Dorkland! Roundtable with Trey Causey

If you don't already own a copy of Trey Causey's excellent Weird Adventures, why don't you? I consider it an equivalent to the old WEG (now published by Precis Intermedia) book Bloodshadows. It has a mix of pulp fiction, traditional gaming fantasy and comic book fun all in one affordable package. The book is almost all system agnostic setting material, with what little writeups there are done in the style of Swords & Wizardry) and details a world where the paradigms of the heroic pulps and traditional high fantasy smash into each other like a J.G. Ballard car crash of gaming inspiration. Seriously, if you don't own a copy go here to RPGNow and pick up the PDF at least (although I really recommend getting a print copy).

Now that you've clicked the link (and yes that is an affiliate link, my future reviews thank you), you can watch Trey and I talking around the Dorkland! Roundtable.

There needs to be a licensed Warlord RPG. Someone with a real amount of money needs to get onto it, and then hire Trey to work on it.

Judge Dredd: The Judge Child Quest

Judge Dredd is always a bit weird, particularly to those used to American comic books. Judge Dredd is sarcastic, sardonic, satirical and many other things that start with an S. Yes, the comic lampoons American culture on a regular basis, but that is a good thing. Sometimes it is good to have that outsider's view on what out culture looks like.

The Judge Child Quest begins with a dying PSI Judge and a prophecy: the child who bears the eagle mark will save Mega-City 1. In the future world of Judge Dredd civilization is in the hands of the Justice Department, and the Judges who stop crime and judge the offenders. A Judge is a combination police officer, judge and executioner. Their word is final. Their word is Law.

Part of the reason why I like the Judge Child Quest is because it goes across space and shows a much wider view of the setting than what we normally get in a Judge Dredd story. The story starts in Mega City, where the dying PSI Judge issues his prophecy and starts Dredd on a journey that goes to the Cursed Earth (the part of American still in ruins from the nuclear war that nearly decimated the world in the past) to Texas City to weird planets beyond the solar system.

Dredd sees a great variety of people at their best, and at their worse. Even more, the Judge Child Quest causes a great deal of growth in the character of Dredd. I do not think that the person Dredd was at the beginning of the story would have done what the Dredd at the end of the story did. Dredd always puts the well-being of Mega-City 1 before his own, but in this case Dredd puts a lot on the line, knowing that he has to do what is right for Mega-City 1.

I really suggest checking out the Judge Child Quest, if you haven't already read it. It is one of the best of the Judge Dredd arcs that I have been able to read. If you haven't read Judge Dredd, or your only exposure to the character is from the terrible Sylvester Stallone movie, I really recommend checking it out. DriveThruComics has a good selection of 2000AD magazines and other select Judge Dredd collections available in PDF form (currently on sale at the time of this writing). Yes, there is an affiliate code. It helps feed what I can write about on this blog.

Dorkland! Roundtable With Engine Publishing

We talked about their current book Never Unprepared, and how the Engine Publishing/Gnome Stew people go through the process of creating one of their books.

We also spent time talking about their influences as writers and gamers, as well as their love for older games. Martin's project to blog about the books from Appendix N of the AD&D DMG is a particularly interesting one that I plan to follow and see where he goes with it. Again, I had a great talk with talented creators and I am enjoying the insights that these Roundtables are giving me into the creative processes of other gamers and designers.

An Early Look At Nova Praxis

I was able to get an early look at the playtest documents for the upcoming Nova Praxis game from Void Star Games. They have a Kickstarter in the works (and if you are reading this blog post from the future it could be already happening or finished).

Nova Praxis is a transhumanistic science fiction game that uses Void Games Stands of Fate variant of the Fate rules as its underlying game engine. Transhumanism is a burgeoning genre in tabletop role-playing. Steve Jackson Games tilled the soil years ago with their Transhuman Space game, a game that featured collaboration between game designers and futurists to make a transhuman setting that seemed a probable extrapolation of the current world into a future one. Eclipse Phase by Posthuman Studios also goes over this ground, but adds an element of horror to the transhumanist SF. Both of these are strong games, with strong followings, that would be difficult for a new game to surpass and set its own ground.

Some would say: Do we really need another transhumanist role-playing game? I think that's a dumb question because, at it's heart, transhumanism should be an extrapolation of today into a probably and plausible tomorrow. As today changes, so should the tomorrows keep pace.

Dorkland! Roundtable With Gareth Skarka

I seem to have fallen behind on posting the videos of my Dorkland! Roundtables here to my blog. Honestly, I thought that I had already posted this. I had a talk with Gareth Skarka of Adamant Entertainment recently. One thing that you'll notice is that this discussion took place before the announcement that ownership of the Icons role-playing game was transferred back to creator Steve Kenson from Adamant.

