Tag: D20

Tabletop Tales: ‘Dragon War’

by Necroscourge

In a wave of complicated games flooding through the scene every now and then, a title comes along that performs in exactly the way it should. I picked up Dragon War at San Deigo Comic-Con this year, and is one of the two card games I plan on reviewing from the con. Where my other find may pride itself in its extensive testing and applied design, professional artist Robert “RAK” Kraus brings a game to the table that you can explain in under ten seconds, yet enjoy for hours while getting lost in the wonderful artwork and relaxed heavy metal atmosphere the game sets. Every card has great art adorned with dragons, zombie boobies, demons, and dinosaurs, in great neon colors with frazetta-esque brutality implied to the point where you can really imagine traversing the land and facing the monstrosities laid before you, weapon in hand, every time you blink.

Two of the game cards, the spaces on the bottom when lined up form the game board.
Two of the game cards, the spaces on the bottom when lined up form the game board.

The overall goal of Dragon War is to usurp the Dragon Throne left open by the mighty Dragon King Marloon after his death, presenting an opportunity that has not come for thousands of years (Dragon Years!). Your character must traverse the land and capture the Throne before another does. The playing field is composed of lines of cards each sporting typically three spaces. Every space has directions much like any classic board-game, and movement is similarly achieved using a D6 and performing the action on the landed square. These directions are usually brief and simple, losing/gaining life, picking up fate cards, battling, and other normal tasks, while advanced cards might bring a sideboard to attention. In terms of difficulty, This is the easiest game to learn that I own, and this is coming from a man that owns Brute Squad. It’s as simple as picking a character and rolling the die to discover what cruel fate the cards have in store for you.

Two more game cards
Two more game cards

Dragon War‘s production value is fantastic for its price point, with a bright box and inclusion of absolutely everything needed to play, including customized tokens for every track needing them as well as a six sided die. The instructions for every expansion are available on the site, and the game’s own rules come on two brief cards for ease, even coming with plenty of extra credits and sketch cards. Like the base set, the expansions are all self contained and immediately ready to be plugged into the game, most can just be shuffled harmlessly into the deck (except Valley of Dinosaurs, but I’m a rebel). Some of the sideboards are difficult to fit in the box, and after awhile your Dragon War set will need a bigger case as more cards enter your possession. As the physical box can be held in most adults palms, it’s a wonderful travel game that you can pull out just about anywhere (but good luck trying to get the Dragon Allies cards in there).

Battlescar is too mighty to fit in your puny box!
Battlescar is too mighty to fit in your puny box!

Where the game begins to shine is its open content attitude, as RAK not only recommends but insists that the game be played however it is most fun to you. In addition to the core set there are many mini-expansions RAK both sells and provides free on his website, presenting new rules, cards, and adventures to deal with on the way to the Dragon Throne. These vary from romps through castles, new characters, set piece cards, new rules, and more to add plenty of hours of extended gameplay. You start with five characters, five adventurers, and a random sixth hero (I got Executioner). Others such as the Elder Wyrm Drako or the noble werewolf Silverbane can be added to your roster for more players and more mayhem, along with their unique special powers. These expansions build upon the basic cards and introduce various new mechanics. The Elemental Furies pack adds four game cards and four sideboards, the spaces on the cards cause the player to do battle with that element’s sideboard. Alternately, you may use the Dragon Allies pack to pick a patron dragon, which, once impressed by fulfilling its goals, will aid you in situations unique to that dragon. RAK’s site, booth, and brain is filled with plenty of such adventures, all the while enjoying seeing what his fans introduce to the gameworld.

The Thundermace card.
Thundermace’s Bio card, one of the collectible characters.

Due to that nature, it’s hard to play the same game of Dragon War twice. At least ten of the base cards have entertainingly brutal effects that make players lose turns or outright switch places with others in a capacity that reminds me of the immense fun to be had playing Boardgame Online, and in some respects Dragon War brings that same zany feel but without the ability to snort coke off Jane Fonda’s rear. Inevitably, a card will be placed in just the perfect way to cause trouble, flinging you a few spaces to an even crueler fate, or robbing you of time that could be spent not being frozen in time. Sooner or later you will roll exactly the number you didn’t want to roll for it is the whim of the mighty Random Number Dragon. That’s all part of the game and fun because of it, as the game’s loose design lets pretty much any player usurp control of the board with a few choice decisions.

This game, extra content, free stuff, and more can all be grabbed on his personal website. RAK also is in the Convention Circuit, with a booth full of great art and a box full of Dragon War cards. Of my regular visits at San Deigo Comic-Con, I found myself wandering to RAK’s booth more often than the others, to pick up more Dragon War cards throughout the entire convention. Dragon War is available for $20 on his site, but it’s worth it to meet him in person at a convention if you can manage it. Of the many card games in my arsenal, this is one of those games that will see use quite often, as you can just lay out exactly as many cards as you need and play whenever, with whoever.

-Necroscourge 7/26/13

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Tabletop Tales: ‘Synergon’

by Derek Kraneveldt

Some people roleplay by simply sitting around the table and casting the die of fate. Brave is the nerd that lives it by donning his armor and striding the LARP battlegrounds. Yet braver still are the men and women of Synergon: The BLARP (Business Live Action Roleplaying). Capitalism at its finest, the business office environment is a social time bomb of veiled feelings, buzzwords, and despair. So it only stands to common reason that dressing up in suits and living it as a cutthroat game of politics is only right! Synergon takes the spirits of D&D and the Business world, throwing them together. Part of the hilarity is that there are apparently a few real companies called Synergon, yet the site still remains hidden in the interwebs.

synergon-boredom-1

I say D&D specifically because Synergon uses identical character generation rules, though instead of the basic statistics of fantasy you have Patience, Tech Savvy, Eloquence, Charisma, and Creativity; and rather than classes you have a Department and get one Skill. While not identical to D&D in many other regards, it’s similar enough that anybody that knows the basics shouldn’t have too much of a problem as Synergon‘s rules are very easy to understand; with plenty of step by step graphs and clearly labelled sections containing several topics.

I cast the runes seven times to get me seven numbers to put in my new employee’s resume; with a low roll of 6 alongside 15,17,13,13,12,12. For Billium Majar, the latest addition to the Synergon family, I decided to fling the 6 into Education (like anybody cares where he went to school…) and made his primary stats Patience and Creativity, to make him a perfect applicant for the Legal Team, giving him an inherent weakness to Human Resources but making him the worst fears of Accounting.

Synergon-Abilities

All employees start by picking one skill of their choosing and get two random ones with a new choice every ten levels. I chose Intimidate as Billiums chosen skill, making him perfect for demoralizing those that get in his team’s way. In addition, Bill is a bit apathetic and couldn’t care less what people have to say, especially about his MBA degree. The same degree lets Mr. Majar use the Catchy Slogan ability to rejuvenate the efforts of the group. For the free item he gets at sign-on, he chose an Inspirational Poster to give him additional Creativity. The ending result is Bill has 23 AP and 15 MP. If he runs out of MP he quits his job and must start over as an Intern, during this time all he can do is regain his AP used for abilities.

An employee of Synergon uses abilities for anything, many of which allow you to be productive and useful to the company, while many others are used to torture and depress your enemies or inspire your own team. Employees can use any Ability at or below his or her tier (1-3), as well as their department unique abilities. When somebody uses an Attack, the target is allowed the choice of using a Defensive Ability that does not count against his actions for the hour. You are only allowed three per hour, and with only so many soul crushing hours of the day, each employee must be careful on how they budget their time, morale, and ability to get things done.

In addition to the players, there are always the hundreds of other drones that reside at Synergon HQ; the Frenemies. The Janitor, CEO, and the rest of the workforce would love to see you stomp off in anger to free up room in the budget for more pay for themselves. Its not that they hate you, they just hate the idea of working with you when they could be getting more money without you. These parasites often swarm around the halls and water coolers, and are known to strike when you really don’t want to acknowledge their existence. Though it may just be a case of the Mondays.

synergon-frenemies

Synergon is easy to understand, easy to play, and just plain fun. It’s taking one of the most serious things and exposing just how silly it all really is. Character creation is a snap, and if you feel all the abilities you use can be daunting just make a list of 12+ abilities that you’d like to use and limit yourself to that.

While written primarily as a LARPing game, it’s worth noting that the game is playable just fine as any other tabletop rpg (but I’m sure in its full suited glory the game is great too)! The office environment leads to intense squabbles and the game’s system is very forgiving while also being very cruel, resulting in an entertaining experience when greed isn’t the motivator of the fighting. You can see Synergon free on their official website!

Necroscourge 5/26/13

Tabletop Tales: ‘Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition’

by Necroscourge

As some of you on Steam may have noticed, Shadowrun Returns by Harebrained Schemes is on its way, which is of course based on the long running Cyberpunk meets Magic RPG series Shadowrun. This is also the first game in a long while that has been actually worked on by Harebrained’s founder, who also is responsible for the RPG, along with several other games such as Mageknight and something called Mechwarrior. Some of you may recall 2007’s Shadowrun for 360 and PC, which was a Counter-Strike esque team game that, while it had some of the spirit, it was more or less not really all that faithful to the source material at all. Yes, it was a good game, but it was not a good Shadowrun game.

