No One Wants to Save the World

Before running DCC #67 Sailors on the Starless Sea, I had never run a module. All of my prior twelve years gaming was spent playing material I wrote. Looking back, the tendency was towards epic, save-the-world type stories. For all of the fun we had, no one actually ever saved the world. The scope of these campaigns was simply too big for teenagers with short attention spans to ever finish.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG has offered my groups a completely different style of play thus far. Every campaign I've run has been a series of episodic adventures where the only real constant is the PCs. This is partially a time consideration. One of my groups plays on a very erratic schedule which makes extended stories harder to maintain.The other reason is that, after nearly a dozen years of never finishing these epic campaigns, I find smaller scales quests to be more enjoyable simply because you can them through to completion with more consistency.

Really, it comes down to the fact that "save the world" is not a good motivation for most players. How many players actually care about the world beyond the immediate situation presented by the GM? Even if the campaign ends with an adventure where the entire fate of the world hangs in the balance, this can never be a starting point. The road to that climax will be marked by several smaller adventures where the players are motivated by the prospect of finding powerful magic items, hoards of wealth, becoming stronger, gaining prestige within an organization, etc.

The Birds Outside the Academy

You may have noticed the Twitter feed that has replaced all of those awesome (and well-funded) Kickstarter projects. The amount of time I spend planning, prepping, and reading about games is considerable, but I don't have the want to increase the number of times I post here beyond my normal schedule. It's mostly an issue of just not having enough time to give a post enough attention more than three times a week. That's where the Twitter account comes in.

In addition to various game-related miscellanea, my Twitter feed will contain live impressions of every module or RPG product I consume. I feel it's bad form to to a full-length review of something before it's lived on the gaming table for a night, but there's not as much room for the granular details and observations I make as I work through this stuff in those longer pieces either.

You can expect live commentary as I conduct my readings of the following books in the very near future:

• DCC Free RPG Day 2012 Module
• DCC#69: The Emerald Enchanter
• DCC#70: Jewels of the Carnifex
• AD&D First Edition Players Handbook
• AD&D First Edition Monster Manual
• AD&D First Edition Dungeon Master's Guide
• Swords Against Deviltry by Fritz Leiber
• Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber
• Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber
• Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber

All of those have been acquired or are in the mail making their way to my hovel in the city. In addition, expect to see any future Goodman Games modules for DCC RPG, the newly-expanded Dungeon Alphabet, and the Brave Halflin Press Appendix N modules get the same treatment as they trickle in throughout the year.

To get a sense of what this will look like, you should dig through my past tweets as I've already covered DCC#68 The People of the Pit. 

The Rage of the Orcs: First Impressions

I posted a rough draft of my Orc class for DCC RPG two weeks back. Last night, we finished our first playtests of the mechanics. As it stands, they are just a little too powerful. When designing the mechanics, I imposed steep penalties for fatigue to discourage players from holding in their rage. The mechanics as written currently give too many bonuses to prevent players from accessing the higher bonuses on the rage table.


The player suggested scaling back the mechanics, but I've already done that: anyone using these rules should omit the Will, Morale, Threat, and AC columns. It's too many abilities. I think the bell curve works, but the speed and ease at which Rage builds is the issue. I have a few solutions in mind. The first one is a suggestion from a member of the Goodman Games forums. Rather than track rage at all, the player chooses to get a bonus to the rage roll for a penalty for the fatigue check. This is very simple and has far less bookkeeping than my current system. The only question is, how do you set limits on a bonus?

Another simple method is to just use your level as the modifier. This knocks the weakest entry on the table (1) off, and scales well until the last few levels. Using this method, here is the range of possible results.

Level	Rage Die	Result
1	1d3	2-4
2	1d4	3-6
3	1d5	4-8
4	1d6	5-10
5	1d7	6-12
6	1d8	7-14
7	1d10	8-17
8	1d12	9-20
9	1d14	10-23
10	1d16	11-26

My only issue is it removes the feel of the class. I like that players build rage, and I think there's something fun about watching those bonuses stack up. It does provide pretty defined parameters though and removes the headache of bookkeeping. I did find that my player often forgot to note the bonuses as they accrued.

The last solution involves keeping the mechanics as they are, but, rather than giving a bonus per each instance of a condition (players dropping to 0, killing enemies, critical hits, etc), the Orc can only receive +1 per each condition fulfilled (+5) in total, which scales as follows:

Level	Rage Die	Result
1	1d3	1-8
2	1d4	1-9
3	1d5	1-10
4	1d6	1-11
5	1d7	1-12
6	1d8	1-13
7	1d10	1-15
8	1d12	1-17
9	1d14	1-19
10	1d16	1-21

This gives the Orc the possibility to access some of the higher values on the Rage table than the second method above, but also makes it harder to hit the top results than the second method. Given the nature of the Rage mechanic, I don't necessarily view this as a bad thing, but it may just not work in practice. More reports to come.

