Lydin's Story Part 2

continued from Lydin's Story Part 1

Day 68
After reaching the town we search for the fletcher. He welcomes us into his home and provides food for my new charge.

We gain important information from him and are granted housing for the night. Strange things happen during the night. Several time during the night we hear screams and see lights. Yue, Tugwyn and Gworeth leave to investigate.

Near morning Gworeth is attacked by Hawber. I heal both and warn them that we must work together to survive, especially in untamed towns like this one.

We leave the fletcher and strike out into the forest. This forest is not a happy place. The undergrowth is harsh, game is scarce. Someone has over hunted to allow a live and vibrant place to reach this point. We reach a rope bridge and cross the river. The far side of the river is where our enemy is massing his troops.

We see many many tracks. The path we are on is used by a great number of people. We follow the path as far as we dare. Yue is attacked from the east side of the path. We look but can not find a source for the attack. We move on but are more cautious.

As dusk approaches I take Screech to find a suitable place to camp. Deadfall is everywhere, but wee need a place where we can safely light a fire. A good stone to defend with would not hurt either. No more than 50 paces from the path I hear a group moving towards me. Screech scents them and is fearful of the scent. I slowly back towards the path and safety trying to see what is stalking us. Whatever it is, it is not natural to these woods. This may be the force that has choked the life out of the forest.

I back onto the path just in front of my enemy. Gworeth and Pandarus have heard the foes approach and have drawn weapons and are ready. Behind me they come out of the woods. They are dead but they move. My masters have taught me of the foul creatures but I have not seen them before.

As they move towards me I think of what my masters have taught me. I have no skill against this type of foe. They move towards me and I am scared. I see Pandarus slash at one of these ugly forms and it falls to the ground. Perhaps if I unleash the forest to trap these abominations I can help the forest kill these monsters. Tugwyn moves past me, he seems to be happy to see these things. He makes some gestures and a dark colored blast takes a creature right in front of me. Part of the creature falls to the forest floor, but it still sinks dirty claws into my arm. I try to keep from retching.

Gworeth and Yue have engaged another group. I slash at this creature in front of me. I falls to the forest floor. I try to put myself between These foul things and Screech. Pandarus slashed through another creature. Hawber is beside me. After attacking Gworeth last night I am unsure if he is there to help us until he crushes the beast that is trying to reach Tugwyn. Tugwyn launches another spell that carves a gaping hole into another of the creatures.

After that each moment blurs into the next. Another of these creatures scores a deep scratch across my chest. Thankfully these creatures are defeated. I would like to burn them, to erase there presence from the world, but it would be too dangerous in this forest. We can not stay here. We start to make our way back to the town. We see a group of men in the distance. They seem to be talking with a group of these monsters we have defeated. One of the men appears to be a prisoner, he wears a sun sigil. I know I should recognize the sigil but I can not seem to recall why. These creatures boil my blood I want to trap them, to cut into them, to use my hands, my teeth, to kill these men that will talk with these monsters.

The men leave on of their own to be attacked by the beasts. The screams, the screams are maddening. We move off to the bridge. We hear the pursuit getting closer. We clear the bridge and watch waiting for these horrible creatures to break through the trees and start to cross the swinging ropes. Hawber is ready to cut the bridge, Pandarus and Gworeth try to stop him. Long moments pass as we wait and watch the far shore. No enemy appears.

We retreat to the town hopefully the fletcher will grant us house guest again this night.

Lydin's Story Part 1

Day 1
I am taken captive! I should have known better than to trust men who wear snakes as sigils.

Day 12
I am alone on the ship except for my cellmates. Yue, Tugwyn, Gworeth and myself shared a small, smelly, room. At times I would grow so tired of that room and of those people, I would wish that the smelly orc and his guards would take me into the torture room. It was painful but it reminded me that the world was still there, that if I waited and took my chance I might still breath free under the trees before I die.

I was not the first taken, Yue and Tugwyn were already in the room when I joined them. Gworeth joined shortly afterwards.

Day 25
I keep sane by counting the hours until I can go an be with the animals again. Time is strange in this room but I think they let me out once a day to care for them. My friend Scratch is up top, she is not doing well. I fear she will die. Some of the guards have been mistreating the mounts. I am doing my best to help them recover.

Day 45
It had been a long time since I have seen the forest.

Day 65
This evening we plotted an escape.

I would hide behind the door. Once that rotten orc entered I would slam shut the door and Yue, Gworeth would attack the bastard while I secured the door. We hoped to kill him and use his weapons on the guards that would surely come to save him.