Shadowrun Returns
‘Shadowrun Returns’ concept art.

While the first RPG to blend the Trolls and Elves of fantasy with cyber linked machineguns it was not, a year prior to its original conception, Cyberpunk 2013 debuted, later succeeded by Cyberpunk 2020 and its nuke and paved sequel Cyberpunk V3 (Oh trust me, that waits for another day). While they are comparable and to an extent the same game, there really are key differences. 2020 is simpler, with a heavier focus on the lifestyle of being a Cyberpunk without any of the trolls,orcs or magic, while Shadowrun focuses on well, its namesake: The Shadowrunners. A “Shadow Run” is a tactical operation performed, usually on the behalf of a megacorporation, that involves breaking several laws and must therefore be hush hush. Normally this occurs in meatspace, but it usually pays off to have a hacker capable of traversing the Matrix or a Shaman that frequently steps into the astral realm. While 2020 is all about how awesome it is to be cybered up, Shadowrun is all about the lifestyle and career of a team of Shadowruns created by the players with a greater focus on storytelling.

I own the Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition, which uses the fourth iteration rules. Full color hardcover with a nice silken bookmark. Like all dramatic RPG systems (Ex: World of Darkness), there are several vignettes that exemplify core themes and characters in the game’s lore. The first story “What is inside your heart” introduces the concepts of magic and hacking but most of all the important thing to take away from the first story is a mantra that will save your Shadowrunner’s life time and time again: Dragons are douchebags. Yes, the flying kind, but more on them later. The second story “Happy Trails” shows us inside the Matrix and introduces Fastjack, the best damn decker there is. Normally this is bullshit, but Fastjack goes on to save the internet by repeatedly smashing a cyberdragon directly in the face with his signature weapon: The Jackhammer.

Fastjack
Fastjack (in glorious non-English).

Fastjack was born 1999, and narrates the game’s history lesson to explain exactly what happened between his birth and 2072 that left the world as it is today (in the FUTURE). Long story short, magic reawakened in 2011 bringing forth disasters of biblical proportions. Earthquakes around the globe, volcanos simultaneously coating the world in lava, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! Thankfully, the wise dragon Dunkelzhan appears and gives a 16 hour marathon interview explaining exactly what is going on and that magic had surged back into the world, causing the Earth to peak in arcane energy, which is the reason the world was fighting right back. At the same time, various megacorporations were fighting “terrorists” all over the world and constantly winning senate rulings in their favor resulting in their status as world superpowers. Now here in 2072, dragons rule most major corporations and in the same store you buy your guns, ammunition, pants, and can get your ears chopped and replaced with cybernetic ones. Why stop there though? Cyberware comes in four flavors, with varied tolls on your sanity, the best stuff is cloned tech if you can afford the insane fees.

The third story, still before any rules, is “Weekend Edition”, telling the story of an Orc Decker named Taylor, and shows off more of how to play the part of a Runner, making contacts, and managing the finances. Food, shelter, booze, ammo, it all costs Nuyen and most runners need to ply their trade to get bread on the table. Strange, since they go on to display bar prices. No way in hell are you getting tap water, but for 1 Nuyen a bottle of water who cares? Not into water? that same Nuyen gets you a can of FUTURE coke and a few more puts booze in it. Granted, that’s just one bar, but its already cheaper than bars are now. The rest of the chapter discusses the big ten megacorporations, combat sports, and finally the major theme connecting the three stories: Simsense.

Simsense
Simsense by Chad Sergesketter

Nearly everybody has a commlink, which is a form of cell-phone/computer and acts as your electronic swiss army knife, that emits a Personal Area Network or “PAN” allowing you and anybody nearby to indulge in the Matrix and experience Simsense. Simply watching movies is boring, why not be inside them? Simsense lets you do just that, but there are drawbacks as you might imagine living somebody else’s events can be addicting and the worst offenders are Better Than Life chips, they act as the major illicit drug in the setting. In the first story the main character mentions walking by several tags and online obstacles in his walks around town, in the second Fastjack pretty much fights Black ICE and in Weekend Edition, Taylor’s date is an Ex-BTL user that experiences withdrawal when a car pumping out raw Simsense data passes by. You can tell reading this book that every detail stated actually exists in the game world, you never feel too much doubt about the validity of the statements where earlier iterations likely felt more patch-worked.

The next story before the games rules is “Gaia’s Heart”, a brief story of a runner told a story about an artifact of great power that twists her into paranoia. The important moral being there are as many liars as ever and the existence of magic makes it even more dangerous. Shadowrun‘s system, like the type of drama it employs is very World of Darkness inspired with all tests using dice pools of Stat+Skill+Mod, with each rolled die of five or more considered a hit. The most important aspect of Shadowrun‘s character sheet is Essence, which starts at six for everybody, and is used for both magic and cyberwear. If you run out, your soul is very violently consumed and you die.

Shadowrun Character Sheet
The ‘Shadowrun’ Character sheet.

One of the largest factors to how your Runner will behave is his race of metahumanity, that is to say whether he is human, ork, troll, elf or dwarf. Elves tend to be the less affected by racism, and many movie stars, celebrities, and porn stars are elves. Orks and Trolls, due to their very decidedly not normal features are usually without a registration number and subsequently, rights. Being a metahuman also means you either have thermal or low light vision, instantly making you better at fighting than a mere human is at the expense of Build points. Every character is made with a point buy system, a much more arbitrary system than the World of Darkness that severely handicaps the points of the various metahuman races in exchange for better stats and abilities. Those that are unwilling to play or mess with the build point system are able to pick from a handful of pre made character archetypes from Enforcers to Adepts, allowing anybody to jump into a field of interest fairly quickly without the math.

Getting to the halfway point in the book, the stories begin to sink in quality. “Fresh Meat” details the formation of a Shadowrun team, what roles these runners normally have, and how they would go about getting prepared in an actually fairly good cohesive story. The sink begins with Monica the Ork Adept in “Extraction”, which tells of Corporate back dealing. At least, I think it does, to be honest the story is written in a chaotic ‘action packed’ style that unlike every other story thus far is much more happy explaining abstract concepts than helping us understand what we are looking at. The last page is indecipherable, it’s hard to figure out who to root for, and what the twist is at the end.

Cyberpunk media prides themselves in a few major genre “requirements”, the first of which is its dark world. Atherton of the first story loses all of his friends in his search, if Fastjack had lost against the dragon both him and his daughter were to be devoured. Drug use, racism, and such themes are much more relaxed than other editions, but its far from gone. In the FUTURE, Orks play heavy metal (more), and are essentially treated poorly. The very nature of being a Shadowrunner is that you are a deniable asset specialized in crime, and part of this involves leading a double life. I appreciate the more dramatic tone in the fourth edition, but it’s worth noting that the 20th Anniversary Edition is NOT a compendium, it flat out sites the other books in the series in a sort of taunting manner. The book’s size is primarily attributed to how very detailed every single aspect of the world is. Factors like recoil, cover, drugs, and summoning are awarded plenty of room to be fully explained. Some may argue a lot of it does not really need to be so explained, but it does really show the effort put into making the reader get into their role in the way a roleplaying game should.

Just a few of 'Shadowrun's weapons.
Just a few of ‘Shadowrun’s weapons.

Second, the toys. We want our smartlinked guns, decking rigs, and cybernetic muscles. Like the Cyberpunk video games, the genre has spawned such as Deus Ex or EYE Divine Cybermancy, a staple of Cyberpunk is the equipment and weapons and Shadowrun still delivers exactly what it should with plenty of Cyberwear coming in several flavors, an extensive weapons list and plenty of drugs to nuke your characters memories. 4th edition presents even more with wireless technology: hackers no longer need to jack in, as most people carry a Commlink and can access whatever they want with it with no wires needed. Which is important as it keeps the group together.

And then of course we have the Cyber Realm, which in Shadowrun is known as Matrix 2.0. As said earlier, almost all tech is wire-free and most electronics allow you to simply think a certain way and things shall happen. In past Cyberpunk games, you normally need to escort your Decker inside the enemy facility if you wanted inside, otherwise your hacker was safely somewhere else. In 4th edition, Hackers can ply their trade wherever they stand and Technomancers act as Cyber-Magicians to add depth to the usual roster of agents (They basically get their own versions of mage abilities, but all sciency).

Deus Ex
‘Deus Ex’, a great cyberpunk video game.

What seals Shadowrun‘s reputation as an extremely tactical combat game are the pages upon pages of “much easier than it looks” combat rules. While Cyberpunk 2020 had simple yet brutally realistic combat rules, Shadowrun takes it many steps forward with special rule after special rule detailing absolutely anything that could potentially happen or go wrong in combat. The main thing to note is through Magic or Cyberwear its possible to have more than one turn (called an Initiative Pass) in a round, with the most possible being four. Each Initiative Pass, a character has either two Simple actions or a Complex, with a multitude of choices of various actions. Firing semiautomatics is a simple action even if you are using two at a time, giving lots of room for badass Adepts to come crashing through windows with a gun in each hand blazing death. Another factor to combat is cover, as every material has a durability and armor rating, and gun control is a punchline in the future so I hope you are not expecting heavy caliber ordinance to be uncommon. Thus, it’s easy to expect combat to turn into Gears of War, running from cover to cover, blind firing to prevent snipers from getting too good of a shot on you. This presents realistic and gritty combat, and once you take the time to read through it, it’s really not too confusing.

