gorn, and Orions if someone can give me a good reason. These crew will not be members of Starfleet, they still belong to their respective worlds, but I also have to, want to, work within canon.

For this, a few guidelines are needed. No Klingon Starfleet officers. Worf was the first and the Federation and the Klingon Empire are at a period of cooled tensions. They are not allies per see, but they are also not shooting at each other. We know from the TNG episode "The Neutral Zone" that Romulans have not had any relations with the Federation since the Tomed Incident of 2311. There is still a Romulan Ambassador on Earth in 2293. That gives me 18 years' worth of gameplay.

I stated in my first post on this that 2295 would be a good year to set this in. Seems like I was on to something. I can even use the Plasma Plague of 2294 as the first mission of the Mercy. We even get a Stardate for it, 38235.3, though that date can't really work for 2294, it doesn't even work well for The Original Series Stardates. That date gives you Wed Feb 24 2360 for TNG and Tue Oct 28 2279 for TOS. Might need to use the FASA Trek Stardate calculations to make this one work!

Also since this is FASA Trek I can borrow some ideas from The Next Generation Officer's Manual. In particular, the notion that there were a bunch of different uniforms in use. Gives me an excuse to use the ones I want. These would be new here and old by the time the USS Protector and the Mystic-class ships roll out.

I am going to need a new ship design too.

What would also be nice is to work in some Original Series Apocrphya into my game; Saavik being half-Vulcan/half-Romulan, Chekov working for Starfleet Intelligence and a touring Chess Master (loosing to the Betazoids), Scotty as a Professor of Engineering at Starfleet Academy before getting lost near a Dyson Sphere in 2294, Sulu as the Captain of the Excelsior and Harriman as Captain of the Enterprise B. Uhura as Demora Sulu's Godmother. I would also like to find out more about Lt. Elise McKennah, played by Michele Specht in Star Trek Continues.

McCoy becoming an admiral, Spock continuing his role as Federation Ambassador, and Kirk disappearing on the Enterprise B. Though those are not really disputed.

I like this idea since it is also the first Trek game my Star Trek loving wife has mentioned she would like to play.

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Morelia the Wood Witch for Basic Era D&D (BX/OSE)

I make no excuses for it, I like Ginny Di. She is great and is having more fun with D&D than a roomful of dudes my age. She often has content I enjoy but this week she has given her viewers three more NPCs to adopt or adapt and I just couldn't say no.

So with her (implied) permission here is Morelia the Wood Witch. She has accidentally overdid it on a love potion and now the whole village is madly in love with her. She is very happy to see any new PCs, especially ones not from the village. She will work out a deal with them. If they can bring back enough Pixie's Tongue (it's actually a type of plant) then she can brew up the antidote for everyone. But you better hurry! Two fights for Morelia's hand have already broken out and things promise to get worse soon!

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A post shared by Ginny Di 🔹 she/her (@itsginnydi)

Morelia the Wood Witch

8th Level Green Witch*, Elf, Lawful (Good)

Abilities
Strength: 12
Intelligence: 15
Wisdom: 13
Dexterity: 17
Constitution: 16
Charisma: 17

Saving Throws
Death or poison: 10
Wands: 12
Paralysis: 11
Breath Weapons: 14
Spells: 13

AC: 9
HP: 45
Age: 216
Gender: Female

Occult Powers

Familiar: Cremini, a white cat with shocking gold eyes.
3rd: Herbal Healing
7th: Speak to Plants and Animals

Spells
1st Level: Color Spray, Salving Rest. Consecrate Focus Item (Ritual)
2nd Level: Burning Gaze, Glitterdust, Bonds of Hospitality (Ritual)
3rd Level: Dance of Frogs, Summon Guardian of the Green (Ritual)
4th Level: Dryad's Door, Venus Glass

*The Green Witch Tradition from my Swords & Wizardry Green Witch book is perfect for her, but I also want this character to have access to some Pagan spells. Plus I want to use her as an NPC for BX/OSE, so she is a Pagan Green Witch. Combine books and mix and match spells. And given that hair I can't help but think there is a little Pumpkin Spice Witch in her as well!

