At long last, I managed to play another game of Battletech on the weekend. It was Josh's and Rich's first game, but they learnt the rules pretty quickly and, I think, had a great time blowing up my mechs.

Two of my mechs suffered Ammo explosions, which was bad. Very bad. Goodbye pilots!

Meanwhile, Josh and Rich, playing mechs of Sorenson's Sabres, completed their mission. They only lost one mech during the battle - a Panther that was unfortunate enough to suffer three engine hits! They also had a Trebuchet with one engine hit, which wasn't that fun to pilot, though, in the end, it was very important for them completing the mission successfully.

The game took about 4 hours to go through; not too bad given new players and the opposition they were facing. With any luck, we'll get another game on this coming Saturday.

Our last session of the Friday Greyhawk campaign was not one of my better efforts. It didn't help that I had a couple of players missing (pulling out at the last moment), nor that I was dreadfully tired. It was also a transition session, where we changed between one style of campaign plot to another. Urgh. We had four short (and quite boring) combats, plus a little roleplaying. It did, however, serve its purpose and, with any luck, things will be looking up now.

There were a couple of good things to come out of the sesion, thankfully.

The first was due to Rich. I'd concocted the story of this band of university students finding an ogre's cave, getting beat up, and returning with the news of its location to the university. From then on, it became a popular dare to visit the cave and see the ogre. This group of adventurers (with prodding from a new NPC) decided to go and slay the ogre and take its treasure. Upon arriving, Rich's paladin entered first, with the rogue and ranger sneaking in behind.

Rich saw this menacing ogre growling at him, club upraised, and completely flubbed his Perception check. For the next few minutes, he tried to talk to an unresponsive ogre. Finally, his patience exhausted, he charged it... only to drop into the 20' deep pit before the stuffed ogre skin. Then the bugbears charged the others in the party!

That was a fun moment. Eventually, Rich climbed out and the combat turned in their favour.

The other important thing that occured was the introduction of Teresa Corthan, daughter of my original AD&D magic-user, Meliander. Nathaniel had expressed a wish for more elements of his homeland of Ulek to be used in the campaign. So, enter Teresa as an NPC - a 16 year-old girl, who'd been sent to Greyhawk to attend the same college as Nate's character.

Teresa will be a lot of fun; she's a NPC that I'll enjoy roleplaying, and she also provides a lot of interesting plothooks. She also firmly fixes the campaign in the timeline. If she's 16, then it must be 598 CY. I might add a couple of years to her age (and the timeline) once I've placed everything properly in the timeline... but I know she was born in 582 CY, so that's a firm dating point for everything else.

Now to see if I can design a better adventure for our next session!

MerricB

A lot of games have suddenly come into stock, so I've been getting regular parcels from MilSims of late. The highlights:

Rails of Europe - the expansion to Railroad Tycoon, which is now out of print, and the license to the RRT name has gone. So, Glenn Drover is using the same system to produce a Rails of the World game, but before that comes out, Rails of Europe allows you to use your RRT pieces in a new setting. Confused? Cool! However, this is a really great game. I played a 3-player game with Randy and Rich on the weekend which Randy won, although I showed you could make a fairly high score without upgrading your engines.

Yesterday I had a 4-player game with my students. I won it by a solitary point - Sam would have won if he'd had completed his Baron card. Incredibly close, and very fun. I had the Venice-St Petersburg Baron card, but due to Steve's links, I couldn't go direct. It was more like Venice - Paris - Berlin - Moscow - St Peterburg! I owned the centre of the game, but Sam did really well down south.

Brass - I've played this once with Mark Brown and Randy, and absolutely loved it. My own copy came in yesterday. Lots of components, and a great Industrial Revolution game. Martin Wallace strikes again! 3-4 players, 2-3 hours. I'm looking forward to playing it again, especially as we'll get all the rules right this time. Not sure when we'll get a game, but we'll see.

Through the Ages - from the designer of Galaxy Trucker, comes this little game that brings the Civilization computer game experience to a card/board game. Well, sort of. This is another incredibly fun game, which I'm really happy to have. 2-4 players, plays best with 3, and takes about an hour per player for the full game. Our game on the weekend (Randy, Rich, me) saw me crush the other two by being (a) the technocrat with a lot of technologies and culture, and (b) be very lucky by drawing military defense cards to hold off Randy's barbarians as they attempted to crush my buildings. Highly recommended.

On the D&D side of things, both Martial Power and Dracomonicon: Chromatic Dragons arrived yesterday. I'm conflicted about D&D at present - it really doesn't help that lots of sessions have been cancelled or have been interrupted in one form or another recently. I hope Sunday's session goes well, because I need a good D&D experience before the year ends.

I've also been playing a lot of Stone Age online recently. I've begun to win games, although I've also lost a couple of games by 2-3 points (which is frustrating, especially in 3-4 player games). Stone Age is just lots and lots of fun.

MerricB

Once upon a time, I thought the 1st edition DMG was a great book. It's something that is still espoused by its fans on the 'net. However, I've got to say that my appreciation of it is dimming, partly from the fact that I actually have read the book many, many times in the past few years. It's not something that I just remember from my early days in AD&D.

There's still plenty about it that is useful and brilliant - it's just that there's a lot of real crap in the book as well... including some key sections.