Day 66
It did not go as planned. After weeks of the same pattern the guards entered the room! Yue and I shared a long look and both bolted out of our prison. We knew we had but one chance. If we could just kill the orc we might have a fighting chance against his guards. Months of being malnourished and torture did us in. Unfortunately, I did not have the strength left to harm the orc. I managed only to burn myself quite badly. Yue made crude attempts but he too failed to score the kill we needed. We had hoped that Gworeth and Tugwyn would be able to win free, but the guards closed the door to the cell separating us.

In the end we managed only to make the wraith of our captures to fall on us rather than our comrades.

Day 67
I awoke to a horrible sound and the floor beneath me shuddered and slid me across the room. Tugwyn tried the door and it was open! A chance for freedom! In our rush to escape we all fell over ourselves as we attempted to exit the room. Once we climbed up onto the top floor we saw immediately that the ship was sinking very quickly.

I rushed to save as many animals as I could. Scratch was already in the water, I play she makes it to shore. One of my dogs is dead, the others are weakened by the crash. Many of the other animals are injured. I doubt I will save many, but I free those I can.

Many of the animals can not make the leap into the water, few of those will make the shore. I hope they have the strength to make the swim. I hope I do. Gworeth and Yue have returned they have not been able to locate our 'friend' the orc. Tugwyn is still in the boat looking for our gear. We can not wait for long we too must make a try for shore. Tugwyn returns empty handed.

We all leave the boat together. I try to help the animals along the way but I am too slow, too tired, I have not recovered from the escape attempt. I do not know how but I make it to shore. I suspect Gworeth pulled me the last half mile. Yue and Gworeth seem to have made the trek without as much difficulty as myself and Tugwyn. His frail form is motionless on the beach. I crawl around looking for signs of Scratch.

If I have lost her I am lost.

I finally find her trail. She is hurt, the trail is bloody. I follow it into a thicket. I can not find her, I have failed her. Finally I stumble upon her, I can feel her fur, now we are whole again. I am too late! Scratch is dead! I can not look at life the same way, how could I have let this happen. She looks whole but the blood trail leads away.

Retching I leave my friend and follow the blood trail. Scratch has done what I could not. I could not save her, but she saved her cub. I did not even notice she was carrying a litter. I will care for him better than I cared for his mother. Screech, I will call him as he is already exercising his lungs.

When I return a group of men riding well fed animals meets us on the beach. Our number has grown by two. Hawber and Pandarus were also captives on that boat. The men talk to us about our enemy. They wish us to assist in revenging their lord on the man who killed Scratch. I agree to this mission.

Alas my dogs did not make the swim successfully. I see signs that some of the other animals made it. Perhaps later we can track some of them and recover what we can.

We move on to a large town to the north. We must find the Fletcher who will assist us further. This is badly used land. It is colder than I am used to and has been over farmed and grazed. There is no game to hunt, no roots for the pot or berries for health and good cheer.

RPG meme bandwagon

Wow, this was a whole lot tougher to answer than I thought it would be. Apparently I am not the story based gamer I thought I was. I picked up on this from Carl.

1. What is the first RPG you ever played?
D&D Basic Set. We must have played that introductory adventure with the Rust Monster a thousand times.

2. What RPG do you currently play most often?
Play: D&D 3E
GM: Fudge

3. What is the best system you've played?
This is an immensely tough question as recently I have GMed much more than played. Which system was the best "system" I've played? Probably HERO. Which system was the most fun? Rolemaster.

4. What is the best system you've run?
Fudge.

5. Would you consider yourself an: Elitist/ Min-Maxer/ Rules Lawyer?
I would like to think I am an elitist, but that just isn't true. I am also sometimes a rules lawyer in that I have read all the rules/books, but not in the sense of challenging the GM's ruling but in being a reference manual for what the rules state. I can also Min-Max with the best of them.
I think these types of categorization are not required because each game type can be fun. The problems arise when you try to mix them. An Elitist will have no fun in a group of Lawyers, and a Min-Maxer isn't going to enjoy a campaign with a group of Elitists.
As a player I try to fit in with the group, or if I can't to find a group into which I can fit. As a GM I try to emphasis story over rules but I am not always successful.

6. If you could recommend a new RPG which would you recommend? Why?
Fudge, with Tri-Stat dX a close second.

7. How often do you play?
Once or twice a month when things go right, four or five times a year when they don't.

8. What sort of characters do you play? Leader? Follower? Comic Relief? Roll-Player/ Role-Player?
A lot of times I find my self playing a Leadership role. However, at times I will purposefully not fill that role to be within the bounds of the character. Also some games and groups tend to favour a Roll-Play rather than a role-play.

9. What is your favorite Genre for RPGs?
Fantasy, although I am getting into steampunk right now and am enjoying it a great deal.

10. What Genres have you played in?
Primarily Fantasy, but I have tried a lot including Modern, Near Future, Far Future, Cyberpunk, SuperHeroes, and cross genre. The one I have not played but am eager to try is Steampunk.