Helping Morelia now in the adventure will pay off later. Morelia knows about the Tredecium and what is going on with the Witch Queens. She will be an invaluable source of information. That is if she can fix her love potion mishap.

ETA: Ginny has added some more about this lovely character on her World Anvil site.

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

One Man's God: Syncretism and the Gods

Hermes Trismegistus

In the pages of the Deities & Demigods (or Gods, Demigods, and Heroes) the Gods and their Pantheons are fairly clean-cut affairs. Greek over here, Egypt over there, Mesopotamia over there a little more. Norse WAY the hell over there.

In real-world mythology and religion, it doesn't work like that. Zeus was, and was not, exactly Jupiter. Ra was Ra, unless he was Amun-Ra or Aten. Dumuzid was Tammuz, except for the times he was his own father. This is not counting the times when religions rise, fall, change and morph over the centuries. Today's God is tomorrow's demon. Ask Astarte or the Tuatha Dé Danann how things fare for them now.

Gods are messy.

It stands to reason that gods in your games should also be as messy.

Now, most games do not have the centuries (game time) and none have the real-time evolution of gods in their games. We use simple "spheres" and give the gods roles that they rarely deviate from. The Forgotten Realms is an exception since its published works cover a couple hundred years of in-universe time, but even then their gods are often pretty stable. That is to make them easier to approach and to make sales of books easier. The Dragonlance books cover more time in the game world, but their gods are another issue entirely.

While I want to get back to my One Man's God in the proper sense I do want to take this side quest to talk about Syncretism.

Syncretism

According to the ole' Wikipedia, "Syncretism /ˈsɪŋkrətɪzəm/ is the combining of different beliefs, while blending practices of various schools of thought." For our purposes today we are going to confine ourselves to just gods.

For game purposes, I am going to use Syncretism as the combination of two or more gods into one. The individual gods and the syncretized god are considered to be different and separate entities.

Now years ago when I proposed the idea that gods can be different than what is stated I go some grief online from people claiming that gods are absolute truth. For example, you can cast a Commune spell and speak to a god and get an answer. But a commune is not a cell phone. It is not email. It is only slightly better than an Ouija board. You have no idea who, or what, is on the other end. If you are a cleric all you have is faith.

So what is a syncretic god like? Some examples from the real world and my own games.

Hermes Trismegistus

Our poster boy for syncretism is good old Hermes Trismegistus or the Thrice Great Hermes. He is a Hellenistic syncretism of the Greek Hermes and the Egyptian Thoth. Now, the DDG has these as very separate individuals. Thoth is a Neutral Greater God of Knowledge, Hermes is a Neutral Greater God of Thieves, Liars, and more. From this perspective, there does not seem to be an overlap. But like I say above, gods are messy. This figure is believed to have written the Corpus Hermetica, the collection of knowledge passed down to the various Hermetic Orders that would appear in later antiquity and during the Occult revivals. Even then the Thrice Great Hermes of the Hellenistic period could be argued to be a completely different personage than the Thrice Great Hermes of the Hermetic Orders.

But is Hermes Trismegistus a God? If you met him on the street would that mean you also met Hermes, Thoth, and Mercury? Or can all four walk into a bar together and order a drink? That answer of course is a confounding yes to all the above. Though this is less satisfactory than say having stats for all four in a book.

The Triple Moon Goddess Heresy

Back when I was starting up my 4e game and deciding to set it in the Forgotten Realms I wanted to make sure I had a good grasp on the gods and goddesses of the world. I was also already mulling some thoughts that would become One Man's God, so I decided to go full heretic. I combined the moon goddesses all into one Goddess. I also decided that like Krynn, Toril has three moons, but you can't see one of them. I detailed that religion in my post Nothing Like the Sun... and I did something similar to Lolth and Araushnee in The Church of Lolth Ascendant.