Let's face it, Gary's explanation of how combat works, probably the most key section of the entire book, is riddled with inconsistencies, clunky sub-systems, and stuff that just doesn't make sense. The less said about unarmed combat the better, but the initiative system is a complete mess. "Compare the speed factor of the weapon with the number of segments the spell will require to cast to determine if the spell or the weapon will cast/strike first, subtracting the losing die roll on the initiative die roll from the weapon factor and treating negative results as positive." Huh? What?

The awarding of XP mostly makes sense, except that you're also meant to compare the power of the monsters to the power of the characters and adjust XP downwards if the PCs overpower them. This leads to some interesting scenarios - especially against tough solo monsters - where experienced characters pretty much can't gain full XP. If you face a lone beholder, a party of 6 PCs need to be about 2-3rd level to get full XP. More than that and the reward is signficantly reduced. The less said about training the better.

For some reasons, most DMs I've known gleefully ignore large sections of the initiative rules and use the simpler Basic D&D rules. With good reason. Heck, even Gary didn't use the DMG's initiative or training rules!

Gary also spent a lot of time fulminating against bad games - Monty Haul games, Killer games, games that allowed Monsters as PCs, and so forth. "AD&D means to set right both extremes," he wrote. Unfortunately, when it came time to actually giving actual examples or showing what a reasonable amount of treasure was, he failed to do so. After criticising his own magic items tables in D&D for allowing low-level PCs to gain any item... there is no change at all in the AD&D magic item tables!

Where the DMG actually shines isn't in its descriptions of the core rules, but instead in giving tools to the DM to populate their adventures with interesting encounters. The appendices are pure gold, and it's a shame that the section on tricks hasn't made its way into more recent versions of the DMG.

The rules on henchmen and hireling acquisition I'll probably be using in my current 4e campaign; certainly, they posit a more mercenary world than is common in the D&D core, but that's fine for a campaign based on Gary's Castle Greyhawk/Zagyg.

And the background descriptions for the artifacts still give me much pleasure in the reading.

Mostly, the AD&D DMG is a book for experienced DMs looking for inspiration in the dungeon-crawling and territory-acquisition world of Gygax's D&D. These days, with the emphasis shifted away to more plot/heroic-based campaigns, I'd say the 4th edition DMG is now the best version of the DMG to exist.

Ranking the DMGs? 4E > 3E > 3.5E > 1E >> 2E.

The 2E DMG? A travesty.

MerricB

Urgh. I really, really hate being ill. Ever since the surgery on my vocal cords back a couple of years ago, any new infection goes right to them and does horrible things to my ability to speak. I am really, really, really grateful that Peggy's birthday is this Friday and I don't have to run a session of D&D. The next session should be really fun (as it'll deal with the consequences of Adam's betrayal), and having it run by a DM who can't speak would likely cause it to be not as cool as otherwise.

Instead, I'm off to the Magic prerelease on Saturday. I'm hoping my voice will have improved somewhat, but nonetheless it'll be my first Magic in a year (since the prerelease this time last year). I can also buy Peggy's birthday present whilst I'm down there, so win-win for me. Shards of Alara looks like a fun set - you've got to say that about any multicolour set, especially one as wacky as this one.

I'll play in one flight and then wander back to the city for a little shopping and a trip back home. I'll see if Mind Games has any nice 3rd party D&D supplements I want to pick up - possibly not, given the horrible state of the GSL, but you never know.

I've survived a week without my father! Hooray! I'd be enjoying it more without this cold, though. Yesterday, when I was supposed to be getting some kindling in, I watched it rain instead. Why is it that when I'm home and I have a cold, it gets really nasty outside?

So, I watched a bunch of JAG yesterday, as well as rewatching The Stolen Earth, the penultimate episode of Season 4 Doctor Who. Boy, I love that episode, and I can't wait until Sunday when the final episode shows, all 65 minutes of it.

My digital camera still hasn't arrived. Hasn't been sent, actually, so at least I haven't paid for anything yet. That's annoying me. I want to write a couple of ASL session reports, but they need a camera to really make sense.

Boardgamingwise, we had a great boardgameday on Saturday (my last day of almost full health). I got to play Brass, and that was really, really, really good. It's England during the Industrial Revolution, and you're building industries, canals and railroads. What makes it very interesting indeed is that the resources you need are often built by other players, so by taking them, you actually help them. It's a lovely design.

I've been looking at For the People, a American Civil War game at home on my own, although I expect I'll give Randy a game sometime in the near future. Deluxe SPQR is sitting on my table just at the moment - I'll have a solo game of that tonight. And, to celebrate the release of the Living Rules for Blackbeard, I had a couple of solo games of that yesterday. KCs are now terribly, terribly tough to defeat - and if you fail the roll, your pirate dies! No damage, just dies. It's actually always been that way, but I think we thought they worked the same way as Warships. We'll have to give it a game soon at a BGD.

Thursday night, assuming I feel up to it, I'll be at Randy's playing Combat Commander: Europe and Twilight Struggle, both great, great games we haven't played much recently.

MerricB

This has been a good week.

I was named Geek of the Week on boardgamegeek, and a bunch of parcels arrived as well.

