Boy oh boy, were we playing some of the phases and rules wrong.

This is the problem with playing the game with someone teaching you the rules without having a chance to really read the rules yourself.

You take what they are saying on faith.

And we were getting FUBAR'd by Ancient Ones left and right for it.

I have since re-read the rules, and those of us addicted to AH have played a round or two each in single player to make sure we caught all the little If/Then rules paragraphs in the back of the instructions.

We all feel much better about the game, and I made a phase cheatsheet so that in the future, the horrors from beyond space and time have the bone gnawing advantages they are supposed to, without us pouring gravy and giblets on ourselves first.

PS: In retribution, we slapped down Yig in a followup round. Hard.

The cheat sheet should now be attached.

The_Warlock

Does everything you present in a campaign actually have to be the current adventure or side quest?

Does it need an answer?

Recently I was reading Creepy... and some of the storyhours I keep up with, as well as several old Forgotten Realms "Ask the designers..." threads over at Candlekeep.

One of the things that struck me was "unsolved mysteries."

Many game systems, especially contemporary ones, try to make the rules clear, and cover a wide variety of possibilities

That understanding and awareness of the rules can often take away from the mystique, otherness, and tension a campaign setting/rpg world can provide.

Dropping strange, unexplained, weird, creepy and odd occurences into the lives of the characters can enhance the players' interest in the world, driving them to investigate and seek answers, but also to be wary.

More importantly, it keeps the players from getting blasé about encounters, and allows the Gamemaster to be creative and add color to his world.

On that note, I think for my next campaign I am going to drop at least one strange, disturbing, or simply unexplained event/occurence per session.

I will keep track of them, and if the PCs show interest, I will develop them in some way. Some may remain unexplainable, but may lead PCs in certain directions, while others may lead to confrontations or encounters of a more meaty nature.

Even if the PCs don't show interest, if I find the imagery particularly appealing, I may bring it back occasionally to tempt or frighten the PCs.

Even the Gamemaster, who plays the whole world, has to have things in the world that even he doesn't know the answer to.

The_Warlock

This board game rocks.

From FFG, I was worried that it would suffer from the complexity and time drag issues that Twilight Imperium and some of their Big Box games can suffer from.

No. It's great. Co-op play versus monsters controlled by a rules, cards & dice system. Lovecraftian/Mythos flavor and rules which flow well in play (though some sections in the manual can be a little on the stereo manual side).

If you like co-op board games with a moderate level of complexity, give it a shot. The production values are excellent. If you ever played FFG's CoC CCG, there is a large proportion of re-used art - however, it's great art, and it's good to see it being used in a quality game.

Drawback - it ain't cheap, and neither are the expansions. But I will say, this one feels worth it.

The_Warlock

It doesn't matter what side of the D&D front line you are on or defending...

If you want a group/team resolution system that is desgned for a system that uses the fabulous 20-sided die...

Check out Stalker0's Obsidian System.

The_Warlock

So, I work in a pretty cool small company.

That said, the majority of my coworkers, while creative and interesting sorts, don't really get the whole gaming thing.

The intersection of our interests is limited generally to more mainstream things, like movies or music.

In the past, I have been involved with several "Boff LARPs", essentially Fantasy-themed LARPs that use pellet or flour filled cloth packets for spells, and foam covered PVC piping for weapons.

I may be tough, but I'm not interested in going rattan.

Anyway, I don't really play in any of the systems anymore, since they tend to get bogged down in player (not character) drama, and system designer megalomania.

But I do like sparring. And back in the day, I introduced my coworkers to the concept at company retreats, and they enjoyed it.

Enter the Company Summer Party. I am specifically asked if I could bring my weapons.

And here's where the alarms go off...

Because several people think their children would love them.

Children between the ages of 2.5 & 4.

(You can't see it, but I'm making a face rather like what happens when guys see another guy get hit in the crotch with a shovel, gaff hook, or pneumatic nail gun.)

To which I responded, no. And reminded them what was in these weapons.

The general response was "Oh".

As I thought about it though, a design began to take shape in my head for how to make a weapon that a spastic 3 yr old could swing with wild abandon, and not take out himself or someone 3 feet and 150 lbs their superior.

After two days I collected the materials, and began assembling the L'Enfant Cutlass.

Supplies:
Head/Neck Contour Pillow (Not true memory foam)
Rubberized foam flooring mat
Duck tape
Electrical tape
Joint Compound Mesh Tape
Cut-off denim jean legs (or other semi-soft but durable fabric)

I cut the foam pillow along the short axis, then cut a rectangle out of the larger contour.

Mesh taped an inch wide strip of mat foam along the flat side of the pillow foam from the base of the larger contour to a point 2" short of the other end. A half inch wide piece of mat foam was attached to the pillow from the "inner" edge of the round side of the large contour, to a point 2" short of the end of the pillow slice.