The rest of the book details available gear and cyberwear, as well as shows off the Technological and Magical aspects of the game’s system. The last few stories thematically run through a combat scenario, a magic scenario, and then another net scenario; introducing more and more concepts alongside characters that we have no connection with. The only character we actually seem to care anything about is Fastjack and we already know pretty much everything that happens to him. The players are meant to be the sort of heroes, at least until you get the brand new NPC book released just the other week.

5th edition
A shiny new 5th Edition is on its way.

Shadowrun‘s main appeal is that in most cases you are playing a criminal, one in the darkest, deepest pits of society, and you’re shackled to the top of the pile. The rules are extensive and its one of *those* RPGs that is intended to be very deeply structured in the base material, with characters as an extension of it. In order to play the game correctly, its very suggested you read the book cover to cover; That can make the game very hard to learn at first. A lot of the concepts are covered in the book, and those without the time to learn the setting will be missing out, or getting their team killed. That’s something else that always looms in your team’s future as well, from how violent and deadly combat is, to how very ready everybody else is to sell you out: it’s far too easy to get yourself wiped out.

A Fifth edition is on its way, though I have not had the chance to really look through it. The 20th Anniversary Edition is worth checking out: it comes with its own bookmark and has a great comprehensive appendix for the then series of books. Other than that, the Anniversary Edition mostly just looks nice. All in all, I really enjoy Shadowrun‘s well fleshed out world, though its not to the liking of all gamers; those wishing for a much simpler Cyberpunk game need look no farther than Cyberpunk 2020. A great game of magic, guns, and tech, is worth checking out.

-Necroscourge 5/22/13

Shadowrun 20th
‘Shadowrun’ 20th Anniversary Edition

Gaming Philosophy: Dungeons And Dragons, Morality, And You

by Necroscourge

When it comes to the concepts of good and evil, there has been an eternal conflict of opinions and thoughts concerning their uses. The muddiest of uses of course being the 9-part morality system as popular in the Dungeons and Dragons series that is composed of the concepts of Lawfulness and Chaos in various degrees of Good or Evil (IE: Lawful Good, Chaotic Neutral) and like any other concept of morality, you can practically expect that pretty much nobody truly understands it. I was sent into this rant by Spoony’s “So you want to be Evil” video (posted yesterday) that begins with “don’t do it”, and is just him sitting infront of a camera explaining his rampant generalizations and misunderstanding of gaming morality.

Good and Evil, as many know, is the philosophical concept that all actions are either “good” or “evil” where the positive actions that the people like are branded as “good” and things people do not like are called “evil”. This matter gets more complicated in Dungeons and Dragons because of the very true presence of gods, angels, and demons in most normal settings as well as the presence of death, true death, and resurrection. In particular the confusion comes from the DnD interpretation of morality, where Evil just means you kill people and Lawful just implies a moral code or respect of law.

The man himself, Gary Gygax.
The man himself, Gary Gygax.

The common interpretation is that the two states of Good and Evil are directly opposing entities, and that by being one you act a very specific way. That is to say Orcs kill on sight because they are evil rather than any real personal philosophies they may have. “Heroes” kill “Monsters” on sight because they are Evil and thus should not feel bad about the lives they extinguish because our culture says killing monsters is “good” . Good or Evil aside, the Paladin that speaks to god still sliced the heads off three Orcs for just being in his way.

As written by Gygax himself in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook:

Chaotic Evil: The major precepts of this alignment are freedom, randomness, and woe. Laws and Order, Kindness, and Good deeds are disdained. Life has no value. By promoting Chaos and Evil, those of this alignment hope to bring themselves to positions of power, glory, and prestige in a system ruled by individual caprices and their own whims.

-ADnD PHB

Chaos and Law in DnD are as simple as it sounds, the character either adheres to a code of conduct or instead values the freedom and liquidity of life. These are philosophical states often polarized just like Good and Evil, while they are more accurately states of being as real as ourselves. While as written Good and Evil are mentioned to be a polarized struggle as well, but in truth the only clause that Gygax seems to attribute to an Evil character is having no inherent reverence to the sanctity of life, implying that the Paladin that runs around the countryside mowing down Orcs is “good” because they would never slay a rational being that surrenders before them. In moral terms, the Paladin would be committing an Evil action if he were to take the life of an Orc that surrenders regardless of the Orcs alignment, while the Orc if Chaotic Evil may very well surrender without moral issue and attempt to kill the Paladin in betrayal, though he may not just to keep you guessing as is implied by his random, Chaotic nature.

batmanalignmentChaoticGoodredone

Let’s look at Batman and Superman, who represent Chaotic and Lawful Good. Both do “good” things, they save the day, stop the villains, but no matter how VERY evil their opponents are, they cherish life (which seems to be the only tangible point to being “Good”), and if given the choice would rather spare lives then extinguish them. Even though Batman is chaotic and will do pretty much anything he can to get it done that may or may not cause suffering, he won’t kill. The Joker does not, being Chaotic Evil, cherish life at all and will kill when he feels like it. On the flip side, he may not because he feels like it.

That being established, now to the task at hand. People like to blame morality rather than the actual player’s actions themselves, or use morality as an excuse to do whatever they want. Honestly though, its a game foremost and the simple “Black and White” morality was there just to give an arbitrary excuse for Orcslaughter. Not knowing that years down the road and after Gygax’s death there would be people using mortality as an excuse to slice people’s heads off because they are Good (Something a truely “Good” character would not do) while Evil characters take this as an excuse to go around town murdering willy-nilly just because they are Evil. This is the aspect of morality people usually have a hard time with, the idea of being evil and then the actual practice of being evil.

Definitely, definitely Chaotic Evil.
Definitely, definitely Chaotic Evil.

Granted, as you have noticed Gygax’s view of Evil is very polarized in a fashion that taken literally and morally incorrectly deems all Evil characters to be wanton killing machines with no possible remorse or redemption, nor a tangible reason for their murder as is the ideal of “Evil is just Evil” while Good characters sort of get off scott free with their murder because of their “just cause”. However, until now I have refrained from the second part of the Good versus Evil morality system, the gods themselves. Unlike life as we know it, gods in DnD actually exist. They appear on the planet, walk around, talk to people, and grant spells to their loyal clerics. The “big” gods such as Bahamut, Lolth, and the rest have entire metaphysical planes they live inside populated with outsiders of their alignment as well as the means of directly communicating with living people.

This is where the already very muddy moral politics get even muddier. We know that Evil simply means having no moral issue with taking lives, while Good will only take lives in self defense and that law and chaos are the primary means to which those morals are taken lawfully or randomly. The issue arises when you have the god king of dragons telling you to smite evil in the name of Bahamut, or when Lolth the spider queen of the Drow urges you to sacrifice the young in her name. Lolths existence and policies directly contradict the laws of a God like Bahamut, which drives the Lawful Good followers to kill Evil things in his name and the name of Goodness. Lolth’s followers are urged to spread Lolth’s corrupting influence and kill those that get in their way. We have labelled Bahamut as Good and Lolth as Evil, The former cares about life while the latter does not. The point being that religious characters have a very real god in this world telling them what is good and what is evil, and to an extent most characters know they exist while nowhere near all have had the chance of actually meeting a god. While their actions are not excused, there reaches a point where individual morality is very separated by what god tells them, that just happens to be morally aligned.

The human, you're standard follower.
The human, your standard follower.

As a general rules of thumb, humans are social creatures and are hardwired to listen to the person in charge, if not obey them. When the entity that gives you the ability to heal and call lightning down from the heavens tells you to smite Evil in his name, most are pretty willing to do so. Conversely, without the prior knowledge that the entity is “Evil”, there is little stopping most from obeying them either as without knowing of both Good and Evil, it is impossible to grasp either individually. What does this mean in a gaming context? Essentially that a Chaotic Evil character does not rampantly run around stabbing people because they are Chaotic Evil, they do so because they have a personal reason of doing so. DnD character morality is often played for laughs because of how initially wild the concepts look when in fact the moral alignments presented in DnD are things that we witness and watch every day, especially knowing now that Good and Evil as defined is a stance on the sanctity of life rather than a polarized mindset or specifically the means rather than the end.

It only stands to reason, to realize that while alignment determines a good bit about the individual philosophies and thoughts a character may contain, there is nothing about the system that absolutely determines how a character *should* act. All evil characters do not like the color black, just as all evil characters are not rampaging lunatics in the same manner that all Good characters are bible thumping fanatics that ceaselessly preach about the joys of Pelor. It’s an arbitrary system developed to make players feel better about slaying the various monsters of the world taken far more seriously than it should be.