Sehanine Moonbow, Selûne, and Shar by Ben Honeycutt

As expected (and maybe a little wanted) these tended to shuffle the feathers of the orthodoxy. Thanks for that by the way.

This is all fun and everything, but what can I actually *do* with these?

Syncretic Gods make FANTASTIC witch and warlock patrons.

Witches in many pagan traditions in the real world believe that their Goddess is all goddesses. That is syncretism to the Nth degree. I already have a case with Hermes Trismegistus and the Hermetic Order.

Here are some syncretic gods from antiquity and potential roles as patrons.

Apollo-Belenus, Patron of the sun and healing. From the Greco-Roman Apollo and the Gaulish Belenus.

Ashtart, Patroness of love, marriage, and sex. Combines the Goddesses Aphrodite, Astarte, Athirat, Ishtar, Isis, and Venus. Sometimes depicted as the consort to Serapis.

Cybele, or the Magna Mater, Patroness of Motherhood and fertility. She combines many Earth and motherhood-related Goddesses such as Gaia, Rhea, and Demeter.

Serapis, the Patron of Law, Order, rulers, and the afterlife. He is a combination of the Gods Osiris and Apis from Egypt with Hades and Dionysus of the Greek. Besides Hermes Trismegistus, he is one of the most popular syncretic gods and the one that lead archeologists and researchers to the idea of syncretism.

Sulis Minerva, Patroness of the sun and the life-giving power of the earth. She is chaste and virginal where Ashtart is lascivious.

And one I made up to add to this mix and smooth out some edges,

Heka, the Patroness of Magic. She combines Hecate, Cardea, (who might have been the same anyway), Isis, with bits of Ishtar (who has connections to Isis too), and Ereshkigal with some Persephone.

In my own games, I have always wanted to explore the Mystra (Goddess) and Mystara (World) connection.

This also helps me answer an old question. Why would a Lawful Good witch be feared or hated? Simple that Lawful witch is worshiping a god that the orthodoxy deems as a heresy.

A Witch (or Warlock) of the Tripple Moon Goddess in the Realms is going to be hated by both the followers of Selûne and Shar, even if they are the same alignment. Cults are like that.

I am planning on expanding these ideas further.

Another thing I want to explore is when a god is split into two or more gods or demons. In this case I want to have some sort of divinity that was "killed" and from the remnants of that god became Orcus and Dis Pater, or something like that. Orcus, Dis Pater (Dispater), and Hades have a long and odd relationship. This is not counting other gods that have floated in and out of Orcus' orbit like Aita and Soranus.

Monday, February 1, 2021

Character Creation Challenge: Looking Back and Forward

And that is done!

I managed to get through the 31 Day New Year, New Character creation challenge. It was quite a bit of fun. In fact, I might continue this on the 1st of each month. I still have plenty of games to cover.

For the record, here are all the characters created this past month.

31 Games, 38 Characters. Not too shabby really.

Many of these characters will find some life again in my War of the Witch Queens.

Sunday, January 31, 2021

Character Creation Challenge: DragonRaid

Here we are. The end of the New Character Creation Challenge. First, a tip of the hat to Tardis Captain for getting this going. This has been a lot of fun and I have considered doing it on the first of each month for the rest of the year. Maybe not tomorrow, but who knows.

Now for today's last character. Ah. This is a game that has been on my radar for YEARS, decades even. Today feels like the perfect time. So let's make a character LightRaider for DragonRaid!

The Game: DragonRaid

Ok. This game.

So DragonRaid got a lot of grief in the gaming communities I was apart of. I had some Christian gamer friends that thought it was a cheap attempt to capitalize on their faith and some even did not want to mix their D&D and belief. As an Atheist, then and now, I thought it was interesting. As someone who was interested in psychology then and someone with degrees in it now I also thought it was an interesting way to learn something, in this case, Bible verses. I always wanted to see the game for myself.

One thing I have to keep in mind that this "game" is not really an RPG, but a teaching tool in the form of a role-playing game.