Just in the last few days, I've become the proud owner of:

• D&D 4e DM's Screen
• D&D Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 4e
• D&D H3: Pyramid of Shadows (the third in the "H" series of adventures)
• Pathfinder #13
• Pathfinder Companion
• ASL: Pegasus Bridge campaign
• Operations Magazine Special Edition #1, which contains...
• ... Iwo Jima, Rage against the Marine, a small wargame
• ... Singling HASL, a small ASL campaign
• Combat Commander: Mediterranean
• SPQR
• Memoir '44: Eastern Front pack
• Race for the Galaxy

Oh, and in K-Mart I found a boxed set of every Ian Fleming James Bond novel... for $70. Price on the back, 90 pounds, or about $200. Very, very happy.

And there's still D&D to come on the weekend!

MerricB

It's a funny thing, but with the end of D&D 3e, I seem to be now buying some of the OGL products.

Oh, I wanted to before, but being in rural Australia does make it quite a lot more difficult to get those products. Especially when you're not being paid very much and you don't have a credit card.

I'm being paid (slightly) more these days than throughout most of the 3e era, and I now have a credit card. I am also demonstrating why I didn't want one before. Heh. I haven't gone too mad, although the initial reason for getting one (buying a new computer) keeps getting put back as I find new games to purchase.

When I get home today, I should find ASL Action Pack #4 waiting for me, for instance.

(I have played 5 solo games of ASL in the last week - I'm definitely getting my money's worth from that game!)

Castles & Crusades has been my big OGL purchase of late, thanks very much to the Castle Zagyg line of products, which are fuelling my Friday night games. I've also picked up a few pdfs of the adventures - and I hope the hardcopy of the rules arrives sometime soon.

I've finally subscribed to Pathfinder as well, just in time for the third iteration. I'm very curious to see what I'll find. The reason I haven't been getting it before involves that lack of credit card, as well as being deluged with adventures I hadn't read, let alone run. However, I really like adventures and I want to know what Paizo is up to, so here I go.

The recent sale of the Dungeon Crawl Classics of Goodman Games has also netted me a few titles. (A couple in C&C versions, funnily enough). Mostly as PDFs, but that's ok. It does make me want a laptop for easier reading, though. The DCCs hold a funny spot; some irritate me with their old-school feel, while others enthrall me with the same. The adventure hooks have a lot to do with it. I don't really have much time for really goofy plothooks or "we want to get wealthy" plotlines. The art can really irritate me. (I really don't like Brad McDevitt's artwork).

Meanwhile, I'm getting most of the 4e releases of Wizards. I may well get some of other publishers, when I work out who is doing what!

MerricB

Once upon a time, I adored 3rd edition D&D. I thought it was the best edition of D&D ever. Then Paizo came and tore up my good feelings, stomped on them, poured gasoline over them, set fire to them, and then buried the ashes in a garbage pit and stomped on them some more.

No, not really.

It is true, however, that a lot of my disquiet with how 3e handles things come from my experiences whilst running the Age of Worms adventure path. The adventure path is all kinds of awesome. Of the three Dungeon adventure paths that Paizo produced, it is by far my favourite and the only one I ran to its conclusion. (I ran the first two or three adventures of "Shackled City" before that group fell apart, and the first six or so adventures of Savage Tide before that group decided it didn't like the AP and wanted to discontinue it).

Other problems with 3e surfaced in my Ulek game, and I'll come to those in due course.

AC and Attack Bonus don't track. In the Age of Worms AP, the third adventure of the series is Encounter at Blackwall Keep. It involves a siege by Lizardmen. According to the CR and EL of the monsters and encounter this should be a significant challenge for the PCs, yet my PCs were barely challenged by it. "Barely"? It was a walk-over for the PCs.

The problem here derives from the 3e disconnect between the rate of AC increase and the rate of Attack Bonus increase, and the fact that the lizardmen have a pathetic attack bonus: sure, they get to attack three times, but at +1, there's not much chance of hitting the fighters in a level 5 party - by that time, the frontline fighters are probably moving up to AC of 20 or better.

In my Ulek campaign, Adam went out to break the player AC system, and did. I think, by the end of the campaign (which reached 15th level), his AC was something like 20 points higher than Sarah's Bard. Anything that could hit Adam would destroy Sarah, and that was a problem. (The bard has its own problems, but never mind those).

I also had the problem of ogres being too deadly for 1st level parties, a good challenge for 3rd level parties, and a walkover for 5th or 6th level parties...

The underlying reason for all of these problems is that the mathematical basis of 3e is poor. If you compare it to AD&D 1e, it's supercharged. All the numbers increase a lot quicker than in the previous edition. It works pretty well as long as you make sure that everything is about the same level, but, certainly with PCs, you can throw some of those numbers off a lot.

In AD&D, you do have the advantage of PCs not really advancing past 12th level. Any system that has such a wide difference in power levels as 3e does is going to run into problems if it isn't very, very careful. 3e wasn't that careful, throwing in plenty of bonus types and ways to achieve them. (To increase AC, you could get armour, shield, natural armour, enhancements to those three, dexterity enhancements and deflection... and those purely through magic items. Spells added more ways to increase AC which stacked with the foregoing!) In AD&D, you could have a limited Dex bonus, magic armour and a magic shield. Have a ring of protection? Bad luck, didn't stack.

4E pays a lot of attention to the maths. A lot of attention. Too much? Possibly. One of the things I really didn't like about M&M is how everything was so finely balanced that it really was a case of you maxed out all the combat (attack or defense) powers you took, because not doing so was folly of the first order. Oh, and I hated the damage system. Give me HP any day! However, will I get that feeling from 4e? Will my players? (I was a player in M&M, and I haven't played 4e yet, only DMed it).