What's your alignment?
What’s your alignment?

Take for example the Orc baby “Dilemma” as posed by Spoony, where a traditionally good party wipes out a Orc encampment and finds women and children, who immediately surrender. The Good decision is to spare them, with the Evil to be killing them despite the prisoners being of Evil alignment themselves. Of course, the metagaming argument of “they are evil” is moot since that is not roleplaying, and not a proper justification of murdering women and children. Then we are introduced to the concept of Evil characters in the party arguing *for* the murder. The most common ignorant thought is that Good and Evil cannot co-exist, and thus a party must be either all Good or all Evil, despite the hundreds of examples of parties with a mixed ratios of alignments in popular media. A common argument against a mixed party is that there will be conflict and thus it is impossible for them to be in the same party together. Any professional writer can tell you all good stories *require* conflict, and the same is true of a DnD party.

People are under the impression that if a Good and Evil character, meet they are required by the games rules to do combat to the death, which is false as evidenced by what we know Good and Evil stand for, and where they divide. The cause of this incorrect assumption are the cases of “controlled” monsters that are in league with whatever Big Bad is looming beyond the Gates of Extremely Evil Evilness at the end of the campaign. These creatures include Outsiders (Creatures from other planes), mind-controlled or otherwise malcontent goblinoids, and other various ill-willed monsters and are the common things you will be fighting so its only natural to assume they are completely unfeeling in their attacks. In most cases these creatures are either genuinely “Evil” homicidal bastards or directly being controlled by the higher powers just as the heroes are doing the dirty work of the good higher powers in most cases. What most don’t realize is there is a very vast difference between a Good creature and a Cleric of Pelor just as there is a difference between a Chaotic Evil Orc tribesman and Saruman’s Uruk-Hai, and thats where people get confused. A Witch is not bad because she is evil, its more of the whole poisoning and cursing people thing, which is a personal choice made by that witch.

-Necroscourge 5/1/13

Tabletop Tales: How To Host A Dungeon

by Necroscourge

I love stuff like this. How to Host a Dungeon is a loose set of guidelines meant to aid one in the creation of a dungeon, fully developed with general lifeform populations and landmarks from ancient civilizations. More of an exercise than a proper ‘game’, the rules are well crafted and meant to simply aid, rather than direct. Many measuring systems are meant to be arbitrary and there are no concrete, correct ways to draw anything.

Created by the mind of Tony Dowler in 2008, this PDF is available for a one time fee of $0 is available from his website. If you like creative drawing or solitaire games I would suggest giving it a shot. For a small donation, a paid version exists that adds a new content for the later three ages in the form of an additional choice or two. Honestly, with how easy it is to just make stuff up for the game there is nothing these choices bring new to the table, so the decision to pay is mostly in aiding the developer which is a just enough cause.

As written, the game goes through four time periods known as Ages: the Primordial Age, Age of Civilization, Age of Monsters, and Age of Villainy. Each Age is intended to be drawn on tracing paper, with parts of your dungeon intended to be improved upon by the next age. I really like this concept, as its merits will become a bit more clear later. In preparing for this article it was only proper that I of course prepared my own example play of How to Host a Dungeon.

As any tale of a Dungeon, this story starts many years ago in the Primordial Age, with but a blank slate to mold the topsoil of in order to give yourself a playground, though the majority of it will fall beneath the ground. Three D8’s are rolled, and tables are consulted to add natural landmarks to the realm. Upon my realm I cast three heavenly die which broke my screen, so I just used a dice roller and drunkenly pointed where “it would be cool”. Upon my realm was a majestic goldvein that ran through it like a shiny river. Just over it was a network of caves inhabited by ancient Neanderthal Samurai. Little did they know that many miles underground on his gigantic lucre pile was an ancient dragon, for now, he slept…

Dungeon1

Our land having been defined, I believe those Neanderthal Samurai referred to the area as Gomjak, and as such it shall be known. As the days grew shorter and colder more and more of the Neanderthals flocked to the Gomjak Caves. Here it is said the mighty Samurai Jonathan of Clan London forged his empire within Gomjak. The London Clan controlled this land, and they were to carve it into a great paradise for their people. I based my custom Samurai Civilization on the Dwarves, but with key differences. Freshly minted, it was time to put it to the test. Their ancestral home has been turned into a deep loving place for them as they delved deeper into Gomjaks soil.

Dungeon2

Clan London’s trials were many, and times were tough in the Age of Civilization. Their knowledge of the land aided them as that Spring rose them to four great families of Samurai belonging to the Clan, able to make use of the ancestral resources available to support them. With the numbers capable of fulfilling the task, Daimyo Jonathan would face his first defeat at the hands of the Black Rider who had slain two of the great families that Summer. Further woes occurred over the next year as treachery took place when another Samurai tripped and accidentally murdered the entire Jonathan bloodline. This power struggle caused Clan Urmesh to ride by and wipe the rest of the clan home out. Within two years the Empire was burnt to a crisp. For decades the caves would lay in misuse…

Dungeon3

On a later fateful day, a great quake shook the land, a thick vein of lava spurting right to the top and bursting. This great shake awoke the mighty Lignog the Ferocious Dragon, and began the Age of Monsters. As Lignog stirred, he could find more monsters had come to inhabit his new domain, and in his sleep the Kingdom of Bargnor was above easing the panic of its citizens with the recent hellfire spewing from the mountain. It also seemed that deep beneath a collection of Magma Sprites had began melting over the ancient caves and hardening them, uncovering ancient treasures buried beside old bones in the ceremonial plot. While in yet another corner of the old dungeon it seems that some Gnoll Pirates had come as well to bury their Horde and turn the place into the perfect hideout!

Dungeon4

With the die cast for the monsters, it would seem the first year would also be the most interesting. A group of adventurers seems to have come in quite quickly in request of the King, to soften up any resistance beneath the undergrounds following the disaster. And that they did: the first major victory of the brave two soldiers sent in was defeating the dreaded Gnoll pirates and carting off their lucre, and soon the two warriors fell upon the Magma Spirits, quickly slaying the many beasts beneath. Twas a victorious day, for much loot was extracted from the underground! Little did they know, that every year Lignog would be crawling closer and closer. But alas, this did not really matter to the King, in a bid of madness with the riches carted from the Dungeons, he would descend underground with his greatest warriors, the Prince electing to rule in his stead.

The age of the Dungeonmaster had begun.

Dungeon5

My game was on a much shorter and smaller map; your games likely won’t end so violently or quickly, but I do hope you generally understand the idea now of what a game of How to Host A Dungeon looks like. Potentially I could continue, though honestly at this point the villain wins. Below I have included the custom Civilization I used, so that it can be used in your own games.

There are a few things like it, but How to Host as Dungeon covers pretty much every base it needs to, and helps tell a great story by the end with just a little bit of imagination.

-Necroscourge 3/30/13

 

Neanderthal Civilization

Forming into loose Clans, the ancient Samurai honed sharp stone blades of raw Stonesteel. The Clan seeks to journey abroad and gain honor as well as wealth. With the politics of the Clan come its vices, many such Empires soon found failure as the line of friend and foe grew thin often. Neanderthal caves are roughly chiseled from the earth itself, adorned with various paintings,tapestries, and pelts. While advanced at their time the Neanderthal Samurai were still not truly civil.

Choose a cave, preferably near the surface and connect it. If one does not exist, make one. The original cave becomes the Community Cave, which is enlarged, and where many families gather. Two small caves for Population and two for Storage should be attached to the Community Cave. Black Represents a force of Neanderthals, White represents wealth.

It is now year zero of the Empire.

The Clan Year

Duties among the Clan are often delegated to those too weak to fight, while those strong enough will also do sizable work during times of war, they must focus on combat. If no members of the Clan live the Age of the Empire ends.

Spring

In the Spring the Clan will breed and mate and Scouts will be dispatched to see what is available to horde. Gather all White not claimed by the Clan but near Clan lands, each White gathered must be stored in a Cave and if need be new ones shall be drawn. For every white gathered in this way a new habitat cave should be drawn if needed for a new black counter.

Summer

If at least four black are within the Clan there will be Blood this Summer, otherwise the Clan shall focus on its efforts mining as per Dwarves. When Blood will be had, half of the Clans Black will emigrate and a D8 should be rolled. On 1-4 a Black is lost permanently, but on 5-8 the Black will return with a White.

Fall

The season of scheming. Being crude people the Clan often works against itself. Roll a D8, on a 7 or 8 remove a Black for they have been wiped out by treachery. If this occurs then an enemy black appears for every two white the Clan owns. If no treachery is to be had they will build as per Dwarves but per the Neanderthal Construction Table

1

Family Shrine: Establish a shrine near entrance, which helps keeps evil ghosts from coming inside and looks pretty.

2

Honor Shrine: Establish an Honor Shrine, giving a +1 when defending the Civilization.

3

Personal Chambers: Draw a series of small cubbies and caves connected to a few corridors.

4

Great Hall: Draw a big fancy chamber, carved from the earth with a big fire in the center.

5

Great Statue: A Stone Sculpture is created in the Great Hall . This is a Great Treasure.

