Sunday, November 1, 2009

Blood At Dralkar Manor

— Matt Harris @ 6:05 pm

I played my second Pathfinder Society Game last night. As a special Halloween adventure, Ithuriel (the same DM from the first session), ran PFS #10 – Blood At Dralkard Manor.

It was a long adventure. We spent six hours playing and even then only finished as the DM narrated away some of the slog and grind. The length was a bit of the problem as it was a bit of a “red-eye” adventure. It started at 6AM Athens time (where the DM was located) which is midnight Eastern Standard Time. Most of the players were on Eastern Time I believe. I actually probably had the best time zone (Pacific) – for me the game went from 9 PM to 3 AM. I can’t possibly see how this adventure could be run in four hours, which is the time limit for scenarios at conventions.

Despite the late hour, I think everyone had a good time, although some players had a hard time staying awake. I think the adventure was better written than the last one, PFS #7 – Among the Living. While there was lots of combat, it seemed less linear and more flexible. I bought the adventure afterwards and it did have much more of a plot to it. The adventure didn’t seem to force a specific mix of characters on us either. We had the following:

While combat was very challenging and about half the party ended up going into negative hit points everyone survived.

My character’s faction quest in this adventure (and the last) seemed pretty silly. After reviewing the other faction quests when perusing the module, I think most of them are rather meaningless. Technically, the are supposed to forward some goal of your character’s faction (there are five factions) but most (not all) seem really useless to said faction. I understand the constraints Paizo is under in creating these – the adventures are time limited and the quest needs to be doable in the time allotted without screwing up the game. They still seem trivial, though.

Overall, though, I had a blast. I actually remembered my familiar this time ;-). There is supposed to be another “red-eye” session next Saturday, and I can hardly wait.

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Sunday, September 27, 2009

A Day Of Firsts

— Matt Harris @ 3:44 pm

I have been playing role-playing games since I received the Basic Dungeons and Dragons blue boxed set for my birthday in the late 1970s. With over 30 years of RPGing behind me, I don’t get to do a lot of things for the first time anymore. Despite that, yesterday I managed to do three RPG firsts (for me). It was my:

  1. First time playing a tabletop role-playing game online. I have played online computer games and MUDs, but never a game designed for face-to-face tabletop roleplaying.
  2. First time playing Pathfinder. I bought the core rulebook in September, but hadn’t played a game.
  3. First time playing an “Organized Play” game. I have played some convention games using pre-generated characters, but was never part of the RPGA or other such organization, until I joined the Pathfinder Society.

Some general comments about all three “firsts” follow:

Online Gaming
I was a little leery about online play, as I didn’t think it could match up to the camaraderie and bonding of face-to-face gaming. I was very pleasantly surprised; I had an excellent time. The game was played using TTopRPG for the chat room and gametable, and Skype for audio chat. While I couldn’t see the other players, the combination of audio chat/visual gametable gave seemed to make up for the lack.

The Dungeon Master and other players were skilled gamers and the game went very smoothly. One of the things I found amazing is that this game would have been nearly impossible to do in the real world, due to the geographic dispersion of the attendees. I was in southern California while the DM was in Athens, Greece. The other three players were in Canada, Michigan and New York, respectively. The pre-game setup (getting & confirming players & times, etc.) was also done online, via the Pathfinder Society Online Collective, a new Google group set up for that purpose.

A quick note on the technical aspects. TTopRPG is a wonderful gametable, at least from a players perspective. It was very easy to use and made things very smooth. A nice laniape was that Pygon, the programmer of TTopRPG was one of the players. The only technical difficulty I noticed is that the Dungeon Masters audio occasionally broke up (like a bad cell call). I could hear everyone from North American very clearly, however.

Pathfinder RPG
As I mentioned earlier, this was my first time playing the Pathfinder RPG, a new role-playing game from Paizo. When Wizards of the Coast decided to abandon the 3.5 version of D&D in favor of the vastly reworked 4.0 edition ruleset, Paizo, which had been the publisher of Dungeon and Dragon magazine, decided to create a compatible game by forking the 3.5 rules (which had been released under the Open Game License).

