#RPGaDAY2021 Day 24 Translate

Heading into the back end of the challenge. What do we have for today and how does it relate to NIGHT SHIFT?

Day 24 Translate

Continuing on the ideas in Simplicity and Substitute, I often try to Translate material from one game system to another for different sorts of experiences. 

In many ways, the ultimate representation of this is NIGHT SHIFT.

NIGHT SHIFT began as a way to take something my co-author Jason and I loved; the games we worked on and played back in the 1990s and early 2000s and translate it to a rule system we also loved.

The simplest way to describe NIGHT SHIFT is "Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Basic D&D rules" but that doesn't really capture all of it.

In the 1990s my game world of choice for AD&D 2nd Ed was Ravenloft. I loved the horror elements, I loved the trappings of Gothic Horror, and I loved that I could bring in characters I have been playing for years over to it.  The Masque of the Red Death Gothic Earth supplement was a dream come true since it also brought in my beloved Victorian era.   It was perfect...almost.

Near the end of the 90s I was getting really burned out on D&D.  Thankfully I had discovered C.J. Carella's WitchCraft RPG.  Here was yet another "Gothic Earth" only this time coming at from a different angle.  I loved it.  Of course, as the supplements for WitchCraft were released I thought of many ways to "translate" Ravenloft over to WitchCraft.   In a way, I got my wish and wrote Ghosts of Albion.  A horror-soaked Earth, in a Victorian setting.

Still as perfect as I think WitchCraft and Ghosts of Albion are, they still didn't give me something.  Sure it was a minor thing, but there was still something I was looking for. 

Jason did something similar.  While I went for the themes I wanted, he took the Unisystem rules found in WitchCraft and went a different direction with Dungeons & Zombies; a way to translate D&D experiences and adventures into Unisystem.  Like myself, he also had a few "fan" based products.

We really have been dancing around NIGHT SHIFT for decades.

I wanted a game where I could translate anything I have done over the last 30+ years to a single game system.  I feel NIGHT SHIFT does this.

Don't forget our Kickstarter going on right now for The Night Companion.

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 23 Memory

The natural choice here is to talk about a great RPG memory.

Day 23 Memory

I will admit I have a lot of really great RPG memories.  Here are a couple of highlights.

Getting My Hands on the First Monser Manual

It seems only fair to start with my first D&D memory, and indeed my first any RPG ever memory.  The first time I held the AD&D Monster Manual was a defining moment. Here I became introduced to the game that so many of us love.  I can remember afterward riding my bike around the neighborhood thinking about it and what the game was. I had no rules yet, the copy of Holmes Basic had not made it its way to me just yet, so I could only imagine what this game could be like. 

Summers Playing D&D/AD&D

As much as I would have LOVED the connection to the world via the Internet we have today (and believe me I tried with my little TRS-80 Color Computer) I am also glad I got to spend all my summers in the 80s playing D&D.  First D&D with a group of kids from Jr. High and then and another, semi-related group, in High School with AD&D.  The cut off there was not perfect, I remember we mixed a lot of Holmes and Moldvay Basic with AD&D, but these are the broad strokes.  I can still remember fighting Liches, getting trapped in the A Series, and battling the "Queen of the Succubi" in Jr. High. Later moving on to bigger things in AD&D in High School.  Oh, there was my short live Atlantis campaign in College before moving on to Ravenloft/2nd Ed but none of those lasted as long as my misspent youth in the 80s. 

Teaching My Kids to Play

One of my greatest joys and successes in life is getting to be a dad.  Honestly every other achievement I have made and am proud of takes a back seat to this one.  So teaching my kids to play was one of my greatest joys and memories.   The look on my oldest son's face when he would hit a monster, or better yet, roll a "20" and proudly proclaim "DOUBLE DAMAGE!" or just the wacky character my youngest would come up with was pure joy.  I taught them both using D&D 3rd edition and now we all play 5e.

It has truly been fantastic. 

I also have some great memories of various Cons I have played at over the years.  The time the guy playing an Occult Poet composed an epic poem on the spot, the time my son's character plunged the Sun Sword into the Forge of Moradin to re-ignite the Sun,  the time I got to play Piper in a Charmed game.  All great memories. 

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 22 Substitute

Related to yesterday, in my desire for systems that "get out of the way" I often substitute a rule from one game for another.

Day 22 Substitute

When I write a supplement or a core rule book I assume that people are going to play it more or less as written.  At least that is, one time.  After that I make no assumptions of how someone is going to play something.  Generally speaking, I also don't play things rules as written.  I am always substituting one set of rules for another.

In Post-2000 D&D skills are much better defined than they are in previous versions.  So I find when running an older version of D&D (say AD&D or Basic-era D&D) then I find myself often asking my players for a skill check.  To make life easier for all of us I will typically use 5e style names and tell them what they need to roll.  It moves the game along faster in most respects.