6

Sacrificial Pit: Draw a shaft about a finger down with a new cave. The Clan throws people they don’t like down this hole. In the Age of Monsters a Black will be placed here.

7

Great Foundry: A Great Smith is awakened and Establishes a Forge. This mighty room is three beads large and possesses a blessed Anvil. A magma vein is connected to this room and shoots straight down to the bottom of the page.  A Great Treasure is placed here

8

Great Spirit Guide: A Shamans Cave should be constructed, where the mystic of the Clan sit’s. Place a Treasure here.

9

Awakening: Fertile Ground spreads a finger from the Shaman Cave. In the Age of Monsters this land counts as it were Gold.

10

The Great Campaign: The Age of the Clan ends in this realm, for the Samurai have all left with their families to the greatest battle of History. Their Ancestors may be present in the Age of Monsters if they succeeded.

Winter

In the Winter the Clan will dump its bodies in a big hole. Dig a ceremonial bodyhole a finger down, with a new side room with an X representing the grave plot of a family’s worth of population for each lost Black this year and move a White into it.

End of the Clan Age

When the Age ends, remove the Samurai and all their loot except great treasures and White in Tombs.

Tabletop Tales: ‘Pokéthulhu’

by Necroscourge

If there was ever the perfect invention for gaming, it was giving us things to collect. People love collecting things, I know I do! That’s probably why Pokémon nearly took over the world in the late 90’s, as it was literally a show, cardgame, and series of gameboy games with the sole purpose of collecting creatures, using them to fight other creatures, and getting a bunch of shiny objects to help us collect more monsters. Why, there is almost nothing you can do to make it better, short of mixing it with Cthulhu. Cumberland Games brings us Pokéthulhu, illustrated by John Kovalic of Dork Tower and Munchkin fame.

 

The world of Pokéthulhu takes the concept of collecting monsters and vigorously mixes it with H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Players are Pokécultists, young children that have found a Pokénomicon and Shining Dodecahedrons and use them to capture and use Pokéthulu. You see, Pokéthulhu scare older people, but kids are unaffected. The eventual goal of all Pokéthulhu Cultists is to become a master, and what better way than to journey forth and collect Elder Badges.

 

The more you know about Pokémon, the funnier the game is, but really you can get away with just knowing about Lovecraft. There is no concrete lore used in the game, it’s expected of the players and gamemaster to go wild with their imaginations and just enjoy the game for what it is: playing psychotic children that pit fight other psychotic children with eldritch monsters for entertainment.

 

Characters have six different Statistics: Grade Level, Sanity, Phys Ed, Pokéthulu Lore, Shoplifting, and Trash Talking. Every kid also has a preferred Aspect, which is an overall type of Pokéthulhu and represents supernatural energy. The rules are simple, tasks consist of rolling a few D12’s, and you want to roll under your statistic. In combat, your Pokéthulhu Lore works in conjunction with your Pokéthulhu’s attributes. Every one of the darling non-euclidean monstrosities has a Power, Speed, and Hit-Point rating. There are also four types of attacks, each with their own ratings. Injure deals hit point damage, Trap binds the enemy, Dodge regains hit points from attacks, and Frighten attempts to end the battle by scaring the enemy away.

 

Pokéthulhu is completely free, and available on the author’s website. The games rules are amazingly simple and its a way to enjoy playing a Pokémon rpg without actually knowing anything about Pokémon, and while being cool. Go go Blhastur!

 

thulogo

 

Tabletop Tales: ‘The Shadow Project’

by Necroscourge

Something you quickly realize about Cutters Guild products is that they are all very clearly inspired by popular mainstream works, specifically popular games of the time. The mascot of Deathstalkers 2, which is fought in What Lurks Beyond, is a large armored black knight called a Juggernaut, which heavily resembles a Chaos Warrior from Warhammer, the popular tabletop wargame. The Shadow Project seems inspired by quite a lot of media while proving to be fairly original in its own right.

 

k2dcgg0600

 

This game, like many indie RPGs, is a custom ruleset with its own niche setting. This game is based on the fictional man-made island New Prometheus, a 3000 square mile large floating city-state off the coast of New England. Much like other islands off the coast of Eastern America, the entire island has entered a state of emergency. In this case, it’s due to a rogue computer virus so powerful it has hacked into the human genome and discovered the secrets of perfect biomechanical parasitism, enslaving the populous as cyber zombies and threatening to take over the entire world if so much as a single bit of corrupted data escapes the island. Thankfully the book later mentions that somehow the Shadow Project constructed a gigantic containment wall around the infected downtown sector (I suspect wizards were involved), which is where the majority of the game  is suggested to take place

 

The intro takes this concept and immediately poses a scenario that if  true, the world has already been conquered, and there is no further reason to play the game. It follows a combat journalist on his deployment to New Prometheus to help recon the city and figure out  just what’s going on. The team is killed near immediately by the techno-zombies, robo-vampires, and other deadly creatures of the city, leaving the infected journalist to wander off on his own. He eventually find a computer terminal, which the virus naturally threatens him with; it’s suggested that the man kills himself soon after. What is not mentioned however, is the fate of the anti-viral Archangel chip in his camera, which he did not botherto destroy after the evil virus pretty much demanded the damn thing. It’s implied that if the virus got its hands on this camera, it would completely nullify the single edge humanity had left against the DEVIL virus.

 

 

'The Shadow Project's character creation sheet.
‘The Shadow Project’s character creation sheet.

 

At the end of this story, the journalist also decides to mention that in addition, an Archangel chip that the player characters use is nearly ready, which indeed makes me wonder why they sent a recon team with the well known repercussions of rendering their secret weapon completely useless. The opening of this book is flawed; the players would get to the scene and immediately become infected since the virus has by then figured out how to defeat its one predator. This part of the setting drives me nuts, not only is the setting so generic but it flat out denies its own possible existence with just a small bit of logic.

 

The books art is the other thing that irritates me; for the life of it, the games artists cannot decide what any of The Shadow Project’s soldiers or the monsters themselves look like.

 

Many illustrations depict the cyber-undead as decomposing bodies with metal graphed bits, while the bestiary pages suggest they are built completely of sinew-like cybernetic tubing with maws of gnarly teeth. Other pages picture Shadow Project soldiers in infantry combat armor while other agents are decked out in the same sinew-armor the undead appear to wear. It’s like the art of two very different games but with the same enemies and ideas behind them.

 

Shadow Project soldiers are tasked with defeating the virus, and are outfitted with Archangel chips that limit the exposure of the DEVIL virus and allow the operatives to hack and utilize the virus for themselves. This is not only extremely dangerous but the main way characters gain power and weaken their enemies. Various weapons the agents are equipped with hack the data within the enemy which can then be applied to the agent’s body, mind, or soul. Yes, as in there is actually a readout on the wrist of every Shadow Project soldier that says body, mind, and soul, and their survival hinges on their ability to shoot monsters and apply it to their SOUL. The fact that this mechanic is in no way actually a meta-concept yet commonly accepted in the game world helps completely undermine any horror the DEVIL virus may have had. If the Hindu philosophers ever saw this book, I think India would declare war on us.

 

Boogeyman - one of the DEVIL virus' most feared spawn.
Boogeyman – one of the DEVIL virus’ most feared spawn.

 

With the great power and reward that comes with the virus there is also great risk. Every time you reach certain levels there is a chance that the DEVIL virus will assume direct control and kill you, as is what normally happens when you plug a virus that shares the name of the dark one into your neural net. Yet Shadow Project is completely fine with their agents doing this, to the aforementioned point of labelling their equipment for inputs of this data to their body, mind, and soul. I can’t get over how weird it is for a horror game to be so laughably flawed in its setting.

 

Every monster in the game is named after traditional fantasy monsters, with various ghosts, wraiths, werewolves, and vampires around. The art for them all is of the sinew variety, and thus once you see one you generally have seen them all. Large humanoid figures with big round eyes, gnashing teeth, and a PHD in kicking your ass. Many of them are designed to be serious threats, as they are created by the DEVIL virus for various functions and purposes. Why however the DEVIL virus named them the way they did, the world may never know.

 

This game is for collectors only, and I don’t suggest actually trying to play it. The book itself is a large softcover book, ships in great condition, and while the artwork flips between two different settings, it’s also rather in-depth and quite pretty. The story of this game is a black hole devoid of any actual plausibility, to the point of being insulting. I don’t question the DEVIL virus at all, in fact that’s the most brutal virus possible. What I object to is how there is no possible way with the current setting that the game should be playable. It sounds like the DEVIL can simply fall into the ocean, grab a fish and suddenly the world is fucked. Also, how is a 20 foot tall wall supposed to stop the DEVIL minions when they almost all can climb buildings effortlessly? There is no possible way to actually quarantine the island! Everything we know about the DEVIL virus just points out more and more that there is nothing we as humanity can do. Not since the reporter basically gave our secret weapon to it!

 

This is a horror game that manages to fail at every quality of being a horror game. The monsters are simply not frightening, the game technically has already been lost, there is a meter for soul on the military’s armor, and on and on. It’s too easy to analyze the game and see exactly what it is doing wrong, and thus draw little entertainment from it.