11. Do you prefer to play or GM? Do you do both?
I prefer to play, but I GM a lot because no one else does (and because I own/read the books). GMing can be fun, but it can be a lot more work.

12. Do you like religion in your games?
I try to allow as much as possible, what is NOT allowed is recreating a real world religion in the game. You can have a lot of similarity, but not a copy.

13. Do you have taboo subjects in your games or is everything "fair game"?
I have two subjects that have special status in my games, one is comical (or at least the player think so) and the other is deadly serious.
The first is that none of my game worlds have snakes.
The second is any form of sexual assault. I always tell the players before hand on what is acceptable and what is not. I also always tell them that they get one and only one warning before I take action. A first offense is a complete party death, the innocent are punished along with the guilty. A second offense result in me NOT participating in the game group any further. I have had 2 first offenses, I have never had a second offense.

14. Have you developed your own RPG before?
Not really, as a GM I usually modify the combat systems making them much more deadly. One of the reasons I really enjoy Rolemaster is that there is ALWAYS a true danger to the characters life. I find is frustrating in a lot of game systems when the players get a sense of security in that they know how ridiculously powerful they are and that they don't need to fear an enemy because they couldn't possibly die...

15. Have you ever been published in the Gaming Industry? If so...what?
Not yet, but I'm working on that.

Why Steam Punk Rocks

Steam Punk Rocks.

I have to admit I have never played a steam punk game, but I want to and soon. I was thinking about why my cross genre games slowly migrated to a single genre. The reason is that they all had a intrinsic flaw (Me). One genre was more, better, faster, etc than others. It might have been that technology was more powerful than magic. Or the fantastic was more fun to play in.

Now I am not blaming this on the system or the modules, or at least not entirely. This falls squarely on my shoulders. Steam Punk seems to have built in genre balancing, the technology is more powerful but flakey. It allows the players to have the best of both worlds.

I really do not like the idea of game balance, and cyberpunk seems to have some of the worst examples of game mechanics that make no sense but are in place to uphold game balance. The most blatant of these is the rule that adding cyber components "steals your soul" making it harder to use magic. What crap. I would love to play a mage with a memory module. Imagine storing spells on a sim soft. Memorize hundreds of spells by simply downloading them into a memory chip that you can change on the fly. Need a fireball? Simply insert the correct chip and fire away.

The problem is that when you introduce that you change the nature of the game. Why would a player play a mage WITHOUT this type of memory module? A natural mage can memorize X number of spells, a cyber mage can memorize as many spells as can fit onto a memory chip. There is a clear advantage to playing the cybermage.

The problem is that the players have to be able to see beyond the empirical advantage. The GM (me) has to get the players to see the benefit of playing the disadvantaged character.

This is why my games failed. I could not get the story to supersede the rules.

Seventh Sanctum

Once again I have gone an embarrassing length of time without a post. So I am going to do a quick review of Seventh Sanctum. Seventh Sanctum is a site dedicated to various random generators. From character names to groups to super powers.

This type of generator can be a GM's best friend when the game is on and a name is needed, or a magic item, or even a creature to challenge the party. No matter what you need you can find something that will help you on this site.

I once needed to populate a library with books. Using the Bookspinner generator it took less than 2 hours to generate literally hundreds (500-600 books) with this type of detail

The Study of Summonings
* This book is of above-average clarity because of the excellent, well-planned chapters. The book's well-done nature allows one to easily find that it has no useful information. Though flawed, one can definitely see that the concepts and information do show a great deal of insight.

Advanced White Magic
* This book is all but impossible to understand because of it having no kind of organization at all. If one miraculously managed to understand the book's contents, that person will find it is extremely informative. One will also find that the concepts and information do show a great deal of insight.

A Wizard's Encyclopedia of New Wizardry
* This book is easy to understand. A short look at the book will show that it is extremely informative.

A Peacetime Comparison of the Halbierd and Falchion
* This book is all but impossible to understand mostly due to terrible diagrams. A talented person may be able to derive some understanding from the book and find it is extremely informative. Despite its good traits, the contents show some plagarism.

An Account of the States' Ancient Heroes
* This book is very clear thanks to the excellent, well-planned chapters. It's easy to determine that it is reasonably useful. After a quick exampination, one will find that the concepts in the book do show a lot of original thought.
* Examining the book, one will find: Some personal notes, in a recognizable, but foreign language, unrelated to the book, concentrated in select sections of the book. Pieces of paper with notes, in incoherent writing, that seem to have to have no single purpose.

I have also used the Dragon Generator to quickly come up with a dragon description.
Hatetearer - She is a mature adult dragon. She has gold scales which are almost mirror-like. Her breath is a bolt of electricity. She is extremely sadistic. Her fighting skills are exceptional. She lives in a forboding wasteland. Her hoard is huge.