We talked about a few things on the Roundtable, but a lot of time got spent talking about pulps (you can see the stack of Doc Savage reprints behind Gareth's head in the thumbnail), and James Bond. We also spent a bit of time talking about the James Bond RPG (put out in the 80s from Victory Games, an imprint of Avalon Hill). Apparently the talk of James Bond has sparked some discussion of the game over on Google Plus.

As I've said before in my commentary on these discussions, I am enjoying the process of talking with other game designers and publishers. It is interesting to get into their heads a little bit and see what influences them as writers and designers. This discussion with Gareth is not different. I think that we get a little bit of a peek into how he thinks as a designer, and what motivates him to design.

New Spells for Your Swords & Wizardry and Old School Games

I like spells in my fantasy games. I like the feeling of magic and wonder that they bring to a world. I also like for the players in my games to have options for their characters. The linked PDF has 26 spells that are new to Swords & Wizardry, converted from the SRDs of OpenQuest and the Renaissance system. I am pretty sure that none of them have appeared in an old school or d20 game. The spells are split between Cleric and Magic-User spells, so there is something of use to either class.

Some of these spells are a bit non-traditional, but that is why I am sharing them.

The PDF can be found here.

Blood and Treasure: Player's Tome in Review

I received a comp copy of the PDF of John Stater's latest game: the Player's Tome for Blood & Treasure. I have to say that I like what I am seeing. This isn't a retroclone, it is something that might be better classified as a "second wave" OSR game. Instead of trying to recreate an earlier edition of an out-of-print game, like most in the OSR had done previously, John has taken the know-how that he gathered while developing material for various versions of Swords & Wizardry, as well as working on the Tome of Horrors Complete for Swords & Wizardy, and has applied what he has learned to the d20 3.x SRD.

Like I said, he isn't recreating another older ruleset, he is taking the approach of simplicity and utilitarianism that is a hallmark of so much OSR work and he looked at how he could simplify the 3.x SRD material and still keep it as something that is recognizable as being derived from those rules. Has he succeeded?

I think that he has. Obviously, I'm not getting the full game from just the Player's Tome but there is enough of the game in there for me to come to some conclusions. This isn't the work of someone who hates modern games. Far from it, this is the work of someone who loves fantasy gaming but doesn't like the complexity that comes with a lot of contemporary games. That's a mind set that I can completely relate to. The whole reason for my jump into retro-gaming over the last couple of years is because I had gotten tired of the complexity of a lot of the games out on the market today, and wanted games that were simpler. This lead me to games like Swords & Wizardry and OpenQuest and Warrior and Wizard.

This isn't a perfect game, but few are. The game itself is definitely strong, and complete. The layout of the book is a bit lackluster, and the fonts are a bit small. I'm sure that was a choice so that page count could be reduced, but these eyes aren't as good as they used to be (particularly with reading PDFs). The art is a mixed bag, but the "iconic" character art for each of the character classes is phenomenal, which might be why some of the other art left me a bit cold. I also have to say that the iconic character art is some of the most inclusive art that I have seen in a fantasy game in a while.

Presentation aside, the rules are strong. John has streamlined a lot of the complexity down to a manageable level. At the same time he has kept the elements that are recognizable as being a part of the 3.x rules. Feats are still a part of the game, streamlined dramatically, and optional. Skills have taken a cue from some of the ideas coming out of the OSR and are based off of saving throws. This is a mechanic that I liked when I first saw it on a gaming blog, and I like the variation on the theme that John has done for Blood & Treasure. There are plenty of spells (most of the book is taken up with spell lists, even though the spells too have been streamlined), which fixes something that I don't like about a lot of old school clones. In their desire for fidelity to the source material, I think that magic-users and clerics tend to get shortchanged. It is nice to see that there is plenty of magic to go around.

This is a great game that a lot of people are going to be talking about for a long while.

Should you buy this game? Hell, yes. Organization and presentation aren't the best, but I'm sure that this will change with future editions. For a game done by an amateur layout person (since there is no layout credit in the book, I am assuming that John did the layouts himself), the book could have looked a lot worse. Underneath that, however, there is a strong fantasy gaming engine that more than makes up for any shortcomings in presentation. Blood & Treasure is the next Castles & Crusades, and I think that publishers like Troll Lord need to look out because there is some serious competition for them to be found in this game. Don't just take it from me, however. Go out now (there's a handy link at the top of this post) and buy yourself a copy of Blood & Treasure. You won't be sorry.

