Skills in AD&D 1

I got to play some AD&D 1st ed again this past weekend.  The boys are really enjoying it.
But the one thing that now feels awkward are ability checks.

Back in the day if we wanted to do something that would require a "skill check" we would roll a d20 and aim to roll under the ability in question.  Easy and it worked for us till the 1st ed Proficiency system came along.

Looking back I remembered something.  I hate the 1st Ed Proficiency system.

I think what I want is something more simple.  AD&D isn't really about what skills and how many skill points you have.  Your skills are defined by your class or race and Ability scores are key.

So I am thinking of taking some ideas from d20, Castles & Crusades and even a little bit of D&D4.

Skill checks will still be Ability checks.
Instead of the roll under mechanic, I am going to use a d20 style Difficulty Classes. Since 3.x d20 and AD&D1 make the similar assumption of 20 levels I think the numbers are good.

Abilities will use their default modifiers.  So 0 +1, +2 or +3 (or negatives as the case may be).  Additionally characters will add +1 per level.  I *might* cap that at 10th level.  I have not decided yet.

Borrowing from Castles and Crusades each character will get two Primes.  These will be the same as the Prime Attribute for their class. Humans will get one extra. Primes will add +2.

So a skill roll then would be like this.
A 1st level Cleric with an 18 Wisdom is making a Spot check.  Wisdom is his prime.
His chances are +3 (wisdom) +1 (level) +2 (prime) for a total of +6.
That might sound like a lot, but a Cleric in 3.x with Spot as a skill would get +4 Wis and +4 for the skill for +8.

I might also give each character a chance at a signature or trained skill.  Something very specific that they get and extra +1 on.  So my cleric in the above example might have Religion as a signature skill, and get an extra +1.

I think this will work fine to be honest.  Course if I wanted that "old school" feel I could put it all in a chart.

Batwoman

Kinda brain dead today.  Busy weekend and a busy start to my work week.  So how about some Batwoman.



Batwoman, J. Metcalf by *sinhalite on deviantART


Batwoman by ~KidNotorious on deviantART


30-60-90 Batwoman by ~MahmudAsrar on deviantART


batwoman part two by ~JoelGomez on deviantART


Batwoman Commission by *mcguan on deviantART


Batwoman - NYCC 2012 Pre-Show Commission by ~MahmudAsrar on deviantART


Heroes Con Auction 2012: Batwoman by *gattadonna on deviantART


Batwoman by *gattadonna on deviantART


Batwoman II by *gattadonna on deviantART


Heroes Con Auction 2012: Batwoman by *gattadonna on deviantART


BATWOMAN by *89g on deviantART


Batwoman - Legacy by =JamieFayX on deviantART


:DC: Twice Named by *AlouetteCosplay on deviantART


:DC: Unmasked by *AlouetteCosplay on deviantART


Batwoman by ~Blindman-CB on deviantART

Birthday/Gameday/Father's Day Weekend!

Wow! What freaking great weekend this has been.

We started it off by going to see Man of Steel (most of the "Smallville" were shot in Yorkvillle, IL near where my wife grew up) and it was a lot of fun.  Not sure if it replaces the Richard Donner films in my heart, but it was still good.

Saturday was Free RPG Day.

We piked up some cool books and bought some more.

We were going to play some Tomb of Horrors under 3.x but my youngest one wanted to play some of the free things we bought.  So we settled on continuing our 1st Ed game where the characters are still around 2nd level and continued on in the Caves of Chaos.

I thought I'd pull in some material from the free stuff to help flesh out the cave some more.

Yes.  There is a good chance that my young sons will play "Better Than Any Man".

Might get some more gaming done later tonight.  They cleared out the Goblin Cave ("D") and started on the Hobgoblin Cave ("E").

Great weekend!  I even got in a 3 mile run today.

Zatannurday: Happy Father's Day!

Here is what looks like Zatara's first appearance in the new DC 52.

Kind of a downer image...

How about something from pre-52, Zatara going Liam Neeson in Taken on a bad guy.

Damn.
Don't piss off Giovanni.

I might need to up some of the stats I have made for him.

Happy Father's Day!!

Winners, Losers and the Tomb

Winners
Wow!  What a day yesterday.  All I wanted to do was celebrate my birthday and give out some free stuff. ;)

Well I have emailed the two winners, I am just waiting for them to confirm their emails.  (ok both have gotten back to me!)

So congrats to John Harp and Michael Bolam!  You can thank the d20 and d6 I rolled!

Honestly that was a lot of fun and I need an excuse to do that again soon.