 

-Necroscourge 3/1/13

 

The company has much, much better offerings!
The company has much, much better games!

Tabletop Tales: ‘What Lurks Beyond’

by Necroscourge

As I like to bring up near constantly, I love OGL (Open Game License) content. I play a third party character in every game that I play in, and utilize plenty of OGL content in my own games that I start. However, it’s not all made equal in any way shape or form and I make no claims otherwise; sometimes it falls flat and descends into obscurity where it can’t hurt anyone. What Lurks Beyond is a published 3.5 adventure that helps support the argument of why if you don’t specialize in writing DnD products you should not write one. This is also going to be your one warning, since this review covers a specific adventure it, by nature, is chock full of spoilers. If for some reason you plan on playing this adventure (you poor sadistic bastard!) then this review may hurt any enjoyment you would receive in doing so. Unless of course you are insane, then rock on!

 

What Lies Beyond

 

Supposedly, What Lurks Beyond is built for 4-6 level 7-10 characters and it warns not to admit anyone of a higher level than that. A core concept to designing adventures, or at least this is Wizards of the Coasts method, is to build it around a group of four characters and test it with various builds and parties of characters. On the first page this book has already filled me with a sense of dread, as you can’t help but wonder how the adventure accounts for the mere possibility of two extra party members. Another warning flag is the adventure’s size. The softcover book is easily over a hundred pages due to the two dungeons contained within.

 

The adventure is split up into a series of chapters, each covering a particular area of the adventure. This clean organization makes the adventure quite easy to run as there is no question as to where various areas are located, while past adventures I have seen lacked such a neat arrangement. The first of these chapters covers the overall area of the adventure and contains the entrances to the various dungeons as well as major points of interest while each more defined location has its own chapter.

 

The back of the book also contains a series of “handouts” meant to be copied and passed out to players, though only a handful of them are not maps but actually puzzles. What Lurks Beyond prides itself in mentioning how well written and cerebral it is for having developed puzzles, but don’t get too amazed; these are mostly boring crosswords, hangman, and other such activities designed to pad out the sessions and punish any players that could care less about the adventure’s plot. The book also claims at the beginning that it is acceptable to swap out the names of some of the gods for whatever is relevant in your campaign, without telling you that one of these gods is the answer to some of these handout puzzles. Along with these puzzles are a series of small, barely detailed maps, but I have no idea why these maps would be passed out in favor of using a traditional mapping method since there is no reason whatsoever the players should have access to a personal map (A useless one at that; this is not exactly the most complicated adventure.)

We begin this adventure in the middle of the woods moving East. The party very quickly runs into a wrecked coach for a chance at a little looting before starting the adventure proper at a fork in the road, presenting the first choice since the book makes no claim that the party can deny to loot the wrecked carriage. The passage in the book swears up and down that it does not matter if you go left or right, and that is simply a damn right lie. No matter which path you take the party is thrown into its first combat encounter. Ever wondered what would happen if a Headcrab from Half-Life rampantly bred with rabbits? That’s more or less what a Blood Bunny is. On either side the party is faced with a large amount of the creatures and there is no written way to dodge this first encounter (it’s forced). That’s a shame because the adventure throws no less than TWENTY FIVE monsters at you, each with ten hit points and a +7 initiative, all of the little bastards do up to five damage per turn as the horde leaps around like the little hell-beasts that they are. Though this encounter is heavily overpowered there are ways of dealing with it using standard classes; if the party has spellcasters specializing in area of effect spells or stocked up on alchemists fire  then it should not be too hard to roast that army of head humpers.

 

No doubt spending eight hours to rest or using a good amount of healing magic, the party then continues to see what happens on the left side. Earlier the adventure claimed that it was fine no matter what side you took. By “it does not matter” they of course meant “Pick left and die.” As not even a page later the book mentions that the players are absolutely not supposed to go left, and “discourages” the players by putting yet another fight in their path in the form of tainted Grizzly Beasts, all the while showing the party signs to turn back now. The beasts are dispatched easily enough, they may hit like freight trains but at least they have a normal array of hit points and AC. Wasting even more healing, the party can then walk 30 feet down the road to a broken bridge, where once again the book begs the GM constantly to try and get the players to go right but by then it is too late since the party is then faced with a SWAMP DRAGON, on it’s own this is easily a CR 15+ monster waiting to penetrate you with four bladed tentacles a turn that do 4D6 damage EACH. Seeing a pattern here yet? Guess what’s directly after the dragon? Surprise, ANOTHER COMBAT ENCOUNTER!

 

By then if your party has not strangled you and impaled your skull on a pike for trying to run this adventure they will likely immediately plead to just let them go right. Unlike the left road, this option lacks the three encounters put there to ensure that the choice is one in name alone (Cutters guild, you are aware that a choice with one correct answer is not actually a choice right?).  Keep in mind that the party has no goals at the moment yet can already be faced with complete destruction. On the plot railroad the party finds the first handout, a cypher that leaves the party with a cryptic phrase that is the secret to finding hidden loot later in the adventure. Loot of course, the party would not know existed if they had gone left. Afterwards the party is introduced to the Tower of Bladesedge, the first dungeon (Likely designed by whoever built Sauron’s tower.)

 

The tower is the hellhole you would think it is, filled with arbitrary traps and strong use of the word “Immune”. I held back on this detail but most (if not all) monsters are outright immune to *something* as opposed to using the vulnerability and resistance system in D20. For instance, if you are a spellcaster that uses anything but Earth magic, a cleric or a rogue with points in Open Lock or Disable Device you are going to very quickly find that the book seems to be under the impression that everything only has one answer and will happily declare everything you do to be either ineffective or outright not allowed. As you could also tell the damage values of everything in the adventure are also very arbitrary, to the point where instead of having an enchantment rating like it’s supposed to, there is a sword laying around that is magical and does a whopping 3d8 damage per swing. I really want to know where all these high damage numbers came from and what game the writer thinks he is writing an adventure for, because it sure as hell is not standard 3.5.

 

The tower serves as another slog of secret doors, riddles, and tasks that all have one single way of being completed. The top of the tower is another deathtrap, with three riddles, ever descending spikes, and a conveniently impossible to dispel Wall of Force to contend with. Completing this riddle opens a secret door in the dungeon that contains the lock for the McGuffin you grabbed from the Well outside. “What key?” you ask? Obviously the key that was never hinted at before yet conveniently is the only way to work the lock that because the plot demands it opens the door to Ezreal’s tomb. Who’s Ezreal? The book seemed to forget to explain that part too. Hidden in *another* dungeon below the dungeon you already are in is a scrap of exposition explaining that Ezreal is a foul witch, though it’s never explained why all magic around Bladesedge is completely bullshit and incapable of being dispersed and why no locks in this land can actually be picked.

 

After wading out of that HELLHOLE the party can finally walk down the road to yet another fork, presenting the group with two possibilities. By now the party is aware that they have opened Ezreal’s tomb in the Cemetery so there is little reason to go anywhere else really. The Generic Hellish Cemetery houses the Tomb of Ezreal and serves as the last real area of the adventure and its oh so varied locations of ruined cities, abandoned towers, and dank dungeons all the while raining and storming. The Tomb is unlocked in the tower, or at least that remains an option since you could…. you know… just climb over the gate and enter the tomb anyway. And yes, that is a viable option capable of saving the party a large amount of time. You would think so at least, despite the ability to get into the tomb it’s still impossible to complete the adventure without opening it with the key in the tower (damned impossible to dispel enchantments!). Though you better hope that you have already done everything you need to do before going to confront Ezreal because halfway to the tomb the dead begin to rise in mass. You thought 25 rabbits was bad, try taking on 200 lesser zombies!

 

FINALLY! It’s time for the final battle! The party, tired from their battles stumbles into the main tomb of Ezreal to find his eternal prison, the stained glass statue of Ezreal and the four key shaped ho- No… NO… NO NO NO…. Ezreal’s tomb is surrounded by four towers, each with its own key and trial (and of course are protected by bullshit magic) that conveniently are required before the final confrontation. If the party were to start at level 7, by now they would measure around level 13-15 (Its hard to tell because the monster entries lack CR’s and thus make it difficult to award experience) from the sheer amount of puzzles, riddles, bullshit magic locks, monsters with bullshit immunities, and McGuffins the adventure puts them through, so what’s a few more towers? Just like every other dungeon in the adventure this is a linear trek to the top to solve a puzzle, slay some critters and repeat.

 

Four towers later….

 

Ok. NOW it’s time for the final battle. Ezreal’s dark soul encased in Stained Glass animates once the final key is inserted and turned and he gives the generic “Rule by my side” speech one would expect. In both forms he acts as a level 15 Sorcerer and is one of the easiest fights in the adventure, since Ezreal fights completely alone and as a Sorcerer will provoke attack of opportunities if he tries to cast any powerful spells; there is really no way you can fail to beat him… Upon destroying his larger Stained Glass form Ezreal rises in his medium sized mortal form ready to continue the battle, which actually makes him even easier to circle and puddle stomp. Suddenly, before you strike the final blow, Ezreal launches bolts of energy that instantly without any save needed knock you all out, he then turns you into his Nazgu- I mean Shades that have been hounding you this entire adventure. That’s right, Ezreal (like everything else in this adventure) has plot armor and cannot die thus winning by default. The party has failed and Ezreal goes on to rule the world because he is invincible for no established (or possible) reason.

