RPGaDay 2019: 7 Familiar

One of the best reasons to be a wizard, back in the days when you had to fend off triceratops on your way to the hobby shop in the mall (I know, I’m speaking in tongues right now), was that you got a familiar at first level (or second, if your DM was being a stickler for those material components). The familiar was a staple of high fantasy and fairy tales, true, but in AD&D, it meant up to four additional hit points—and at first level, that was a HUGE deal. It also meant you got some extra sensory bonuses and, if you were really lucky, you might get a magical familiar that would certainly be a benefit in those early levels as you struggled to stay at the back of the party and not get killed.

5th edition familiars are, by comparison, a little lacking in pizzazz.  Sure, it’s cheaper to cast the spell, and you get more animals to choose from, but they are not special in that way that they are all either celestials, fey, or fiends, as you choose. They still look like a harmless li'l bat, but trust me, they are evil!

You don’t get to add hit points, and you aren’t penalized when the familiar dies. In fact, you can dump it into a hyperpocket whenever you want. It’s potentially useful, but given the expanded list of familiar chdices (including bat, cat, crab, frog, hawk, lizard, octopus, owl, poisonous snake, fish, rat, raven, sea horse, spider, or weasel—but NOT the quasit, brownie, or imp) and the fact that they are all interchangeable, well, who cares about a familiar in fifth edition?

My solution is to bring a little first edition into the spell. Below is the link to my write-up for Familiars. It’s free for you to use. Click here to get it.

Familiars--Homebrew 

If you’d like some more inspiration on how to handle familiars, I would highly recommend the Vlad Taltos series of books by Steven Brust. His titular character has a small flying lizard (a Jhereg) named Loiosh and their relationship is amazing and should give you plenty of examples for how to run a wizard with a familiar.

Also, there’s a great novel by Roger Zelazny called A Night in the Lonesome October. I can’t recommend it strongly enough. A great book about what the help gets up to when the masters are away.

RPGaDay 2019: 6 Ancient

Webster’s defines “gothic” in several ways:  the Teutonic Barbarians, which are certainly cool if you're into that whole history thing; the style of architecture that dominated France and Western Europe from the 12th to the 16th century; and the one that I want to talk about, which is "...relating to a style of fiction characterized by the use of desolate or remote settings and macabre, mysterious, or violent incidents."  

Characteristics of gothic art and literature can include, but are not limited to decay, haunted locations, curses, madness, powerful emotions, and the presence of the supernatural. 

Sounds like a hell of a campaign setting, right?

I think the best parts of classic D&D are gothic in nature. It’s one of the over-arching principles that drives the game even now. Consider that of the mere handful of skills allowed the player characters, there are three knowledge skills that relate directly to gothic elements: arcane, religion, and history.

I’ve always preferred the Howardian ideal of dim antiquity and fell sorcery, lying fallow beneath the ruins, weighted down by the crashing eons, waiting in blind indolence for the lone and unsuspecting fool to life the stone, trace the carvings or dig up the skull of the long-forgotten sorcerer so that evil will one day stalk the land again.

Buscema and Alcala. Click to enlarge.

And why not? That’s one third of the game’s primary adventure milieus, isn’t it? The crypts, the ruins, the dungeon! Of course, they are unfailingly gothic and ancient—no one raids the newly-constructed underground lair (though I suppose they could), or visits the brand-spanking-new temple of elemental evil. Those are nowhere near as fun to traipse through. And why? New places can’t have ghosts, supernatural and macabre things, or curses or madness.

Again, I’m sure if you worked at it, you could probably come up with some new evil warlord who JUST put the finishing touches on his labyrinth of madness and he’s now killing all of the workers so they won’t divulge his secrets and the widow of the town’s stonecutter wants you to go pull his carcass out of the abattoir so it can be interred in the family crypt. There’s most of the elements that go into a gothic setting, only fresh and new, but how many times can you go back to that well? And yet, every kingdom, every duchy, every principality has its own mouldering crypt, abandoned keep, ancient ruins, etc. It's part of the creative DNA of Dungeons & Dragons.