The problem that 4e may yet experience is that 1st level feels like 30th level. I believe this won't actually happen - although the relation between attack bonuses and defenses, damage and HP will stay moderately constant, the special effects that hang off those bonuses will change and be the determining factor of how interesting combat is. However, that's still just speculation. After all, I loved 3e for many years until Paizo Made Me Hate 3E.

Grappling Rules The World. This is somewhat related to the last point of the lousy maths of 3e, but there are a few extra things to be said here. I sort of knew Grappling had trouble in 3e (to be honest, it was almost completely unworkable in 1e & 2e... certainly I or any other group I played in never used the rules. In 3e, it worked well enough for us to use the rules. Unfortunately). However, it was in The Spire of Long Shadows that the big, big problems with grappling came to full light, because it was here that Martin lost his barbarian and didn't have him raised.

There are these big worm creatures in SoLS. They're big - probably Gargantuan. Cousins of the Purple Worm, except nastier. They're a really cool idea, but the implementation gave a few problems, and this comes down to the really, really lousy rules for grappling in 3e. It isn't that the idea of opposed checks is a bad one (it isn't), but rather that a disparity in check bonuses is multiplied badly when you're dealing with opposed checks. And, unfortunately, the disparity wasn't just that the Worm was stronger than Martin - it was, but not by a lot. It was that it was also bigger than him.

Now, I'm sure that it made a lot of sense to the designers to have size factor into the grapple check. There's just two problems here: first, size was already taken into account in the Strength score. (Make a creature bigger and it became stronger). And secondly, +4 per size difference was a hideously huge bonus when it came to opposed checks.

So, Martin's character got grabbed. Then swallowed. Then killed. All without him having a chance of escape. (Attack with light weapons inside the beast? Cool. Oh, grapple check to draw one? Forget it!)

Meanwhile, in the Ulek campaign, Dave's Druid was giving me the view of grappling from the PC's side. He had a bear. A grappling bear. A grappling, enlarged dire bear. Don't ask. It was cool, but overwhelming. And amusing given he was playing a particularly weak halfling. There was one point when he was in snow, and could only move 5 feet a round!

Grappling was just broken. In 4e, they got rid of it, almost taking us back to the days of 1e. Actually, 4e still has grappling in some form or another - Grab, a basic version that everyone can use, and more specific versions that some monsters or PCs can use. This does demonstrate one of the problems inherent in the 4e system: it doesn't support all the manuevers that you believe anyone (even without training) should be able to do. Some have been removed because they're so powerful, others you just wonder about. I really wonder why Trip isn't in the basic combat manuevers - especially as standing from prone doesn't provoke any more... although having Combat Advantage against a foe is possibly more effective in 4e.

The 15-minute Day. This problem also occurred in Spire of Long Shadows. Indeed, it's possibly the poster-boy adventure for the problem. However, the reason it exists isn't because the party is rorting the system and taking unneeded breaks to recharge all their powers. No, it's purely one of survival in SoLS.

Despite the problems with the CR/EL system in 3e, it is actually a remarkably good guide to determining how difficult an encounter will be for your party. (You do have to take into account how many Adams and Craigs you have distorting the numbers, though). When you get an entire adventure of APL+2 or +3 EL encounters (APL=average party level), you know your party is in for a rough ride. If they've got any sense - and, thankfully, my party did have - they're going to rest up after every encounter or two. Adventure flow? Not a chance.

This relates back to the lousy maths of 3e, and its very steep power curve. There isn't really that much of a gap between "very easy and doesn't deplete resources" and "we threw everything at the monster!" 3e combat can also be really swingy. Criticals and multiple attacks at high levels - plus incredibly damaging attacks - meant that a character could go from full health to dead in a single round, especially if ganged up upon.

So, if you'd used some of your major resources, you had to rest. High-level PCs could go somewhat longer, but the obsolescence of spells was also a problem. When you had 8th level spells, it was rare that your 5th (or even 6th) level spells had enough of a punch. Sometimes I really think that AD&D had the right idea with its non-capped magic missiles and fireballs: they were always relevant. In 3e, having 30+ spells could be misleading. 5-6 actually effective spells? Sometimes.

4e made a brave effort to tackle this. I'm not entirely sure it succeeded. Certainly, you can go longer now, especially as you're only expending a few major powers (and encounter powers are generally pretty good anyway). Healing surges do seem to be the determining factor of how long you can proceed, and they're a mixed blessing. They're a lot like Reserve Hit Points, and I really, really appreciate how they mean you don't actually need a cleric. However, because everyone has powers now - encounter, daily and at-will - the classes certainly appear very similar in how they work. It would be very nice to have classes that use a different resource management system. Is such possible with 4e? I hope we find out some day.

MerricB

I've been busy buying new games - both RPG and board - in the last few weeks.

My latest boardgame is World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game. I've just had a brief (incomplete) game of it with my students. There's a lot to recommend it. 2-4 players, takes about 90-120 minutes, and plays a lot like a more complex version of Talisman. Downtime is pretty light and what I really enjoy is how someone else rolls for the monster. Not that there's any decision to be made, but it feels like you're doing something.