To AD&D or not AD&D?

These were released last Tuesday. I haven't acquired them yet, and I'm not entirely sure I will. When I finished my Pathfinder campaign earlier this spring, I was left feeling dissatisfied. I don't think it was because I put together a bad game, or that it didn't turn out the way I wanted. Rather, the amount of work necessary to bring my ideas to fruition was far too overwhelming. Immediately after the campaign ended, I began looking at other systems.

This is when I learned that Wizards of the Coast was reprinting the first edition books. I've never played first edition, or any of the numerous OSR games, for that matter but I knew I wanted a simpler game. It just so happens that Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG showed up on my radar at exactly the same time. If you have read my blog with any consistency these last few months, you know that this has become the preferred system in my gaming groups.

So why am I hesitant about these reprints?

First, If I'm going to purchase a new game system, it needs to do one of two things: make it easier to craft the stories I want to tell or offer a completely different experience. I'm not sure AD&D does either of these things.I suppose I would need to see the rules before I make this claim, but I've been playing some version of this game for twelve years now.

The other reason is the barrier to entry; these books are expensive! Both the Player's Handbook and the Monsterr Manual are barely over 100 pages and clock in at $35 each. The Dungeon Master's Guide is more substantial, but it's also $10 more. I know these are supposed to be collector's editions, but it's my understanding that the only differences between these and the originals is the cover art and the gold-lined, gilded page edges.

It's too hard to resist the temptation to compare them to other games on the market. The Pathfinder core book, which is 500+ full color pages is only a hair more expensive than the DMG. DCC RPG, which includes an entire game system, is only $40. The Burning Wheel core book is over 600 pages and only costs $25. I could go on.

However, despite all of the practical reasons I have to convince myself to pass on these reprints, I am genuinely curious about the game's roots. Not $120 curious, but it just so happens that you can find copies of the originals in decent enough shape for about half that price.

Schools of the Earthlight Academy

The name of this blog is taken from a few places. Earthlight is the title of a collection of poetry by Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism. The Earthlight Academy is also an actual location in my homebrew world that I am in the process of reconstructing. I say reconstructing because a few years ago, when I moved to attend college, I threw everything away and gave my D&D books away. I don't know what I was thinking.

To represent this loss, I've jumped my homebrew world forward an entire age. The present day is set one hundred years after a cataclysmic flood that destroyed most of the Old World and buried the vast majority of accrued knowledge. The Earthlight Academy is a school of Wizards, Sorcerers, and Scribes who seek to reclaim the lost arcane secrets. Essentially, they are archaeologists of magic.

DCC hints at specialist Wizards, but does not have any real concrete rules to differentiate an Enchanter from a Conjurer. The book recommends designing mercurial effects for each school of magic, but I'm going to do one better. I'm going to design specialist Wizards for each major school of magic. These are not going to be entirely new classes, like my Orc, but minor tweaks that coincide with the flavor of each specialty. The first one will be the Necromancer, who is about 50% done.

In addition, expect to see some new patrons pop up on this blog. The ones in the DCC RPG core book are great, but we need a few more options. I plan to create at least one to coincide with the specialist Wizards. The first is going to be Golgomoth, a lich who has accrued vast knowledge about the secrets of life and death. Of course, there is always some fool willing to barter his soul away for such knowledge, and Golgomoth is always willing to oblige.

I don't have any sort of timeline for these projects, but I can promise the wait will be worth it. 

The Hound of Hirot is Dead

I finally had a chance to run the module that came with the pre-order for Dungeon Crawl Classics. Unfortunately, if you didn't snag a copy when the game dropped a few months back, you've probably missed your chance. Actually, if you haven't grabbed the game yet, you may be out of luck for a little while. Joseph Goodman reported that the first print run of DCC has sold out, which is great news. Here is the pitch:

High above the windswept moors and darksome woods, the village of Hirot is under siege. Each night, as the sun sinks beneath the western mountains and the candles burn low, a devil-beast stalks the village streets, unleashing its savage fury on the living. From warlord to pauper, crone to child, no one is safe.

Defeating the immortal hound will require more than mere blades or even spells. To slay the beast, the characters must delve into the mysteries of the land and its Savage Kings. Only then, armed with relics forged from a bloody past, can the most cunning and courageous of adventurers challenge the hound of Hirot!