I think gothic elements work best when you file the serial numbers off; or to put it another way, I think Ravenloft is overkill. It’s too “on the nose,” and moreover, in danger of sliding out of the low fantasy setting I prefer. I get why it’s popular and why they chose to freshen it up for 5th edition, but I’d rather be more subtle, if not judicious, about my gothic trappings.

The Appendix N author who got this the most right was Robert E. Howard. His successors, Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock, and Karl Edward Wagner, got this idea, as well. More of that stuff in your game is never a bad thing.

RPGaDay 2019: 5 Space

…the Final Frontier…

I can’t help it; anytime I see the word in print, It’s William Shatner’s voice-over I hear in my head, every single time.

I grew up watching Star Trek…and didn't we all? During my Formative Gaming Years (or, if you will, the “FoGy”) I was interested in the Star Trek Role-Playing Game more than somewhat, especially coming off of Star Frontiers. After all, the potential of a game based on a group of fascinating and dynamic characters going off on space adventures seemed like a no-brainer…until you started taking the episodes apart.

You quickly realized that, as a player, if you weren’t Kirk, Spock, or McCoy, you were support staff, or God Forbid, cannon fodder. The solution was to create your own crew, and ship, and go have different adventures, but this was before The Next Generation, before all of the spin-offs, and the other games, and so on and so forth. All we had for a point of reference was Classic Trek. Hell, we didn’t even call it “classic.” It was just Star Trek. That’s old.

And it made the RPG something of a cipher. No one would agree to play Scottie because everyone wanted to play Kirk, but rolling up your own bridge crew and ship was, well, not nearly as cool. I think that has changed in the wake of a half-dozen Star Trek shows, each one a different flavor, and some great movies and more comics and a lot more examples of what the Federation means in the future. More stuff to hang your hat on, for sure.

The best thing about the FASA game was that they had access to the series bibles and put a lot of the information about the world (lots of stuff that wasn’t in any of the shows) into the game to help fill out the environment for the GM. If you were a Trekkie (or Trekker, or Trekkite) then you loved this game for all of the sneak peeks behind the curtain it gave you.

This was a dense game, folks. It incorporated (like FASA’s other games) the ability to beam down to the planet, get into a firefight, beam up to the ship, and then slug it out in space with photon torpedoes and submarine style warfare. The boxed set came with ship schematics. Schematics.

Grape Nuts aren’t as crunchy as the Star Trek RPG. And I discovered, as did so many others, that as much as I liked Star Trek, I didn’t need to like it quite THAT much. The only game I ever played was an introductory scenario that my friend Larry ran to demonstrate the game for me. I liked it, but I could see that there was a whole other world I could have been pulled into if I committed to the game, and so I remain fascinated by the FASA game and slightly repulsed, as well.

RPGaDay 2019: 4 Share

 I think one of the best things about the modern gaming renaissance is the Maker culture that has infiltrated the game; mind you, it was always there, but there’s something to be said for how around the bend we’ve come so that anyone can write an adventure (or new spells, or whatever) and put them online and people can have them, or buy them for a nominal amount of money. That’s very cool, and quite generous.

In the spirit of the month, I’m going to share with you three of my backgrounds I have written up for my City-State urban campaign. These cleave very closely to the spirit of the backgrounds already published, but have different emphases. The Bureaucrat is an occupation that works well in an urban campaign, and poses challenges for the player who suddenly finds themselves in the wilderness. The Exterminator is an overlooked profession that would be really useful to have in your emerging city. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it and it translates well to dungeons.  The Pilgrim is a more focused version of the Outlander, and is a broad background to base a lot of character classes upon.

You can snag the pdfs below. I hope you dig them. Any and all feedback and comments are welcome.