I'll write more about it when I get to play it in full. (For my Ballarat friends, I'm busy all of Friday and on Sunday afternoon, but I'm otherwise free and I'd be happy to stay in later one evening to play this...)

I also picked up Chrononauts, which is one of my favourite high-luck games, simply because the theme is so good. You're a time-traveller from an alternative future, who needs to change history to get back home. Of course, with everyone from different alternatives, things get chaotic. You can also win by gathering artifacts, or just by patching up time and stopping paradoxes.

I'm in the middle of a Castles & Crusades kick as well. I've ordered the main rulebooks from MilSims, but I've also picked up a cheap PDF ($10) of the Player's Handbook. Oh, and a bunch of C&C modules in PDF. As I think I've mentioned, I don't think I'll ever actually play C&C, but I've a lot of time for adventures written in an "old school" manner.

Speaking of "Old School", that explains why I've just bought 13 "Dungeoncrawl Classics" from Goodman Games, mostly ones recommended by this thread on EN World. Half-price PDF sale at RPGnow? Cool. I might be blowing my gaming budget a bit, but it's fun.

A 14th DCC (in print) arrived in the mail for me yesterday, but it's a DCC conversion to C&C - GG1: The Mysterious Tower. I like this one enough that it'll become part of my "Greater Castle Greyhawk" and available for the PCs to adventure therein if they feel like it. Castle Greyhawk has, historically, had a bunch of demiplanes associated with it, so I might just slot in my favourite adventures there for my players to experience.

The last PDF I bought today was the official D&D 4e Monster Manual pdf. It's strange; the Aussie dollar is almost 1:1 with the US dollar at present. So the price was pretty good, even at the "horrible rip-off price" that a bunch of EN Worlders are accusing it of having. I bought this one for the statblocks - cut & paste will be very useful for homebrews. At some point I might get around to getting the rest of the books in PDF, but not just yet. I need a laptop first!

MerricB

MilSims has delivered the final 3.5e books I ordered about a month ago. So, that's that for 3.5e purchases, I guess.

For those who are interested, the books were:

* Cormyr: the Tearing of the Weave
* Shadowdale: the Scouring of the Land
* Fortress of the Yuan-Ti

Together, they finished off two 3.5e adventure trilogies. Yeah, I know... I had part 3 of the Realms trilogy before parts 1 & 2. Just the way MilSims had stuff in stock. These last three adventures cost me a total of aus$30.

I also picked up a few (eight?) Castles & Crusades adventures (in pdf format) yesterday. Rpgnow had them on special, and I have a credit card. Eek. That's scary.

I've read four of them so far - the four in the "A" series. Brief notes:

The editing for each is terrible.

A1 talks a lot about letting the players do what they want, but what it actually presents is a nice town plus a dungeon. It seems from the map that the dungeon is about 2 or more days of travel away from the town. I don't like that type of design, especially for 1st level PCs.

A2 is another town + dungeon. The town is enemy controlled, and the dungeon is 6 days travel away from the town! Huh? I really, really don't like that design. The encounters don't look too bad, though.

A3 is a single dungeon. I can't quite work out if the PCs are meant to infiltrate it (in which case, why it doesn't give them a firm goal?) or fight their way through. It's noted that the entire dungeon should be finished in a single expedition (not session). That's tough on low-level PCs, especially magic-users. 24 page module... how many encounters are in it again?

A4 is a city intrigue adventure. At least, it wants to be. It's one of the most incompetently handled adventures I've seen. You see, it gives the locations, the NPCs and their motivations... but fails to draw the PCs into the adventure at all. Indeed, there isn't an adventure that I can see. City adventures aren't dungeon-crawls; they rely on an event-based structure. Pity there aren't any events described in the book!

I've got hardcopy of the C&C rulebooks on order from MilSims. I hope I may have them next week. I'd like to review the adventures, but I'm not sure if I'll get around to them.

MerricB

I've just been reading the first Castles & Crusades adventure, "Assault on Blacktooth Ridge".

There are some nice ideas used in the adventure, but the writing is terrible. Spelling, grammar and sentence construction are things you take for granted... until you discover that they've gone missing. Then you realise exactly how important they are.

"The following are descriptions of the more notable places and people in Botkinburg. This is followed by a rumor table that mixes both truth and fiction."

"However, this may not be enough to attract the more demanding player. There are several reasons, suggested below, for the adventurers to go to Botkinburg. However, what truly brings an adventurer to this place can only be found in the heart of that player's character and not in the place itself."

"This was once a wooden bridge, whose remnants jut out into the river about 15 feet. Many of the fishermen gather here in the morning and afternoon before and after fishing. They discuss the days catch, mend nets and sell fish."

"The Castle Keeper should feel free to develop other encounters, or augment the encounters below, to develop story arcs that are integral aspects of the adventure."

My eyes! My poor, bleeding eyes!

MerricB

I picked up Dark Chateau earlier today, another part of the Castle Zagyg series of modules from Troll Lord Games. In actual fact, the copy I'd ordered from MilSims hasn't arrived yet - I picked this up as a pdf, as it was on special with a bunch of other Castles & Crusades adventures at RPGnow.

I then printed it out in booklet form and stapled it together. Heh. Knew there was a reason I bought that extra-long stapler. Now I just need a guillotine to cut the pages nicely to size...