There was a rather comical moment right at the outset of the session, when my player's party, led by a gambler who had run out of money and was traveling to Hirot to take part in the lottery learned its true purpose. The adventure opens with the players stumbling upon the Jarl, his thegns, and some 30-odd townsfolk ferrying a woman to a sacrificial altar.The group learned that a villager was scarified every three days to satiate the Hound. Naturally, the group wanted to interfere.

One of the most surprising things about this adventure is how much roleplaying there is. Players will spend the majority of their time in town interacting with NPCs and figuring out how to defeat the Hound. Not that I'm complaining, there are a lot of fun personalities that enrich the scope of this adventure beyond "kill the monsters, get the treasure."

It also doesn't fall into the trap that some adventures do when there are specific kill conditions for the monster. Doom of the Savage Kings offers multiple opportunities for the PCs to acquire the tools necessary to bring peace to Hirot. Not only is this just a great module, but it's a great template for fledgling DMs looking to understand how to run a "sandbox" style game. If you happen upon this in your FLGS or see a copy on eBay, I would definitely throw down the loot for it.

I Hate Fantasy

I have a confession to make: I hate fantasy literature. This might seem odd considering I run a blog about tabletop RPGs that focuses (at the moment) exclusively on the fantasy genre, but it's true. Aside from a handful of books, I loathe fantasy. Maybe I've just read the wrong books. Maybe it's because I went to school for literature and am a snob. I don't know.

However, this year I have set out to change this. I feel like I can't own funny-sided dice and toy soldiers that I've painted, lovingly, without enjoying a fantasy book or two. Last year I read A Game of Thrones after catching a few episodes of the show. I wasn't impressed. Or rather, the experience wasn't compelling enough that I felt obligated to devour the books in the way so many other people have. I have a theory: if I can find someone reading a book on any subway line during any given day of the week, there is no way it is good. Yeah, I'm definitely a snob.

Still, against my better judgement, I dove into A Clash of Kings earlier this year. I enjoyed this one a lot more. I still have issues with GRRM, but I actually felt tempted to dig right into his next book, A Storm of Swords, which I'm currently struggling to finish. I think he crafts brilliant characters who speak with razor-sharp wit. It's everything in between the dialogue that I don't enjoy. I had almost given up on the book, but found myself plowing through a few chapters this week. It seems, after 700+ pages, that I'm committed. I'll likely even read the whole series, because I'm a masochist and don't know when to quit. 

When DCC RPG showed up on my radar in April, it was the first time I heard the term "Appendix N." After doing a little research, I discovered I was familiar with some of those authors. Two exactly: Tolkien and Lovecraft. I know it's sacrosanct to say, but I hate their books. Tolkien's magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings is a series I've never been able to finish. It's really the first 100 pages of The Fellowship that kill me every time I attempt to read it. The Hobbit, on the other hand, is one of those rare fantasy books I actually enjoyed. Lovecraft has the exact opposite problem of GRRM for me. Absolutely haunting descriptions, but flat characters with boring dialogue. I think I liked two of his stories (I read 400+ pages of them), "The Colour from Out of Space" and "Pickman's Model."

It's really the other authors, whom I had never even heard of, that caught my eye, particularly Fritz Leiber and Robert E. Howard. I've slowly been collecting their books or putting them on hold at the library, hoping that they will provide me with better experiences than other fantasy authors have in the past. After I finish A Storm of Swords, I'm going to dive right into Swords Against Deviltry.

I end this post with two questions and a request: am I missing something in the works of GRRM, Tolkien, and Lovecraft? In some cases, it's been years since I've read their work, should I go back and re-read them? Lastly, what do you recommend to someone looking to make fantasy a "project"?

Dungeon Crawl Classics Alternate Cover: Wizard

It seems like Goodman Games' expectations have been blown to pieces as DCC RPG is already being reprinted. In addition to the regular blue cover out on the shelves, they are producing two variant covers. This is a sketch of what Joseph Goodman is calling "The Wizard One".

I can't wait to see this thing in color. The only issue I have is trying to justify owning three copies of the same core rulebook.

The Green Tide

Orc

The time of the Orcs is here. They have risen from their hovels, crossed the badlands and putrid swamps to conquer all who resist them. They wear their scars like honorable men wear their king's banner. The time of the Orcs is here, and they are angry.

Hit Die: Orcs gain 1d12 hit points at each level.

Alignment: Orc society is scattered and unorganized. It tends to be structured around roving war bands, with the strongest assuming the leader. Of course, this does not last very long, and most Orcs perish not from a well-aimed strike by their enemies, but by the cold, crooked knife of one of their inferiors. For this reason, Orcs are mostly Chaotic. Occasionally, Orcs separate themselves from the barbarism of their brethren and are Neutral. These arrangements are often familial in structure. Orcs are almost never Lawful, and those who are generally are the product of exile, capture, or orphanhood.