5e Background: Bureaucrat

5e Background: Exterminator

5e Background: Pilgrim

RPGaDay 2019: 3 Engage

A few years ago, I was doing a part-time gig as a creative arts teacher for a homeschool family. One of the young men I was working with was smart, creative, imaginative, and also pretty shy and quiet. I had worked with him previously doing artwork and also with language arts, and I thought we’d try a little experiment to bring him out of his shell: dungeons and dragons.

This was during the time before the 4^th Cataclysm, when all I owned was The Old Books with their secret knowledge and wisdom. I also had a shit-load of dice. So in the interest of keeping it low impact, I introduced the kid to first edition AD&D, old school, as God intended, and we played through a modified version of The Village of Hommlet, only with werewolves and other stuff, because, you know, that’s just cool.

About the third session in, when the town became convinced that there was a werewolf in their midst, I gave my player a homework assignment: come up with a way to catch the werewolf without killing him so they can unmask him. Now, prior to this, he’d been playing along, cautiously, and every time I asked him a question, he got a panicked look in his eyes, until I outlined a few options for him. It was slow going, but he was tentatively enjoying it, even if he kept comparing it to playing Skyrim.

The next week, when I showed up, we hadn’t even sat down at the table before he was explaining to me the plan to catch the werewolf. He’d been thinking about it all week, working it out, formulating strategy, and so forth. I opened the session with “Okay, so the villagers are looking at you. Rorick asks you, “Do you have any bright ideas?”

Without missing a beat, my student said, “I tell them, ‘I’ve got a plan, but you have to do exactly what I say or more people will die.’”

All of a sudden, he was in the game, and saying things in character (sometimes deliberately, sometimes cautiously, but still!) and it was very cool to see him come out from under his shell and start thinking dynamically. Later, we talked about it, and he told me he loved being able to come up with his own plan, which is something you can’t do in Skyrim. True that.

This hobby is unique. You never know what’s going to hook a person. But when they engage with D&D (or any other RPG), it’s got a transformative effect on people. 

RPGaDay 2019: 2 Unique

Weird Tales Magazine called itself “The Unique Magazine” and it wasn’t an idle boast, either. Widely considered one of the greatest pulp magazines of all time, it premiered in 1922 as a ghost and supernatural pulp and quickly went into debt, as it was unable to find its audience. When a Shakespearean scholar named Farnsworth Wright took the editorial reins in late 1924 (himself installed by the magazine’s new owners), he heralded the Golden Age of Weird Tales by introducing the small but dedicated readers to some of the most important fantasy writers of the twentieth century.

REH's Conan was one of the most
popular series in the magazine.

Of singular note are the Three Musketeers of Weird Tales: H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard; Other less distinguished but no less important authors included: C.L. Moore, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Seabury Quinn, Frank Belknap Long, August Derleth, A. Merritt, Fritz Lieber, Manly Wade Wellman, and so many others, just to name a few.

Why should you care? Well, if you are an Appendix N Junkie (or Appendix E for you fifth edition folks), or maybe you’re merely interested in the history and development of the game, then Weird Tales Magazine is the Dead Sea Scrolls of D&D. You probably already recognized those names above as a significant who’s who for the original Appendix N.

Reading is not only fundamental, it’s required to play Dungeons & Dragons, and the experience of play was always intended to be akin to, if not adjacent to, a literary experience. Modern movies and television and increasingly-sophisticated video games tend to blur and conflate the chain of custody between gaming and literature, to our detriment, I think. Case in point; my current players relate all of their commentary in meta-game to playing Skyrim.

Sahuagin! No, Kuo Toa! Wait a minute...

This has an advantage in that you can play off of those expectations; my thieves’ guild is so much more vast, intricate, and interesting than the little gang of ne’er-do-wells in Skyrim that it blew the players’ minds when they discovered it, and just how vast and sprawling it really was. But that’s not hard to do. I mean, as cool as Skyrim is (I guess), nothing beats me at the table, doing my thing, and creating worlds that these guys live in.