Anyway, I'm intending to use Dark Chateau as part of my Castle Greyhawk campaign, so I have just spent a couple of hours going through the module, finding all the monsters, and converting them. This serves two purposes: one, it lets me become more familiar with the 4e monster system. I've got to say, with the aid of those tables in the DMG, it's a snap to do some rough and ready conversions. The other is that it lets me get a feel for the balance of C&C encounters.

Hmm. Interesting.

You see, C&C is built on the same mathematical basis as AD&D and oD&D. It is just neater about expressing it all. Without lots of special abilities cluttering up the monster statblocks, you get an idea of how they'd go if the PCs didn't cheat. Of course, the PCs will cheat - they'll use spells, ranged weapons, and the like. It's what PCs do.

So, take your Giant Weasel (just as well I have the D&D Miniature for it, huh?) HD 3d8, hp 21, ac 16, move 20 feet. It attacks with a bite for 1d6 points of damage.

This weasel is pretty well fed - it averages 7 on the hit die. Still, let's assume that your doughty band of PCs are dealing about 5.5 damage on average when they hit. That weasel, well fed as it is, will survive 4 hits rather than just 3. (The origin of Hit Die comes from the fact that in the Chainmail system, a Hero needed four consecutive hits to be killed, and this got converted into 4 Hit Dice when D&D came along).

Meanwhile, a PC will probably survive only one or two hits from the weasel. The very, very original D&D had both attacks and hit dice rolled on d6. For everything. Still, I'm guessing your fighter-types are going to have about 8+ hp, so perhaps even three hits if they're lucky.

Weasel hits - let's say - about 35% of the time. A PC hits the AC 16 weasel about 40% of the time. A party of five PCs meet the weasel... after one round, it's taken 11 damage and returned (on average) 1.22 damage. Hmm. After two rounds, the weasel really should be dead, and one of the party might be sort of hurt.

The big thing about that encounter is that it isn't really all that interesting. That's one of the chief problems with vanilla monsters - you need to spice them up with interesting situations. In 4e, I run into the problem that a lone weasel is even less likely to be interesting. So, I spice it up a bit. I'm not sure how weasel-like my resulting creation is, but hey...

Giant Weasel; Level 3 elite skirmisher (300 XP)
Init +7; HP 94, bloodied 47; AC 19, F17, R17, W15; +2 saves; 1 action point
Spd 4; Bite +8 vs AC; 1d10+3 plus secondary atk +6 vs Ref; target is knocked prone and weasel shifts up to 3 squares.
When bloodied, makes an immediate attack.

It's quick and nasty, but it'll prove a minor foe for the group. Probably won't last more than a couple of rounds, but neither would the C&C weasel.

More interesting is the group of giant frogs. Give me groups any day... they're interesting! Solo opponents - which there are utterly too many of here - just allow gang-up tactics.

C&C stats: HD 2d8, HP 12, AC 12, Move 10 feet or 45 feet swimming. They attack with a bite for 1d4 points of damage. Their special abilities include a +4 on their initial attack when using their tongue.

D&D 4e conversion:
Giant Frog; level 4 brute (175 XP)
Init +2; HP 68, bloodied 34; AC 16, F18, R15, W15, Speed 2, swim 9
Bite +7 vs AC; 2d8+4 damage
Ranged 4: Tongue Grab +5 vs Ref; pull 4 squares

I've got a soft spot for Giant Frogs due to Village of Hommlet, but they look quite amusing to play. The level is entirely arbitrary on my part, as I reckon a group of them at that level will be a fair challenge for a party of 6 PCs of about 2nd level or so when they wander that way.

The great moments of the adventure aren't in the combats, in any case... but in the weird and mysterious magics that RJK has sprinkled around the Manse. But the combats are needed to break up the weird and mysterious... and combat is just fun.

MerricB

Once upon a time, there were these D&D designers who decided that clerics were boring. Why should every cleric have the same powers, even though one cleric was a priest of the god of battle, and another was a priest of the god of love...

Now, all of this makes a lot of sense. It really does. Why should the powers that one god grant be exactly the same as another's? Well, unless the gods all got utterly drunk one night...

Where things go pear-shaped is when you get to actually implementing it in the game.

D&D is designed, at its heart, as a team game. Each of the characters has their own abilities that are meant to be distinct from the others. The Fighter has good armour, lots of hit points, and hits things with weapons. The Thief has poor armour, moderate hit points, and attacks from positions of stealth and does lots of out-of-combat things. The Magic-User has no armour, poor hit points, and uses magic spells to kill monsters and perform various utility tasks. In pre-4e games, the Magic-User also had that strange aspect of Vancian magic: they had big effects, but a limit on how many per day, whilst the Fighter, like the Energizer Bunny, would keep running on...

The Cleric, as originally conceived, is a holy warrior. Their armour, hit points and melee strength is just a little lesser than the Fighter's, and they have a minor form of spell-casting; primarily curative and aiding magics.

As D&D has progressed, the Cleric's spell-casting has become more and more significant. At times, they've infringed very heavily on the Magic-User's turf (as the MU has infringed on the tasks of the Thief). One of the problems with the system of magic we have... which is very much "whatever sounds like a cool idea at the time" can go into a spell, without always a proper check of whether it actually fits the class or not.