The game's author and designer was Dick Wulf, MSW, LCSW, who is, as his degrees indicate, a licensed Social Worker and holds a Masters in Social Work. He had done a lot of work in psychotherapy and ministry. He also played D&D and Traveller. So it seems he actually likes and knows RPGs better than the guys who gave us Fantasy Wargaming!

Plus I have to admit the ads in Dragon Magazine always looked really interesting. I mean seriously, that is an evil-looking dragon and should be stopped and those look like the brave warriors to do it. Even if they need some more armor*. (*that is actually a point in the game! more later)

A while back my oldest son and I saw this game at my FLGS and I told him all about it. He is also an Atheist (as everyone in my family is) and he wanted to get it so we could play the other, evil, side. He wanted to do something with the dragons in the game (he loves dragons) and I of course wanted to bring witches into it (cause that is my raison d'être). Plus this copy still had the cassette tape in it. I mean that is just beyond cool really. So yeah I grabbed it with every intention of having a bit of a laugh with it.

I might be a witch-obsessed Athiest, but I am also an educator and not really an asshole.

The truth of the matter is spending this past week with the game I just can't take a piss on it. The author is just too earnest in his presentation of this game. There is love here, and scholarship, and frankly good pedagogy behind the design. I don't normally mix my professional education background with my game design work. Yes, they can and they do mix. But when I am writing a book on the Pagan witches for Old-School Essentials I am not trying to write a historical treatise on the pagan religions of Western Europe during the time of the Roman Empire. I'll try to keep my facts in line, but I can't serve two masters. I have to write what is best for a game.

DragonRaid also doesn't serve two masters. It serves one and makes that work for both pedagogical reasons (to help young people understand Christianity and their Bible better) and game design reasons (to have a fun roleplaying experience).

For this DragonRaid succeeds in a lot of ways. For this, I simply can't do anything else but admire this game and its design. So no playing dragons here, or me coming up with a witch class to fight the characters. I might do that at home, but I am not going to be a jerk about it.

Besides look at everything you get in this box! I mean seriously, this is some value.

The DragonRaid RPG Box contents 2, Lightraider sheets

The DragonRaid RPG Box contents 3, so many books!

The DragonRaid RPG Box contents 4, counters

The DragonRaid RPG Box contents 5 documentation

I even got the cassette tape! I don't have anything to play it on though.

The DragonRaid RPG Box contents 6, and honest to goodness cassette tape!

Thankfully you can go to the official Lightraider Academy website to get the audio files from the tape.

The Famous DragonRaid Tape

This company is all in on this game and I have to admit I totally admire them for it.

So expect me to more with this game on these pages including a full review.

The Character: Solomon

Building your character, the Lightraider, is one of the core elements of this game. It is also why we are here today. There is a pad of Lightraider worksheets and a smaller sized pad of Lightraider character sheets. I am betting I will need both. There is also a blue Game Instructions Rulebook for players.

There are two books that I start with. The red book is the New Player Briefing. The yellow book is the Dragonraider Handbook Player's Guide. I will start with the red since it is the smaller of the two and covers the game basics. The yellow, spiral-bound one covers the in-game background. After some background, we get to the characters on page 60 or so. There are 9 Character Strengths (Love, Joy, Peace, and more, based on Galatians Chapter 5, verses 22-23.) and 2 physical attributes. The first nine are determined randomly on a d10 (called a "Starlot" here. the d8 is a "Shadowstone." I think that is what I am calling d8s from now on!). Many other attributes and scores are determined via derived stats from those strengths. I see why we need/want a worksheet. There are also 8 character abilities that are required and three optional ones.

Note: I am not doing this as a proper review. That will come later. Today I just want to make a LightRaider.

I am going to do this properly and roll all random strengths. Let's see what sort of character I get. Rolling is the easy part, everything else on this sheet requires a lot of math. Not difficult math really, lots of averages, but had I know I would have worked up a spreadsheet.