Now, I told you that to tell you this: at least half, if not more, of my long-running campaign world is admiringly appropriated from much better writers than me. That was one of the dirty little secrets of the Old School Renaissance; players and DMs would gleefully steal any idea not nailed down, and even then, some of them brought a crowbar, just in case. I mentioned this previously when talking about the movie Beastmaster.

But the real stuff, the books and stories from Weird Tales magazine? Those decorated authors? That’s uncut, high end, mainline good shit, right there. What makes this so ironic is that, over time, Dungeons and Dragons had drifted—some would say by necessity, and others would say by design—away from being derivative of Conan, Elric, Lord of the Rings, etc. and into its own world that is ultimately unique unto itself…but also, and this is strictly my opinion here, very vanilla. D&D has, over forty years, become a kind of default setting catch-all fantasy world that is not bad, not at all, but it’s lacking some of the bumps and scrapes and dents and dings that first edition D&D had. Scars are sexy, and the early D&D was a Frankenstein’s monster that wore all of its influences on its sleeves…and its arms…and its face…and its body…

The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game. For this reason, and for the hours of  reading enjoyment, I heartily recommend the works of these fine authors to you.
 - E. Gary Gygax, from the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide

RPGaDay 2019: 1 First

I’ve written before about the blue box Dungeons & Dragons game; I now know it to be the fourth printing of the Holmes rewrite, which included a copy of BI—In Search of the Unknown, and a set of chits that completely and utterly failed to capture the excitement of rolling platonic solids.

My step-father bought the game for us, no doubt intrigued by the concept; he was a sword and planet fan and one of the first things we bonded over in our nascent relationship was fantasy and sci fi books. I remember our first game: we had been handed character sheets, and in front of us was several Dixie cups full of chits (I know, sexy, right?) and he began narrating the adventure. We were at a door. It opened into a dark hallway…and then he said, “hold on a second,” and started flipping through the rule book.

We waited patiently. Where were we going to go? Mom was dealing with the other two kids, who were five and seven years my junior. I asked if I could see one of the books that came in the box. I was told no, because he needed both of them to run the game.

This was intriguing. I watched as Paul flipped through the rule book, and then consulted the module, and back and forth for several minutes. Then he got up, lit a cigarette, and took the rule book with him, saying, “Just a minute. I think I forgot to do something…” and he walked into the other room, muttering.

And that was my first Dungeons & Dragons game.

Two weeks later, I casually migrated the box into my room and began my examination of the rules. It was fascinating in the extreme—I had never seen a rule book laid out in that particular style or typeface. It looked different. It felt different. The artwork was a little messy, but also evocative.

The section I read more than any other in the book was the example of play. That, I thought, was where our game went off the rails. I didn’t know what to say, and Paul didn’t know what to do. I tried to match up the cross-section of the sample dungeon with the sample layout and of course, none of it was supposed to match anyway, but it kept me from playing that much longer until I did.

That summer, my other step-brother, from my father’s re-marriage, came back from Boy Scout Camp with all kinds of life wisdom and a new thing: he’d been playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Not the basic stuff; that was for kids, Jack. For hard-core gamers only. It only took a couple of weekends before I was hounding my mother to buy me a Player’s Handbook.

I can still hear it in my head, like a voice over an old-fashioned telephone… “It’s HOW MUCH?...for a book…? What’s this…that game you never played? I know, Paul bought it, but…and this is for what, again…Mark, we’ve got dice at the house…I don’t know…Okay, but you’re paying me back for this…”

My copy of the Player’s Handbook was $18.00, from B.Dalton  Booksellers in the mall. By Christmas, I’d acquired copies of the Monster Manual and the Dungeon Master’s Guide ($24.00, NOT on sale), and bought a set of Armory gem dice. Mom said, as we were picking up Christmas paper wrapping, “I hope you play the hell out of that game, because that’s all the money I’m going to spend on it.”

The next day, I conned a ride to the mall, where the hobby shop was located. I bought the most recent issue of Dragon Magazine with Christmas money, and I bought a module, too: The Tomb of Horrors.  I was hooked. There was no going back.