However, during the design of 2nd edition AD&D, some of the designers had this bright idea of dividing up the spells into "schools" and "spheres". One was for magic-users and one was for clerics. The idea was that by creating these different groups of spells, it'd be an easy way to create differentiated clerics and magic-users. You see, Gary Gygax had included the Illusionist class in AD&D, as well as the Druid class. And the designers thought that it'd be the work of an instant to create eight specialist wizard classes just by dividing up the spells. Oh, and you could create speciality cleric classes (just like the druid) by doing the same with the cleric spells...

It was a terribly flawed idea.

The reason it's so flawed is twofold. The first is that spells are not created equal. Divination spells are not the equal of evocation spells. The second is that you actually expect a wizard to be more than "guy who cast spells". You need them to be "guy who casts spells to blow up our enemies". And cleric is "guy who cast spells to heal us and hits monsters with mace".

When you looked at an AD&D 1st level magic-user, you could be 99% sure that he had the sleep spell memorized, because it was what made the character worth playing at that level. Friends? So, not. The AD&D magic-user was the artillery that got the group out of the really bad situations they found themselves in. Just a few goblins? The fighters got into the action. A lot of goblins? Then out rolled the magic-user and his sleep spell.

The cleric was a support melee guy with support spells. Of course, this isn't always the most exciting role - which is why we got the horribly, horribly overpowered 3e cleric - but it actually does have a niche and doesn't step on too many toes. And it's important to have him in the group!

Unfortunately, AD&D 2e and the Complete Priest's Handbook with its "build your own speciality priest" managed to forget that the cleric had a role. They looked at the roleplaying conception of the class without actually remembering that it had to be played in a game.

So, you could have the wonderful sensation of having a Cleric of the God of War with all these destruction spells (but no healing), or a Cleric of the God of Love with all these healing spells, but nothing to help in combat...

It's little wonder that when 3e came along, the designers threw out all of this "make your own bad character" material and standardized the cleric. Now, if someone was playing the cleric, you knew what you were getting. It wasn't a poor wizard, or a wannabe fighter, it was a cleric - melee, healing and buffing. Priests of various gods were distinguished by domains. Of course, the balance of domains had its own problems...

4e continued with the 3e path, except it defined roles a lot better. The Warlord is a Cleric without the god bits. It actually plays quite differently, although they have overlap as both are "leaders" (i.e. buffing and healing). The domains are gone, absorbed into deity-specific feats, which are very sparse in the initial books. One expects that with the feats and paragon paths, designers of speciality priests in the future will be able to make some itneresting combinations. However, all of these things are based around the same core.

Of course, you can still customise your cleric with your selection of powers. What 4e does is say "this is your role, and you can fulfill its minimum requirements". Unlike 2e, which ignored whether you'd be any use to your party or not...

MerricB

What I want to talk about now is what arrived on my doorstep yesterday: Castle Zagyg: the East Mark Gazetteer.

I've been interested in Gary Gygax's version of Castle Greyhawk for some time now, but I've always been stymied by one basic factor: it hadn't been released. Troll Lord Games eventually teamed up with Gary and started work on the Castle Zagyg project, but it's been very slow going. Yggsburgh, the first volume of the CZ work, was released in 2005, but further supplements have been very slow in seeing the light of day. I didn't even buy Yggsburgh, which is the town near the castle. However, it's looking quite likely that the first levels of the actual Castle will be released in just a few months (August), so my interest has been rekindled. I ordered the four CZ products that MilSims had in their catalogue, and two were delivered yesterday: the Moatgate section of the town, and the product I'm discussing in this post, The East Mark Gazetteer.

This product is presented in an attractive cardstock folio. It consists of four "small-poster" maps in colour, and two booklets, 24 and 48 pages, which are printed in black & white. The product is credited to Gary Gygax and Jeffrey P. Talanian, with art direction and cartography by Peter Bradley.

So, what is the East Mark? Well, it's the province in the World of Urth where Castle Zagyg and Yggsburgh are situated (with Dunfalcon being just a few hundred miles to the west). One of the maps shows these environs: an area of about 30 miles (EW) by 20 miles (NS) in which are a number of woods, lakes, hamlets, hills... Castle Zagyg and Yggsburgh. The map is full of names that are very Gygaxian in nature: "Wychwood Forest", "Serpent Ridge", and "Great Leech Marsh" to give a few.

I would have liked a bit more colour differentiation on this map. Everything seems to be in shades of green, even the rivers. Still, it's legible enough.

Accompanying the map is the first booklet, the Gazetteer of the East Mark, a 24-page B&W guide to the people and places that inhabit the East Mark. It is very reminiscient of the original incarnation of the World of Greyhawk Campaign Setting in its presentation. Even some of the text evokes the Gazetteer in that book. "There is little doubt that the East Mark cradles the epitome of culture, enlightenment and sophistication in the known world..." If you do possess the 1980 or 1983 World of Greyhawk books, those words should be quite familiar to you, although in a new setting.

I understand that this material has been extracted from its original presentation in the Yggsburgh book, but, as I don't yet have that tome, it's new to me. It is also, unfortunately, underwhelming. A lot of this is due simply to the fact that I am comparing it to the 1983 World of Greyhawk books. There are details on the trees found in the area, the zodiac and calendar, and a brief history of the East Mark, all similar to material in the Greyhawk gazetteer. The history, I'm afraid, suffers in comparison. Whilst Greyhawk's history had events of great note and significance in it, the history of the East Mark just looks mundane.