Ok. I did a spreadsheet anyway. This is the exact thing I would have loved back in the day. I would have written a BASIC program for my Color Computer to help me generate a character. Even now I can see all the code in my head! So let's look over all my numbers and see what character I have here.

Solomon
Knight of the Way

Character Strengths
Love (LO) 6
Joy (JO) 6
Peace (PE) 5
Patience (PA) 10
Kindness (KI) 2
Goodness (GO) 6
Faithfulness (FA) 7
Gentleness (GE) 2
Self-Control (SC) 10

Character Abilities
Courage (CO) 7
Endurance (EN) 8
Hope (HO) 6
Knowledge (KN) 7
Listening (LIS) 7
Quiet Movement (QM) 8
Vision (VIS) 7
Wisdom (WIS) 4

Blend with Surroundings (BWS) 9 +2 11
Climb Skillfully (CLS) 8
Track Enemy (TE) 8 +2 10

Weapon Abilities
Solo Battle (SB) 6
Sling 7
Flail 7
Crossbow 6

Defensive Abilities
Evade Enemy (EE) 8 +2 10
Recovery from Injury (RFI) 6
Resist Torture (RT) 7

Armor
Belt of Truth (BT) 7
Breastplate of Righteousness (BR) 6
Shield of Faith (SF) 6
Helmet of Salvation (HS) 6
Sword of the Spirit (SS) 1
Boots of the Gospel of Peace (BGP) 6

Physical Attributes
Physical Vitality (PV) 27
Strength (ST) 4
Agility (AG) 4

You can't see it, but there are a lot of derived stats here. For example, Blend with Surroundings (BWS) is made up of Self-Control doubled (SCx2), plus Patience (PA), plus Endurance doubled (EN). Endurance itself is made up Joy, Peace, Patience (doubled), Faith, and Self-Control doubled, all divided by 7 and rounded down. See why I wanted a spreadsheet.

Can't get much more old-school than this really!

Looking over this character I see he qualifies now for a special Character Role. Normally this would be chosen later after a few games, but let's do it now. Doing the math (again) I see he meets or passes the thresholds for Knight of the Way or Rescue Master. Looking over his stats, mostly at his really poor Kindness and Gentleness scores it looks like Knight of the Way is the better choice. That also gives me a +2 bonus for BWS, TE, and EE.

So. Who is this guy?

Well seeing how low his Wisdom is I thought let's name him Solomon. A reminder of what he needs to work on.

Solomon is a bit of loner. He is not particularly kind nor gentle. He doesn't learn from his mistakes well (low Wisdom) but he is not stupid. What he is however is tireless in his goal of hunting down the enemy of the Overlord of Many Names. He specializes in getting other Lightraiders behind enemy lines and hopefully getting them back out, but that is a job for the Rescue Masters. He knows if he gets caught he can resist the enemy better than most and that is where his true kindness is; if catching him means someone else avoids the Dragon Lord's torturers then so be it.

His combat scores are good, but better with ranged weapons. And yes despite what you may or may not have heard characters ARE expected to fight and kill the forces of evil.

His Faith is pretty good and his Goodness a little less. I think this guy is likely more about wanting to hurt the enemy rather than helping out good people. That will be his struggle.

Well...the real struggle is I don't really know any bible verses so I am not going to get very far with the Word Runes. But I suppose that is the purpose of this game really, to teach them to young adults. This is actually a cool idea; memorizing real bible verses to have an effect in the game. As an educator, I can appreciate this.

I will need to get into that in a future review.

The Links

I am going to be going through this game some more. So I am going to share my collected links here so we both have them for later.

LightRaiders, the home of DragonRaid, https://lightraiders.com/

Introduction to DragonRaid, https://vimeo.com/399051861
The DragonRaid audio files, https://lightraiders.com/dragonraid-tape/

Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonRaid
Review on RPG.net, https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11723.phtml
Review on Biblical Geek, http://www.biblicalgeek.com/blog/2018/11/22/dragonraid
Thoul's Paradise has a whole series of posts.