Losers
The big loser of the week is (or will be) Tracey Alley for publishing Mystara books.
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/06/ugh-do-we-have-to-do-this-one-again-ip.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/06/ugh-do-we-have-to-do-this-one-again-ip_13.html
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mystara.reborn/
I did not set out to ruin her week but seriously folks, IP is IP is IP.

I have seen a lot of comments of "well WotC isn't doing anything with it".  Sorry, but there is no such thing as "Abondon-ware" in fact the Mystara property is alive and kicking with the release of the "Dungeons & Dragons Chronicles of Mystara Game" out next week.
Or even "She is not making a lot of money on it". The amount made (lots, little or none) doesn't matter.  I bought those books (but got a refund) because I thought they were official Mystara books. There are lots of people that would love to make more Mystara products, people that I would love to support.  But they don't make them because they know they are not allowed too.

Of course the other loser in this is me.  I thought I had found a new series to read and instead I have to drag all this out into the light.

The Tomb
The best news though is for my birthday and Father's day I am going to play some D&D with my kids!  YEAHH!

Since it is also D&D day I think a classic is in order.   So Liam and Connor will be headed to The Tomb of Horrors!

I have copies for every version of D&D (well 1st to 4th) so I am not sure which system to run it yet.  1st ed is the obvious choice, but the boys are playing 3e now and their 1st ed characters are only 1st level.

I am expecting it to be a lot of fun!

UGH. Do we have to do this one again?? IP theft, Part 2

Here is a comparison of the map from Tracey Alley's book and the map from the Expert set.

Tracey's map

The Known World from the Expert Set

And both at 50% opacity.

So not just redrawn, but maybe even traced.

In better news I am going to pick winners later tonight!

UGH. Do we have to do this one again?? IP theft

Before I go too deep here if you want to wish me a happy birthday and win a prize, go to this thread.  If you want to see me rage against the machine some more stay here.

Still with me?  Ok.

For the record I want you to know that I was not setting out to do this. I just wanted a nice little novel about Mystara and witches to read.  Been on a great Mystara kick all week.

So I treated myself to a bunch of books on my Amazon wishlist for my birthday.  Three of them were the "Witchcraft Wars" series.  I am not sure how I found them but all I knew about them that they dealt with the rise of Witchcraft in the Mystara game world.  So perfect for me right?
The cover art looked a little off from other Mystara books, but they were new and I thought that maybe WotC was trying something new.

That's not the case.

I was so excited that the first book was free for the Kindle that I grabbed it and the next two books.
You can get it too so you can see what I mean.
http://www.amazon.com/Erichs-Plea-Book-Witchcraft-Wars/dp/1453600973/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371123885&sr=1-1

There was a map inside. I was quite excited to see it to be honest. I saw Glantri..right next to Karameikos and way north of Alfheim (on the coast)

Wait. What??

I then noticed that the publisher was NOT Wizards of the Coast or Mirror Stone but "Amazon Publishing Services".

A closer dig into the other books from this author, Tracey Alley, revealed more books and two with some pretty blatant art theft.

Here are the books in question:
The Witchcraft Wars, Book 1, Book 2 and Book 3
A Very Hairy Adventure - A Kaynos History Tale with Clyde Caldwell art from a WW Werewolf game.
An Unholy Encounter (The History Tales of Kaynos) with art from an October 1988  issue of Dragon magazine.

There is a long discussion about it that I started last night over at the Facebook Mystara group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mystara.reborn/584320224945880/?notif_t=group_comment

But here are my point.  I bought all three books because 1. they were set in Mystara and 2. they were well reviewed. So I do feel a little like I was ripped off. I thought these were something like those "Dragon Codex" books from Mirrorstone; novels that take place in Krynn but are not part of Dragonlance (but still published by Wizards).
I mean really. A novel set in Mystara about the rise of Witchcraft? Why not just call it "Tim Read This Damn book Now!"
If you ignore the map it reads like a Mystara book. She has a Vestlander that used to be a Monk and is now a Druid. There are half-orcs that speak Hill giant. There are elves and dwarves, The writing isn;t bad, it's not great either, but I didn't mind paying whatever I paid for them BECAUSE I thought I was sending a message to WotC that Mystara books are a good idea.
Thankfully Amazon let me return the last two books of the series for a full refund.

I have started to reach out to people at Wizards, but no response yet (no surprise it's like 6:00am there now).  This is not how I wanted to spend my birthday.

Here are some links.
Her website/blog, http://traceyalley.weebly.com/novels.html
Amazon page, http://www.amazon.com/Tracey-Alley/e/B003OVMKFU/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

I should just stick with reading witch books where the witch gets pregnant by her lesbian lover.   After all, I have a reputation to maintain.

ETA: Part 2 is here.