Howard Chaykin's Black Kiss [NSFW]

With Chaykin's follow-up mini-series, Black Kiss II, finally hitting comic stores, I thought it would be a good time to (finally) get my post about the original Black Kiss up on the blog and out into the world. Black Kiss came out from Vortex Comic in the late 80s. Vortex was a Canadian publisher that also brought us Dean Motter's Mister X. The Vortex books were ahead of their time, in one way or another, and very cutting edge. Which is likely why a creator like Chaykin would be interested in working with them.

This post is based on the Thick Black Kiss collection of the miniseries that Vortex put out in the 90s.

Dorkland! Roundtable: BRP Edition With Ben Monroe and Jason Durall

On a very special Dorkland! Roundtable with Ben Monroe and Jason Durall we talk about Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing System and the upcoming standalone BRP fantasy game, Magic World.

We spend a lot of time talking about why we like BRP, what drew us into the system in the first place and other topics of generally dorky conversation. A map is shown to us by a member of the upcoming generation of roleplayers, as well. It was a lively conversation, and much more fun than the last time that I talked with Jason on here. Before Hangouts on the Air because a thing, Jason was on my first Dorkland! Roundtable, which was a bit of a fiasco for a good number of reasons. But it also shows just how much things have changed, technology-wise, with Google+ in the last few months.

Magical Origins and Icons Superpowered Roleplaying

This blog post sprung out of a Google+ post that I made the other day. One of my favorite things in comics has always been the magical characters from Doctor Strange to Zatanna to Doctor Fate to John Constantine to Sargon to Doctor Occult. I like the fact that they are a little bit weirder than your "regular" super-heroes, that they don't always wear tights, and that their adventures are a bit more fantastic.

I wrote up a couple of new Origins for Adamant Entertainments Icons role-playing game. Actually, I wrote up more than a couple but I thought that I might save those for another blog post, or perhaps some other use. If you haven't played Icons, you should check it out. Designed by super-heroic gaming guru Steve Kenson (creator of Mutants & Masterminds and other super-hero games), Icons is a lighter approach to super-heroes, inspired by the Marvel Super-Heroes game of the 80s from TSR, as well as the Fudge and Fate RPGs. This is a game that is designed for pick up play so that you can get characters up and going with a minimum of effort and fuss. This game has a fun and novel approach to its subject matter, and I think that any one interested in super-hero comics and role-playing should have a copy of Icons on their book shelf.

Origins are sort of the archetype for a character in Icons. It represents the type of super-hero that your character is. Magically-oriented super-heroes have just as many options of types as do their non-magical brethren, if not more. In this article, I will give you a couple that will let you get started into integrating magical heroes into your Icons games.

Old School Caster: The hero has been around since the Golden Age of heroics, slinging spells and taking names. The character probably knew the parents and grandparents of many of the heroes operating today. Unlike a lot of younger magicians, honor and rules are very important to this hero. In the world of magic, knowledge is power, so the character gets two additional specialties.

Altered State: The hero was once human, but the supernatural world has changed them into something...other. The character is now a creature of magic of some sort, from an elemental being to a living plant to a magically animated golem. Raise two of the character's abilities by +2 and give them an additional aspect.

The (Un)dead: The character died, but that state of being does not stop someone from becoming a hero. Now serving a higher (or sometimes lower) power, the character has been given a new "life" and a mission to go with it. Increase two of the character's abilities by +1 and give them an additional aspect to cover their (un)life.

Aspects and Magical Origins
You will probably notice that these new Origins give characters more Aspects than more "normal" starting characters under the basic Icons rules, and there is a reason for that. The magical community in super-hero comics tend to be more maladjusted than most regular super-heroes (outside of mutants, at least). Icons has an excellent mechanic for dealing with that with Aspects. Challenges work well to simulate the social and psychological tolls that the world of magic can take on a hero. Yes, it gives magical heroes a bit more determination to play with but that will not always offset their other problems.

Normal super-heroes often find magical heroes unsettling, for one reason or another. That has to do with the magical world and its dangers being so much stranger than what regular heroes have to deal with. Magicians and demons rarely have the desire to rob banks or kidnap people. The normal super-heroes are lucky to deal with that. The magical heroes get to deal with the reality incursions of elder gods and demonic entities that live within left angles.

Magical Specialties
Just to give your new magical hero a little bump, here are a couple of magical/occult specialties to give them a little more juice.

Demonology: The hero has received training in demons, their workings and the realms in which they live. Add their specialty bonus to tests dealing with these subjects.

World of Magic: Magicians tend to know the mover and shakers, human and otherwise, in their community (both good and evil). Add their specialty bonus to tests dealing with knowing who might consider a place within their territory, what witches may sell potions in a city, and other similar tests of knowledge.

Legend Lore: In a world where gods actually walk the Earth and magic exists, knowledge of the legendary past of the world and some of these beings can come in handy. Add the character's specialty bonus to tests about the myths, legends and folklore of the world.