 

clue-thats-how-it-could-have-happened

What the adventure fails to alert the players of in any real concrete way until they actually bump into the McGuffin required is that Ezreal can ONLY be slain with the powers of the dead paladin Seth, whom every now and then is referred to in scriptures found in the adventure. Due to how the adventure’s maps are structured and because the book itself makes it fucking impossible to go left (Which is where Seth is buried as well as the exposition needed to signify that Seth is even needed to slay Ezreal.) You actually are encouraged to metagame and be aware that Cutters Guild fucking hates you, has never played DnD in their life, and of course would never make it as simple as just slaying the end boss and bringing happiness to the world.

 

If the players instead chose to continue down the road before confronting Ezreal, and braved the lair of the growlings beneath the tower in order to get Seth’s amulet then the party can journey past the ruined city and travel to Seth’s burial ground where the party can then revive the dead Paladin, who promises to help you in the final battle against Ezreal. From then forward if you bring the Amulet to Ezreal and destroy his stained glass form the character wearing his amulet will poke’morph into Seth and thus be able to lay a divine asskicking on that damned defenseless Sorcerer that could not fight his way out of a paper bag. After the two to three rounds needed to encircle and destroy Ezreal, Seth will behead the blighter and forever doom his eternal soul to hell (Heaven and Hell of course is called something different in DnD and behaves completely different, but I don’t expect the authors to know the first thing about the game at this point)

 

The birds sing, the sun shines, and your party is now victorious holding the various overpowered weapons and artifacts found from the adventure and the knowledge that pulling their own teeth would’ve been less painful than trying to win this adventure. What Lurks Beyond is a strange animal, as the book itself is actually well written and diverse with plenty of adventuring to be had; yet it falls completely flat with its arbitrary judgement of monster and loot strength and the obvious fact that the authors probably never played a real adventure beforehand or have any knowledge pertaining to the balance of a written adventure. A core rule to playing GameMaster is that there should never be such a painfully linear path to victory, and I count the possibility of losing for just not exploring enough to be too much of a “videogamey” cop-out. Unlike a videogame, a RPG party rarely gets the option to continue from where they lost and often will not want to sit through fights or sections multiple times. There are too many overpowered enemies, arbitrary traps, and the ever present impossible to dispel magic that seems to litter these godforsaken woods.

 

Gary Gygax has often been accused of writing the worst modules in DnD’s history, and to that I call bullshit. Mr. Gygax’s infamous modules were written for the express purpose of thinning out crowds of gamers at tournaments and as a test of a party’s ability to min-max and create a balanced group while What Lurks Beyond was written as a serious, cerebral adventure of high (as a kite) fantasy. Though honestly the adventure itself is not too hard to fix, the main issues lay in the sheer amount of magically locked doors, unbalanced encounters, incomplete monster entries, and joke of a final battle that leaves you feeling like you wasted more than a months worth of sessions for the weakest payoff possible. Copies of this adventure are rare as the book was not very widely circulated. Like the rest of Cutters Guilds titles you can get What Lurks Beyond from their shop, while it may be the weakest of their titles I will one day visit their stronger ones, as their better works can be considered somewhat legendary.

It turns out the reason the balancing is off is because the module is technically not for D20 at all but their own 3.5 setting book Deathstalkers 2 that uses a very different ruleset, behaving like a completely different animal. Many of the monsters in this adventure are from Deathstalkers 2 as well (Including their re-used bestiary pictures, tsk tsk)

-Necroscourge 2/15/13

 

necrofin

Tabletop Tales: Dealing With Stress: My Own ‘Dungeonland’

by Necroscourge

For months I have been awaiting the release of Paradox’s new title, Dungeonland. 

 

The game finally launched just a few days ago, and is most definitely an early contender for the most embarrassingly terrible release of 2013 (and it’s only February!). The game was originally pushed back a week to January 29th, with the promise of a smooth (and relatively bugless) launch. This would have been quite a change for Paradox, as they have a very spotty history, full of bugged releases and bad ideas.

 

 

Dungeonland released publicly with severe balancing issues, and Paradox decided to make it available the very hour Valve Staff were arriving to work at their California office, rather than a more traditional midnight release.

 

dungeonland logo

 

The Steam Community forums were flooded with cries of lag, connection problems, balancing issues, and a severe limit of content. Paradox’s Facebook page is filled to the brim with hatemail (Though to be fair, I wrote a fourth of it…). It’s almost a joke in the way Paradox behaves after botching a release so badly.

 

It was after trying this tangled mess of a game that I angrily stood up and perused my own game shelves, mumbling angry truths to myself that I dare not repeat here. It was only then that the planets finally did align and the angels did sing a lovely tune, my fingers grasping the sacred book as it came free from the shelf…

 

“Those petty fools and their Dungeonland stand no chance against the joys of… The Sunderdome!”

 

The book I held in my hands was Xcrawl; one of my most prized possessions and the tome that shall seal the fate of many witless saps and heroes who so much as dare to enter my domain! Xcrawl is a setting book based on a generic fantasy world with the idea that it is “Modern day” with a few very major difference between the two timelines. For starters, instead of beginning as a godless Democracy, Mr. George Washington took the other option and forged America as the North American Empire (NAE), crowning himself Emperor George Augustus I, with his first major decree being the immediate release of all slaves within the empire. Within this great Empire, LARP (Live Action Role Play… silly) was born when a pack of dim witted college mages descended into their basement, only to encounter a pack of ghouls (much to their dismay)! Instead of being terminally punished, the college boys were rewarded as the founders of the NAE’s new national sport. The titular XCRAWL Games!
 
Xcrawl Cover
 

I madly flipped through the pages, “Blah blah blah, Empire this, Empire that.” Normally I prefer to keep the setting intact when I do such a thing, however, any setting based in an empire that has banned all adult entertainment definitely has no room in my heart! Finally, 87 pages into the book, I was able to start reading about the actual sport of Xcrawl, which with some distinct differences, behaves much like a regular dungeon crawl.

 

Xcrawl is a combative sport where a previously established team of heroes ventures into the equally preconstructed labyrinths created by the event’s Dungeon Judge. This “judge” is given a generous budget to hire hunters to bring bloodthirsty beasts, wizards and architects to his hospitable dungeon! While real Xcrawl events have various “rules” (like a ban on firearms), I chucked such principles out the door nearly instantly realizing, “Those puny heroes will need every edge they can get in my new park!”

 

As such, it’s no big wonder that Sunderdome could be classified as an illegal event by the NAE. Well bah, I didn’t want my porn banned anyway! Much like the infamous illegal Chinese events, all players will be allowed in my dungeon at once without a real time limit, and will gain glorious prizes for bloodshed – the value increasing if they should happen to shed the blood of a fellow player, hehe.

 

Sunderdome gives its heroes the standard bonuses and edges one could expect from a regular Xcrawl event, including rest rooms and the Mojo system. For glorious feats of teamwork and violence the party is rewarded with Mojo points that can be offered to fellow players in times of need. However, a player may not beg for the use of these points; it needs to be offered naturally.

 

In my park, the heroes won’t be the only ones that are cheered for, as my hoards are also allowed Mojo points if they are built of preconstructed teams such as the vicious “Eleven Imps of Hate” I have hired to guard the exit to the first stage of Sunderdome. The ranks of Xcrawl are filled with the standard classes of adventuring lore, but for those that take the sport somewhat seriously, the Athlete class makes a good replacement for combatants that want to dedicate their lives to Xcrawl, or any sport really.

 

Ran by the enigmatic DJ Majesty, this dungeon will test the mettle of any party! Composed of two stages and a mighty Boss level to smash those would be heroes who progress too far. No expense was spared in the park’s development and even the most seasoned Xcrawlers will have a problem or two getting out alive! Why would one subject themselves to this? What are they playing for Suzanne!?

 

“Thousands of gold worth of prizes, with the winning purse valued at 100,000,000 gold!”

 

That’s going to buy the winning team a few good burials for their fallen comrades, with enough leftover to retire to boot! Remember, all teams are in it to win it. Running into another dungeon crawling team need not be a fight, but you can’t risk them getting to the Boss before you do, can you?

 

Stage 1 is more like an application than a true stage, as the heroes battle their way through the entrance area known in the nightmares of heroes as the Parking Lot of Pain! This regular looking parking lot has a few surprises in the form of Anti-Hero Mines scattered intermittently around the pavement. Those that evade the mines will then have to avoid the eagle-like sight of Crimbles, the Kobold Sharpshooter that makes his home in the water tower that overlooks the entire area! Head still intact? Time to march up the Sunderdome Steps as the famous Eleven Imps of Hate pelt the party with stones, small arms fire, and boulders. Only then will the party be allowed into the Sunderdome Proper and be admitted to Stage 2.