Yggsburgh itself is described very briefly, although there is an accompanying map (the second of the three colour maps in the product). I find this map to be very attractive, although some of the streets and districts seem surprisingly regular in construction.

The bulk of the Gazetteer is taken up with descriptions of various geographic locales in the Mark. Many of these are descriptive but quite dull, but there are several that provide adventure hooks and material that a good DM should be able to turn into something greater.

The layout of this section is not helped by an inability to use secondary headings. "Great Hillwood" is followed by "Stonewyck" and then "Great Leech Marsh", all headings with the same appearance. "Stonewyck" is actually a subheading of "Great Hillwood", but it doesn't appear as such in the text, causing confusion as you thumb through looking for references.

Sadly, one of the more interesting places isn't shown on the map, although it's briefly described in the text: the Purple Tower, home of the evil wizard Lord Uvoll. All-in-all, I find the Gazetteer workmanlike with occasional flashes of brilliance. It doesn't scream to me, "Use me! Use me!", unfortunately.

However, the Gazetteer is only the shorter of the two booklets. The longer booklet (48 pages) is the original adventure, The Mouths of Madness, which is the first part of the actual dungeons of Castle Zagyg. This is, in essence, a preview of material that will be seen in the second full release of CZ material: The Upper Works. If you've got the patience, it might be worth waiting just a few more months - I'm told August - until it's released. However, most of you probably bought the Gazetteer some time ago, and it's only now that I, a latecomer, review it.

Whilst I just described The Mouths of Madness as an original adventure, I'm not quite sure that's the case. You see, as I was reading it, I was sure that I'd seen a lot of it before. You may have as well, for Gygax had published similar material a long time ago, in what is possibly the most played D&D adventure of all times - The Keep on the Borderlands. Even the title of the adventuring area is similar - The Mouths of Madness compared to The Caves of Chaos? Yes, I think that's a match!

The first part of the adventure - about 20 pages worth - describes the wilderness surrounding Castle Zagyg, along with rumours and adventure hooks to get your group into the adventure. All the monster stats are given for the Castles and Crusades system, but any player of AD&D would be able to use them almost unmodified. One of the wilderness encounters comes straight out of European fairytales and folklore, another has definite reminders of one from The Keep on the Borderlands. There is a double-sided map accompanying this - one side shows the wilderness for the players, the other the wilderness for the DM... an inconvenient arrangement, I must say.

After this, we move into the adventure site proper: the caves surrounding the base of Castle Zagyg. This is a very strange throwback for me. Many of the cave systems are near matches of those in the Caves of Chaos. There's an ogre, an owlbear, tribes of kobolds, bugbears and orcs. There's even an battle call of "Kree-ahk!", reminiscient of the goblin call of "Bree-yark!" in KotB.

I've must say, now I've started playing 4e, the simplicity of the encounters and maps seem strange to me. There's a lot of "10' wide corridor ending in a door". I really wonder at how much combat will occur in those corridors. Where 4e goes for mobility in combat, this is an adventure with many constrictive passageways, although there are some notable areas where a good DM will have monsters attacking the hapless adventures from several directions at once. It's areas like those that will make combats here tactically interesting. The entire dungeon is shown on the fourth of the small "poster" maps.

Where Gygax and Talanian shine in this part of the adventure is in putting together a plausible set of small humanoid encampments, with rivalries between the monsters and details in the furnishings and encounters that just bring verisimilitude to the entire affair. There are many details that will make the reader smile in delight, and that a wily DM can use to entertain his or her players. The roleplaying details, in particular, rise this adventure above its antecedent, The Keep on the Borderlands, which was aimed primarily at novice DMs.

However, despite all of this detail, the adventure never really soars. Part of this is because it has been emasculated: these caves are meant to lead into the dungeons of Castle Zagyg, but such are not yet available. So, just as things get interesting you discover the way forward is blocked by a roiling fog, a cursed conjuration of Zagyg (wherever he is!) Some of the entrances, such as the Dwarf Entrance, sound very interesting indeed, but there's only a brief teaser with no real content. Wait until August (or later!)

Another part of my dissatisfaction with the adventure would be due the nature of most of the monsters: they're humanoids. And humanoids, in AD&D, weren't that interesting. They differ from each other only by a couple of hit points and in their weaponry. You need interesting tactical situations to really make them shine.

I actually think I'm being somewhat unfair with that last point. There are some interesting situations that will come up in this adventure, and I'm currently experiencing 4e for the first time, which really makes humanoids distinct from each other. Many DMs, especially those still running AD&D or C&C, will not have that problem at all. It's just how I see it at this point in time.

Probably more significant is the lack of real "tricks" and areas of wonder in the caves. There's one great, great area - the gate to Barsoom - and a few other areas out of the ordinary - I love the glowing mice - but mostly you've got humanoids and more humanoids and the mundane details of their dwellings. Well detailed, yes, but mostly mundane details. I'm not sure if I'm being too hard on it or not, for more details will become evident through actual play. Still, I've spent most of the last day reading and thinking about the adventure, and I wanted to get my thoughts down about it.

So, this is a "capsule" review, with further reflections to come if I ever actually manage to use it in play. I've been making notes for converting it to 4E (not particularly hard, I finished most in about an hour last night), and it may see use sometime soon, especially if my players are interested.

I'm glad I've bought it, although I'm not sure if everyone will find it useful.

MerricB