I am not limited to substituting one form of D&D for another. I will also grab ideas from other games.  I will for example allow a character to use a skill that is not tied to a particular ability.  For example, in Unisystem the skills are independent of Abilities.   So the Art skill can be tied to Intelligence for knowledge of a particular bit of art. Or use it with Perception to determine if a piece of art is a fake. Or with Dexterity to create a piece of art.  In D&D 3, Knowledge is always tied to Intelligence. But sometimes I let characters tie it to Wisdom if they came upon their knowledge via practical experience instead.  

And these are just for skills.  I use the Bloodied condition from 4e for some monsters in combat.  I use the conditions from 5e in old school games, and more publically I use the 5e size modifiers in almost all my D&D games now.

In some ways, though I still prefer AD&D 2nd ed, d10 initiative roll, but 3e-5e's d20 works roughly the same way.

What rules do you like to substitute?

Sword & Sorcery & Cinema: The Throne of Fire (1983)

Doing a bit more research on my next Witch Queen adventure when I turned up this little Italian gem.  So. What do you get when you mix Italian actors, Norse myth, a witch, the son of the Devil, and a magical throne?  Well, you get Il trono di fuoco or 1983's The Throne of Fire.

The Throne of Fire (1983)

Azria the witch is impregnated by the Devil to give birth to a mutant baby.  The baby grows up to become the less mutated Morak played to great scene-chewing effect by Harrison Muller. Born at the same time is Siegfried played by Italian stuntman Pietro Torrisi in his last role.  I can't really find much on him.  

In order to gain the Throne of Fire Malak has to marry Princess Valkari, played by Sabrina Siani.  Now, obviously, this is an allusion to Valkerie, but they keep pronouncing it "Val-Kar-EE."  Hmm. I can live with it.  Malak captures the Princess, but not before she can show off her own Xena moves.  

Siegfried comes to the court of the former King Agon, and now belonging to Valkari, to fight Morak.  He stabs Morak, which only causes him to laugh and reveal his "devil face" ala Lucifer.   Defeated he is tossed into the Well of Madness, which admitted was fun.  Here, for reasons, he finds his father, Well it is revealed in a long flashback that he was in the court when Morak first attacked.  He makes Siegfried invisible and invulnerable to everything but fire. 

Siegfried teams up with the Princess and helps her escape, but not before Morak can shot him with a flaming arrow. 

Recaptured Princess Valkari shows she is more than capable of getting herself out of jams and if that means sacrificing Seigfried, well she only just met the guy after all.  She doesn't wear much more than what is show in the poster above in this, but that is still a lot more than she wore in the Blue Lagoon rip-off, the Blue Island.  But I'll give the writer and director credit, for a bit of 80s, Z-Grade Sword and Sorcerery romp Princess Valkari is quite capable. She manages to escape on her own and kill a few guards in the process while Siegfried is still tied up.  

Malak lets Siegfried go to lead him right the Princess, which of course works. And they are recaptured again.  This is getting monotonous. 

Malak charms the Princess to get her to marry him and the solar eclipse happens, "The Night in a Day," so he can sit on the Throne of Fire.  But I guess the timing was not quite right, because when Siegfried throws Malak onto the Throne he burns up.  

Valkari becomes the new Queen and the people want Seigfried to be King.  Really???  He didn't really do a damn thing.

Game Content

The Well of Madness is nice, and a real Queen would have given Seigfried a title and then told him to pound sand.   A Witch Queen would have turned him into a newt for his impertinence. 

Not much here though that can't be found in other, better movies.

--

Tim Knight of Hero Press and Pun Isaac of Halls of the Nephilim along with myself are getting together at the Facebook Group I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters to discuss these movies.  Follow along with the hashtag #IdRatherBeWatchingMonsters.

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 21 Simplicity

When I first started in RPGs I was all about complexity and systems that mirrored everything, these days, I am more about simplicity.

Day 21 Simplicity

There used to be big debates in RPG circles, narrativist vs. simulationist.  Gamist was thrown in there as well. You don't see that as much anymore. Well.  You do, but now the focus has shifted a bit. 

This debate has waged on in various formats, various permutations, over the decades. But in the end, the one that wins out for me is Simplicity.

I like a lot of games. I like to read and play a lot of games.  I don't like needing huge volumes of pages to explain to me how to play a game.  Sure I understand the value and the place of supplements and "Splat" books, but the core needs to be simple and complexity for complexity's sake is not a value. 