Electrical tape was used to tighten the foam around the wider mat foam piece where it was adjacent to the foam cut out area - making a serviceable hilt/handle for a small hand, with a pillow foam basket hilt.

Mesh tape and a little electrical tape pinned the mat foam pieces in place higher up the "sword" closer to the small contour "tip".

The denim jean leg cutoff was slid over the "blade" area, until it abutted the basket hilt. Some angled dart cuts later, and some folding over of the former pant leg, provided a soft but durable blade.

A minimal amount of electrical tape is applied to cover the denim egdes.

Duct tape is then gently applied in overlapping layers on the Basket hilt (inside and out, all around), so as to cover the base of the denim blade cover and the top and bottom of the "hilt" in a even and clean fashion.

End Product: A semi-floppy, highly squishy, 20" cutlass, with a pillow foam basket hilt, and a grip good enough for small hands and big.

Some quick "slap" tests later, I was fairly certain that even at their worst (best?), there was no way to permanently injure a human who was already capable of limb control with these.

I chatted with and intro'd the weapons to the parental units first to make sure they would be alright with it, and set down the only ground rules under which I would teach the kids and allow the weapons' use.

All agreed.

At the party, my bag of adult weapons intrigues the children...and when told they can't use them, bottom lips begin to protrude, until I present the smaller bag of small swords, one for each child there.

In short order they have agreed to the five rules: No hitting a person in the head; No hard hitting; No swords around food; No swords indoors; No playing swords with someone who isn't already playing swords with you.

The end result was much frivolity, very tired kids, and parents who ended up feeling better about their kids' safety when they were pretending to be pirates and knights with foam swords than when they were playing at most of the other kid-approved activities at the party.

Pictures:

The_Warlock

Hmmm, Blogging. Never really cared for it. Generally didn't find it useful for me, unless I had a specific task to do, like playtesting or something, and then I used a forum dedicated to the playtesters, or what not.

I suppose I'll give this a try though...(kick) (kick). This is new, shiny, the tires have no wear.

Ok...where to begin...or should I say...re-begin...

I am not fond of 4E. I use that term because it's somewhere between distaste and apathy. I can't say I hate it, that would ascribe too much emotion. But I do hate, with the fiery passion of a poorly Star Trekkified Ricardo Montalban, the campaign world and cosmological changes that have followed in it's wake.

Now, let's backtrack...I favor The Forgotten Realms as my fantasy campaign setting of choice. I fell in love with it with the first Grey Box. And I just concluded a 13 year campaign, which culminated in heroic victory for the PCs in February of this year.

But my relationship with the campaign setting has been one of ever increasing dislike over those years. Not becasue of my campaign, but because of the directions and lack of utility of the product I hoped would support it.

There were of course some gems, but both TSR and WotC took the setting in directions that became less and less useful to a non-organized play GM.

This is primarily because of the dreaded metaplot, and novelized canon. Was I somehow forced to use material? No, that's silly. But I found less and less utility, because both companies advanced the campaign plot in directions that made it more and more work to use the material with plotlines that had evolved in my campaign.

Well, that, and some of it was just uninspired rehashing of world content to put more rules I didn't need into the game system.

So, bleah.

I actually gave up on new FR materials before 4E and the "Gamma Realms" reboot was announced...that data point just confirmed that that was a direction I was not interested in.

Thus, I've decided to go back in time. (Cue Huey Lewis & The News)

Remember that 13 year long campaign I mentioned? Well, the enemy was a foul god from beyond the world that was actually just a nightmare of a more distant and ancient god that had been put to sleep on a far distant world.

At the end of it all, the PCs discovered that all they had fought through was actually a nightmare that every person in the world had succumbed to. With the defeat of the entity, they awoke to find themselves strange shadows of the people they had imagined to be, and chose to leave the world behind for the Realm of Dreams.

Doing so, they set to rights the world and undid the terrible dreams become real power of the ancient deity.

Leaving it 1357, The Year of the Prince.

Where do I go from here? Well, I'm working on cleaning up the system I will use mechanically for future campaigns, which will likely be shorter overall.

But, am I throwing out all the history of the prior 13 years of real time played?

No, actually...

As I ignore the metaplot, and novelized materials, and excessive RSE's (Realms Shaking Events, for the untutored) which I don't like and start from a clean slate, people of my future campaigns, PC & NPC, will have vague recollections of the terrible nightmare. There will be some impact, prophetic and otherwise, on the game world regarding what sages will begin referring to as "The UnDreamt War".

Someone said recently that setting reboots are good. I'm beginning to agree.

Change is good. It's all about making it the kind of change that works for you.

This works for me.

The_Warlock