Flightwings the Great-winged - She is an elder dragon. She has silver scales and exceptionally large wings. Her breath is a cloud of gas that puts most beings to sleep. She is very arrogant. Her skill at mechanical items is quite refined despite her size. She lives in a friendly city. Her hoard is giant.

Interactive History part II

Because I am not quite busy enough I am going to try to resurrect a play by mail or play by post Interactive History Game.

Step One: Re-read the rules and maybe reformat them into a single html page.
Step Two: Recruit players.

The Role of the Dice

For reasons I can not yet make public I have been considering alternative systems and mechanics to my much loved fudge system. This has led me to seriously examine the systems I like and why.

First the crunchy bits:
Iron Crown's excellent Rolemaster series. This was a system I fell in love with years ago. I love the detailed skills, and to be honest the hundreds of tables appealed to me for some reason. I loved the complex combat cross referencing, and the criticals were just the best. I fell away from the game because keeping up with all the books was too expensive and the hours and hours of character generation were just too much. I still try to convince people to play War Law every once and a while, but I still haven't gotten any takers.

Hero System. I have to confess, I don't think I ever actually played Hero. I have created hundreds of characters but I don't remember ever actually playing a game. I love this systems detail. The 5th edition with the power stunts and power frameworks is brilliant. But as with Rolemaster the hours and hours of character generation (while fun) were just too much.

All these games I like because of the detail but I find they have too many restrictions, and the game crunch means it is a lot of effort for the GM (usually me) to get everything together. I find that the latest d20 D&D game is the same way. Even a simple group of Kobalds can take forever to describe because they can all have different skills and feats.

I still buy these games and supplements for them for the detail but usually I only use the detail as background for more free form games.

Now onto the smooth stuff:
A game I have half read, is Over the Edge. As I have only read the character generation rules I can not speak for how good Over the Edge is from a system point of view. However, the reason I have only read the character generation rules is because I desperately want to play this game as a player. I know if I read the rest of the rules and the setting information I will be hoisting a session and I am holding out hope I will get to play the game.

Fudge from Grey Ghost Games. I love fudge, I still have difficulty playing Fudge out of the box. But with Fudge I can tinker to my hearts content. I recently tried FATE:Fudge and found it was also an excellent game, although I ended up using the Fudge attribute ladder rather than the FATE ladder.

In recent years my most enjoyable moments have all come out of Fudge or Fudge based games. The name and description of this blog come from a Fudge product (Believe it or Else). In a perfect world I would continue to use Fudge but things that are going on in the Fudge community are upsetting me to the point where I am looking for alternatives. (more on this in another post).

So that means I need to find a new system.
The options:
A simple and interesting system is the EABA system from BTRC. This is another universal system that seems quite sound. I have read 90% of the base rule book and downloaded samples from 3 or 4 setting books. It strikes me that the EABA is an excellent system, the only thing I think would be difficult would be a cross genre game. I have never played the EABA system so I could very well be wrong.

From the Canadian (yeah!) Guardians of Order is Tri-Stat dX. I like a lot of things about this system. It is a very elegant system with a very very cool powers/abilities framework. I would live to play in a Tri-Stat game. As with the EABA a cross genre game might cause a problem.

The yet to be released Open Core System. I am going to pick up Open Core, if for no other reason to see what it is like and whether it will make Gatecrasher a better game. I love the Gatecrasher universe. Magic and technology together, to me the feel of Gatecrasher is a very nice mix of "Hitchhickers Guide to the Universe" and "Wizards". Hopefully Open Core will bring a less number crunching system to the setting. I don't know if Open Core is the generic system I want.

I have also downloaded the free Fuzion rules. I haven't read the entire ruleset, but it seems a bit too crunchy for my taste. This is most likely a system I will read simply to borrow the best

Or do I just build my own system? I have built or rather I should say I have hacked Home Brew systems before. Rarely does a system see play when I haven't adjusted something about it. Sometimes successfully, sometime not.

Now after all that rambling I have come to the point, do I need a SYSTEM or is it all about the MECHANIC?
What is it about the systems I like? The details, the flavor, the setting information. What is it I dislike about those same systems? The resolution mechanic. I love Rolemaster for the detail, I think the resolution mechanic to tedious and at times too slow to keep the players interested in other players activities. I love the power framework rules in Hero, but I don't want to deal with the accounting required for character creation and management.

What do I like about Fudge? The simplicity of the resolution mechanic. So maybe I just need to come up with my own mechanic. If I were to role 4d4 instead of 4dF would I still be able to get the flow that I like so much from the Fudge game? This is something I am going to look at very closely, I have several resolution mechanics I have used from time to time. I even have a ladder resolution system I tried long before found fudge. Maybe all the time I have spent looking at new system is just a search for a new mechanic.