AD&D is a great game, but let's be honest. The rules are a hodge-podge of systems that are largely unrelated to each other save in a post hoc fashion. The layout of the rules is equally poor. We learned it then because it was what we had and we didn't know any better.  AD&D 2nd Ed is better organized (sort of its purpose) but there are still bolted on systems.  Honestly look no further than skills and psionics.   Also, AD&D 2nd ed loses some of the charms of AD&D 1st ed.  Is the charm in the complexity or is the charm in our memory via "Nostalgia Goggles?"  Hard to say. 

D&D 3rd Edition did a bit of a better job of this. 5th Edition does a better job still.  Still neither are at the level of say WitchCraft, Ghosts of Albion, or even Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space.

I am not trying to imply that simpler is always better.  For example, many of the Powered by the Apocalypse games are quite simple and none of them have ever really grabbed me.  In fact, I usually find them too simple.  

But for me, I desire to remove unneeded complexity for complexity sake and keep my games and my designs a little more simple. 

#RPGaDAY2021 Day 20 Lineage

Today's alt-word has been on my mind a lot lately.  I have been wanting to talk more about it so today feels like the day. 

Day 20 Lineage

Since its inception, D&D has had race as a feature of the game.  However, since its inception race has been more or less been misused.  Really Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, and Humans are different species.  Now while it is true humans can interbreed with elves and orcs I am going to stick with the notion here that they are species.  

Race, as a term, has a lot of negative connotations about it.  There is the idea of ethnic or phenotype determiners of race. There is the colonialism notion of races, and how that was used to justify all sorts of crimes against humanity for centuries.  There are even the Theosophical ideas of races which seem to be the well that D&D has drawn from.  In the end "Race" is not only not even the proper word, it is a woefully loaded word.

I like Species myself.  But you might say "but species can't interbreed!" except of course when they do.  There are sterile hybrids between species, there are even fertile ones. These range from plants to animals and even mammals.   Even in humans, there are fossils that may be human-neanderthal hybrids and many scientists think that we may have killed all the other archaic hominids or we may have bred with them until their genome was absorbed into ours.  We know from mitochondrial DNA scans that Neanderthals share more alleles with Eurasians than with sub-Saharah Africans.  

I also remember having debates in my Philosophy of Science class that species only serve the needs of scientists making taxonomic nomenclature.   

So can all the D&D Player Characters be different species? Of course. Can they interbreed? Absolutely some of them can.  But this is not really the full picture either.

Let's take the term used by the latest D&D 5e book, Lineage.  

Lineage has none of the baggage that race does. Nor does it have to overly complicated scientific logic that species does.  Lineage allows you to build what your character is.  

From Tasha's Cauldron of Everything:

At the first level you choose:

• Creature type. You are a humanoid. You determine your appearance and whether you resemble any of your kin.
• Size. You are Small or Medium (your choice).
• Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
• Ability Score Increase. One ability score of your choice increases by 2.
• Feat. You gain one feat of your choice for which you qualify.
• Variable Trait. You gain one of the following options of your choice:
• Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.
• Proficiency in one skill of your choice.
• Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for your character.

Simple.  You can rebuild any race you want.  

Just prior to Tasha's Arcanist Press released their Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e.  A fantastic guide.  Where Tasha's uses "Lineage" this uses "Ancestry," which is in my opinion just as good.  But this product also includes "Culture" in the mix.   So what if you are a human raised by elves?  Or in the case of my own Sharis Val, a drow raised by dwarven clerics in a monastery.  It can even explain the already established differences in the three types of halflings/hobbits with fallohides/tallfellows having halfling lineage and living near elven culture.  Yeah, they are taller and the like, this is a blog post not comparative biology. 

You can also vote for Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e for the 2021 ENnies awards. It is up for:

• Best Electronic Book
• Best Supplement
• Product of the Year

Pathfinder 2nd Ed also does something with all of this too.  Their system is more mechanically oriented.

Personally, I prefer this over the systems we have been using.  

I would adapt these to Old-School play, but I am going to wait to see how Chromatic Dungeons does it first. 

ENnies Voting is now Open

The annual ENnies awards is now open for voting and as usual, there are a lot of great choices to vote for, or at the very least shop for.

I might get into my picks later on (have to see how long voting is) but for today I want to focus on one particular book and maybe convince you to consider voting for it.

Up for Best Adventure and Best Cartography is Halls of the Blood King for Old-School Essentials. 

I reviewed Halls of the Blood King last month and frankly, I loved it.  So it is great seeing it get some official recognition.  It would be even great if it wins.

It has some serious competition, in particular from the Alien RPG adventure.  But keep in mind that OSE is still largely a one-man operation of Gavin Norman.  Alien and Free League is a more traditional publisher.  So to say that OSE and Blood King are punching well above their weight class is not hyperbole. 

So, if you can make the time, give HotBK a vote for both Best Adventure and Best Cartography.