Weapon Training: Orcs are trained to use the battleaxe, blackjack, club, handaxe, javelin, mace, shortbow, shortsword, spear, longbow, longsword, two-handed sword, and the warhammer.

Level	Attack*	Crit Die/Table	Action Dice	Ref	Fort	Will	Rage Die
1	+1	1d10/III	1d20	+1	+1	+0	1d3
2	+1	1d12/III	1d20	+1	+1	+0	1d4
3	+2	1d14/III	1d20	+1	+2	+1	1d5
4	+2	1d16/IV	1d20	+2	+2	+1	1d6
5	+3	1d20/IV	1d20+1d14	+2	+3	+1	1d7
6	+3	1d24/V	1d20+1d16	+2	+4	+2	1d8
7	+4	1d30/V	1d20+1d20	+3	+4	+2	1d10
8	+4	1d30/V	1d20+1d20	+3	+5	+2	1d12
9	+5	2d20/V	1d20+1d20	+3	+5	+3	1d14
10	+5	2d20/V	1d20+1d20+1d14	+4	+6	+3	1d16

*Applies to both attack and damage rolls

Rage: The Orcs have built their reputation, not on their combat prowess, but on their ability to channel their hatred and malice into raw power. An Orc may enter a Rage at any point during a combat, even when it is not their turn. To determine the extent of an Orc's rage, roll the appropriate Rage Die, modified by the following:

• +1 for each creature the party kills
• +1 for each critical hit a party member lands
• +1 for each critical hit a party member suffers
• +1 for each fumble a party member suffers
• +1 for each party member who is dropped to 0 hit points

A player should keep track of these bonuses during combat. If an Orc enters a rage, is knocked unconscious, reduced to 0 hit points, or goes to sleep, erase all of the bonuses accrued. Orcs do not track these bonuses while in the midst of a Rage.

Rage	Atk/Dmg	HP	Fort	Will	DR	AC	Morale*	Speed	Threat	Action Dice
1	+1	+1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
2	+2	+2	+1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
3	+2	+3	+1	+1	-	-	-	-	-	-
4	+3	+4	+2	+1	-1	-	-	-	-	-
5	+4	+5	+2	+1	-1	+1	-1	-	-	-
6	+4	+6	+3	+2	-1	+1	-1	+10 ft.	-	-
7	+5	+7	+3	+2	-1	+1	-1	+10 ft.	19-20	-
8	+6	+8	+4	+2	-2	+1	-1	+10 ft.	19-20	-
9	+6	+9	+4	+3	-2	+1	-1	+10 ft.	19-20	-
10	+7	+10	+5	+3	-2	+2	-2	+10 ft.	19-20	+1d14
11	+8	+11	+5	+3	-2	+2	-2	+10 ft.	19-20	+1d14
12	+8	+12	+6	+4	-3	+2	-2	+10 ft.	19-20	+1d14
13	+9	+13	+6	+4	-3	+2	-2	+20 ft.	19-20	+1d14
14	+10	+14	+7	+4	-3	+2	-2	+20 ft.	18-20	+1d14
15	+10	+15	+7	+5	-3	+3	-3	+20 ft.	18-20	+1d16
16	+11	+16	+8	+5	-4	+3	-3	+20 ft.	18-20	+1d16
17	+12	+17	+8	+5	-4	+3	-3	+20 ft.	18-20	+1d16
18	+12	+18	+9	+6	-4	+3	-3	+20 ft.	18-20	+1d16
19	+13	+19	+9	+6	-4	+3	-3	+20 ft.	18-20	+1d16
20+	+14	+20	+10	+6	-5	+4	-4, Fearful Presence (DC 20)	+30 ft. 1st in Initiative	17-20	+1d20

*Applies to enemy morale checks

A rage lasts for a number of rounds equal to the Rage Die result (maximum 20). After a Rage ends, the Orc must make a fortitude save (DC = Rage Check + 1/per rage that day) or become fatigued. Fatigued Orcs suffer -1 to all  action dice, all skill checks are made untrained, and speed is reduced to half. This condition lasts for a number of turns equal to the margin of failure. Clerics who heal this condition are treated as if they rolled a natural 1 on a lay on hands check. While fatigued, Orcs may not enter a rage.

I Smell Man Flesh!: Orcs have an uncanny ability to smell flesh and blood. Orcs can smell any creature with either within 100 ft. Orcs can identify a creature they are familiar with by scent alone on a successful Luck check.

Initiative: Orcs spend their whole lives learning the art of war. While wielding two-handed weapons, they may roll 1d20 for initiative.