 

Stage 2 is the Sunderdome itself. A gigantic labyrinthine maze of twists, turns, and deadly traps! Players enter through the Lobby of Torment, assaulted at all sides by Rabid Elven Lobbyists my boys have injected with Kermitis C bacteria; highly illegal, very entertaining. From there, the Players must navigate the Vicious Maze of Horror and its assortment of Spike Cannon traps, more Anti-hero Mines, and the great many monsters that stand between the party and the elevator. Said elevator takes you atop the Sunderdome, where the final confrontation against whatever fiendish boss I have chosen to rip them limb from limb today awaits. If they can overcome this monstrosity of a problem, it’d be less of a problem than Paradox’s blundered release.

 

See, right there. RIGHT THERE is a better idea using Xcrawl and Dungeons and Dragons, than Dungeonland is; I suggest that you don’t question it. What? WHOS THERE!? NO DON’T TAKE ME BACK TO THE WHITE ROOM! AHHHH!
 
Its almost as if they thought I was crazy or something!
 

Fin.
-Necroscourge 1/30/13

Tabletop Tales: RPGObjects ‘Abandon All Hope’

by Necroscourge

Just like their video game counterparts, RPG’s fall into different genres as well as different styles of play. Some games glorify combat like a fighting simulator, while some focus on deep roleplaying experiences. Abandon All Hope is a Sci-Fi Psychological Survival Horror RPG effectively set in Hell, fully capable of immersing you in one of the worst possible situations a person can ever imagine. AAH presents an interesting concept; in the future, after a long string of wars, the tired planet turned to a paranoid utopian Meritocracy. One that grades everybody’s dispositions, attributes, and which even has a system of quantifying how crazy they are. Taking this knowledge, they proceeded to launch everyone, even those predisposed to violence on a big spaceship (called Gehenna) sent in a random direction. On this spaceship, you as a prisoner must survive both the robotic Custodians and your fellow prisoners.

 

Cross section of a typical Gehenna floor.
Cross section of a typical Gehenna floor.

 

Of course, it always gets better. At some point during the Gehenna’s voyage the ship was caught in a form of rip in the Space-Time continuum referred to by the prisoners as “Perdition”; that is for lack of a better word, Hell incarnate. This is both a weak and strong point of the game’s writing, as the book assumes that players begin after Perdition, and everything has already gone wrong, leaving a sense of confusion for those that don’t understand prison life as it is, much less how a prison behaves in hell. In addition, AAH has no source books, only additional adventures taking place in a canon plot string. The result is that the setting book provides only the core basics of how the ship operates with very little explanation of how things actually *work* on the ship. This can make Abandon All Hope a hard game to DM, despite how comparatively easy (and fun!) it is to actually play.

 

Character Generation is very simple and demonstrated in an easy step by step (and to the point) process, beginning with rolling up your Prisoner ID number. From there, you make choices for your inmate regarding his criminal background, attributes, mental health, and even your secret agenda which in turn opens up several Traits that can be taken to make your character even more unique. The result is that every player’s Prisoner will widely vary depending on their dice rolls and Trait choices. AAH also sports a very efficient balance: those who lack high statistics as weaker characters are given extra Build Points to buy more equipment and traits than a stronger character who has less dependence on good starting equipment.

 

Death Slither, a demon from the game.
Death Slither, a demon from the game.

 

In its inspirations, the game pays a lot of homage to Survival Horror games such as System Shock 2 and several high-casualty RPGs such as Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia, all of which is very evident by reading through the games rulings. However, amidst all of its detailed rules and systems there is always one thing that seems to be missing from every section. Fluff. As stated before, the game makes little to no mention besides casual references to “common” rules and laws amongst the prisoners and the vague warning that you will be searched for contraband often. There is very little mention of the inner workings of the prison itself besides the presence of robot Custodians and a Warden AI that rule the ship with an iron fist. The end result is that the book only contains rules and should be treated as a rulebook only (All of the story seems to be in the adventure modules), which as stated before makes this game hard to DM: if you lack basic knowledge of how prison life works, you will be playing this game wrong.

 

This is an important thing to mention, actually. This is a game based in a prison spaceship that tells you absolutely nothing besides basic descriptions of facilities and expects you to run the game as a Survival Horror Prison game. Honestly, I think detailing how a prisoner lives their daily life in this gigantic deathtrap of an ugly ass spaceship is sort of important. Things such as politics and the behavior of the Robot Custodians are often hinted at and mentioned at different parts of the book but there are no concise rulings actually made concerning the ships politics besides the enigmatic Wardens control of the ship and the SUGGESTION that there are demons running around.

 

A preview of the Abandon All Hope character sheet.
A preview of the Abandon All Hope character sheet.

 

Yes, Suggestion. You see while the game does detail several demons and how they generally appear, the rules for actually using demons are incomplete. A demon can spawn when a mental statistic meets or exceeds 10, however no mention is made of how often this occurs, or when another demon is allowed to spawn (I emailed the writer, all he could do is copy paste the rules on manifestations in the hope it answered my question. It didn’t). Demons are also mentioned to be prowling the decks often yet the Wardens Guide (DM Section) swears up and down that such beings should be rare due to their strength and shock value which leaves me the impression that they never considered that Abandon All Hope could be ran without the adventure modules.

 

While the game is criminally lacking in fluff, explanation, or plot, AAH does have a brisk explanation of the combat system within two pages and that is a plus. There is also a loosely imagined crafting and salvage system in place for those that want to research and build new items out of items collected from the various broken terminals and devices around the ship. As crafting systems go, AAH’s is easily my favorite. Every source of salvage can be checked once for materials, of which it has 0-2 different components you can grab that can be in turn used to make items and equipment using experience points. Certain characters may even to learn how to craft various items with toolkits, or even craft drugs.

 

Cover from the module 'Seeds of Rage'
Cover from the module ‘Seeds of Rage’

 

Despite the numerous weak points, AAH is a fairly well written game for those who just want to use the rules and play their own campaigns. There is very little effort required to make your campaign unique and interesting as the setting itself (while unexplained) is original enough to be interesting on its own, but could also easily be adapted to any space-borne setting from DOOM, all the way to Pandorum. Abandon All Hope is a Horror game by heart and its unexplained vacuous nature lends to the setting, adding to how lethal the game itself is.

 

Abandon All Hope is available on Amazon and various other websites where RPGs are sold. I do give you one word of warning however when purchasing books from the RPGObjects website: Only buy in bulk from them. My copy of Abandon All Hope came in a flat rate envelop with no protection whatsoever and thus arrived at my doorstep damaged and dogeared; the response I received from RPGObjects was an amatuer “Wow, How did that happen!? Pay for the shipping and I will replace it” response. I was also not happy that the PDF(Less than $3) is in full color while the print version of the book($25) is in black and white. This normally is not too much of an issue. In this case however, the most painful section to look at is the Demons part of the book; all of the art is bright and colorful causing the pictures to come out as muddy dark and grey abominations. This alone is enough reason to skip on getting a hard-copy in favor of the cheaper (and prettier) PDF if you have the means to.

 

Despite how much I hate their business practices (and owner), I do have to report that RPGObjects games (Of the four or five books of hardcopy that I own) are brilliant. For instance, I have been running a weekly Darwins World game for a little under a month now and it’s an extreme hit with my group, and when we start our weekly AAH game I’m sure it will be a hit too. In short, their books are good, but for the love of the maker don’t get anything non-bulk shipped by them if you like your books being in mint condition.

Abandon All Hope is a an easy to learn system akin to Traveler, and is perfect for Horror gamers.

 

Screen Shot 2013-01-25 at 7.25.35 PM

 

In the 27th century, after generations of war, Terra has finally entered a Golden Age. With the rise of a new global regime, and the installment of a Pan-Terran Meritocracy, efforts are made to stamp out crime and violence permanently. The solution: the ruthless rounding up of all murderers, vice offenders, dissidents and anarchists and loading them onto the colossal prison hulk, Gehenna. The concept is simple. Eradication of all lawbreakers from Terran society and indefinite exile to the furthest corners of space.

Five years into its automated voyage, the Gehenna has inexplicably vanished from all tracking and earth-based telescopes. Five years into is voyage, the Gehenna and the nine million souls aboard her has slipped through a spatial anomaly into another dimension entirely.

The event has wrought havoc on the ship and caused the death of many aboard. Thousands more are now free, running riot in the ship’s dark levels. Murderers, rapists, and maniacs are loose, but they are not alone. This new dimension is home to strange alien lifeforms that are drawn to the hate, misery, fear and suffering of those aboard.

Abandon All Hope is a science-fiction/supernatural horror role-playing game in which players take on the role of the condemned aboard an automated spaceship that has plunged over the edge of the known universe. Here, in another dimension, they must contend with escaped lunatics, robotic controllers, and monstrous aliens who feed off of their fear and suffering. Former convicts are now the heroes, and every day is a fight for survival. For those who seek it there will be chances to escape, to gain power, embrace damnation, or seek redemption…