Followers

Well this blog got its first follower! It's like when you find the first comment on one of your posts and say "Hey, someone out there actually reads this!?". Thanks to Aslan, a fellow gamer from the End of the Earth and the World of Aeran, whereever those places are. ;-)

S&W goes Silver

Catching up with all the blogging of the weekend, it was great to read the Ennies 2009 results and find that Mythmere Games won the Silver award for the Best Free Product category. Congratulations! I'm proud that my vote contributed to that. This award has to be seen as a milestone for the Swords & Wizardry project and a boost to the whole OSR movement that creates and supports free-form RPGs.

On game rules and fun

Today I was reading the MicroLite74 rules set booklet, considering it as a possible candidate to use once I finish DMing my current 3.5e campaign, when I came across a sentence on the Designer’s Notes section that caught my eye:

"So don’t search your character sheet or the rules for the perfect solution [...]"

It was like having a deja-vu. When you look over the DM screen and see your players going back and forth their character sheets (or rulebooks) trying to find the answer for any given situation, you should know that something is wrong. It's then time to stop and ask:

People, is this really the game we want to play? Are we having fun?

In the end that's what games are all about: having fun. I've come to believe that in a game (at least in RPGs) the quantity of rules is inversely proportional to the quality of the fun you get playing that game. This has no scientific basis but an emotional one, and by no mean intends to be a static statement, so maybe someone could prove me wrong.

Later in the booklet, on the same section, there's a summary in reference to A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming by Matthew J. Finch, and under the item "Player Skill, not Character Skill " you can read the following:

"Players don’t need to be rules lawyers."

And I would humbly add, neither do DMs. Amen.

Goodbye 3.5e

I never played D&D or B/X. I started playing AD&D 1e, then switched to AD&D 2e, then to 3e, then to 3.5e, always thinking that the new rules set was better than the prevoius one without giving it much thought, but no more. I now DM three 3.5e campaigns all set in the World of Greyhawk; one ongoing (Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk) and two other "on hold" (a long term one that we left in the middle of Maure Castle from Dungeon magazines - heathens! - and a homebrew one).

With time I've realized that allowing the use of books like the "Complete" or the PHB2 was a mistake. I should have known better that with the three core books was more than enough. What was done in the eagerness of adding flavor to the game, in the end became a cumbersome corset for me. I don't need more rules, spells, feats or classes to do what I intended to.

So then it's decided, once we've finished EttRoG I plan to go back to the roots, back to 1e, or B/X, or some of the OSR rules set like Swords&Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord.

One Page Dungeon Contest 2009 Codex & Compendium

Keeping their promise Chgowiz and ChattyDM (two of the contest judges) released in PDF the One Page Dungeon Codex 2009 (the "Hobbyist" version as they call it) and the One Page Dungeon Compendium. The Codex is a compilation of the winning entries, runner ups and honorable mentions and the Compendium contains all of the contest entries. Mine is here!

As a bonus the Codex has a great cover made by Mark Allen. He's the winner of "The Erol Otus Art Challenge" in the Color category (May 2009). Next month they'll be publishing a "Professional" version with aditional content and art for the three winners.

Well done guys!

Medieval battle records go online

The detailed service records of 250,000 medieval soldiers from 1369 to 1453- including archers who served with Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt - have gone online.

See the whole study here.

New look!

I decided it was time to give the blog a new look, so I changed the template and modified its HTML code in order to add a background. The chosen background is the image on the left. I used GIMP to have it resized and then applied an "old photo" filter. All but two of the miniatures were hand-painted by my wife (BTW she plays D&D too!) and me. The other two (Caramon at the front and the barbarian at the center) were painted by a friend and fellow gamer.

Ennies 2009

Just added this cool banner I found in Chgowiz's blog to support the truly free RPGs nominated in the Ennies 2009 as best free product. What are "truly free products"? They're products which are not intended to be quick-starters for, or stripped-down versions of, commercial produced ones. Every vote counts! Don't forget to cast yours!

One Page Dungeon: Shrine of the Rodent God

This blog has been up for some time and its sole intention was to have a place to keep my RPG characters. I always wanted to post something else about my hobby but I guess I didn't have anything worth to say until the 1PDC. Being a player and DM for some time, I must say I enjoyed very much the whole process of creating and submitting an entry (Shrine of the Rodent God). Though it didn't get even an honorable mention, someone found it likeable and took the time to made some comments about it.

Follow this link to found more about them: Alex Schroeder: 2009-07-02 More of my 1PDC Favorites:

"Shrine of the Rodent God by Gabriel Perez: The first room starts with an “in your face” trap. I like that. The magic mouth gives you instructions and everybody immediately suspects that something is going to happen – but nobody knows what. I also like it that you can get to the other side of the trap and loot it.

The best part about this dungeon are the various lycanthropes that the players might ally themselves with. There’s a wererat, a werebat, and a werecat “of the Feline Order” – hell yeah! – trying to fight them. I like the setup!"


Thanks Alex!

Sagard D'Abernon

This character was created for an Ars Magica 5th Ed. campaign set in the medieval England of the year 1220. (DM: Pipe)

Sagard, born in 1197, is a young magus of House Jerbiton that has recently passed the certamen. He comes from a noble family originary of Normandy. He and other young sodales are to establish a new covenant in the dangerous frontier between England and Wales, now in conflict after the death of William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke, in 1219 and the raise of Prince Llywelyn of Wales.

Sagard's sodales:

• Iagno Vasilievich of House Tremere (Alex W.)
• Pence Lambert of House Flambeau (Eduardo B.)
• Arilestar Depulsoris Swan of House Tytalus (Fernanda)

Int +3, Per +1, Str -1, Sta +2, Pre +1, Com +1, Dex 0, Qik 0
Creo 1, Intellego 2, Muto 6, Perdo 6, Rego 6, Imaginem 10, Mentem 5

Wakenabe Matsuo

This character was created for a 3.5e Oriental Adventures campaign we usually play on Fridays every now and then (DM: Ejbs).

Matsuo is a ninja/yakuza of the clan Wakenabe from the city of Okami on a mission to replace a scroll in the castle of the daymio of Mura-Sabishi. This mission was successful. The new one is to infiltrate the enemy army and obtain their battle plans. So far so good...

The other members of the ninja party are:

• Katsuhiro, a human ninja/bu-shi (Javier R.)
• Myuri, a human ninja/wu-jen (German H.)
• Sasaki, a human ninja/wu-jen (retired) (Martin F.)
• Takeshi, a human ninja/shaman (Daniel R.)
• Matsuo, a human ninja/yakuza (Gabriel P.)

Str 14, Int 17, Wis 16, Dex 17, Con 16, Cha 16