The result was the Pathfinder RPG. I think they did a wonderful job on it as well. Pathfinder (rules free online in the Pathfinder Resource Document) is essentially compatible with 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons, but has had some of the rough edges smoothed away. One of the things I noticed when playing yesterday is that everybody always seemed to be able to be involved in the action; there were only a couple of times when anybody took a Delay action. In the past 3.0/3.5 games I had been in, there were a lot of Delay actions, when players couldn’t find anything for their characters to do. In the Pathfinder game I played yesterday, the action was continuous.

Pathfinder Society Organized Play
I had considered joining the Living Greyhawk campaign by Wizards of the Coast, but since I don’t attend conventions, it seemed kind of pointless – I would never get a chance to play. When I was that the Pathfinder Society would allow home games and online play, I decided to give it a chance.

Yesterday’s module was PFS #7 – Among the Living. It took about 5½ hours. Since the set run-time is supposed to be four hours, I am guessing it could be quite rushed in a convention setting. I found it very enjoyable although it was very combat heavy. There wasn’t any real need for role-playing, although the group did so anyway :-). The faction quest my character had was quite easy.

After the game was over, I bought the module to see what “behind the curtain”. We basically covered everything in the 21 page module. I did note that most of it seemed to be monster stats. As the module was designed to be scalable for parties between levels 1-7, each encounter had 3 different sets of monster stats. The net result is that there was one page of maps, a couple pages of background text, another page of player handouts, the cover and credits pages, and the open game license. The rest was statblocks.

After reviewing the module, the Pathfinder Society rules and my experience yesterday, I have come to a few conclusions. One, organized play ala Pathfinder is fun. Two, it won’t replace regular home gameplay. Character growth and development is a lot more rigid and constrained. The ability to affect the developement of the gameworld via character actions seems totally lacking. On the plus side, it allows a lot of different people/characters to share and interact in a continuously changing groups of PCs while still maintaining some sort of character continuity.

While I think I prefer “standard” gaming to “organized” play, I did have a blast yesterday and hope to play again in the near future.

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Sunday, June 14, 2009

XKCD’s Explanation Of The Voynich Manuscript

— Matt Harris @ 12:47 pm

This particular webcomic was mentioned on the CaerAzkaban Yahoo group. I am not a great fan of XKCD, but this appealed to my inner RPG geek. Not new, but funny. It certainly seems like a plausible explanation of the Voynich Manuscript.

Voynich Manuscript XKCD Comic

P.S. BTW, the yahoo group search feature sucks. I couldn’t find the message that linked this at all – I had to find it using my archived copy in Outlook.

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Sunday, May 3, 2009

Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game

— Matt Harris @ 12:23 pm

With the release of the 4.0 version of D&D and all of the tension that created in the D&D gaming community, it seems to me that there are a lot of new gaming systems that are being spun off the 3.5 SRD. While some are just trying to fix/improve the 3.5 rules (for example, Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG ), others are trying for a more retro feel, attempting to create versions of the rules that play and feel like older versions of D&D. While this has been going on prior to the 4.0, e.g. Castles & Crusades, I think the process has accelerated as all of the gamers who aren’t moving to 4.0 look for a new RPG homes.

My all-time favorite version of D&D was the D&D Cyclopedia set of rules and the associated game world of Mystara. The Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game looks to me like an attempt to recreate much of the ruleset of the D&D Cyclopedia version of the rules. I have only done a cursory review of the core rules, but here are things that jump out at me, including some differences from the D&D Cyclopedia ruleset:

Overall, the rules appear to be very, very compatible with the D&D Cyclopedia version of D&D. I certainly think that one could run any of the old Basic and Expert modules without any prework needed for conversion. The only thing that would need to be done when running is converting racial classes to standard classes and converting from the old THAC0/AC system, both of which should be very easy.

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Sunday, April 19, 2009

Dissociated Mechanics

— Matt Harris @ 2:06 pm

The D&D Contact mailing list I am on referred to this 2008 article on the skill system in 4th Edition D&D. I found the article to provide some very interesting insights into game mechanics and game design, further reinforcing my belief that 4th edition is not for me.

Note: I haven’t played 4th edition, nor do I own a copy of the rules, but I have picked up smatterings of it here and there.

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Saturday, November 1, 2008

Dungeons Daring

— Matt Harris @ 11:28 am

There is a new, free RPG out there that looks somewhat interesting: Dungeons Daring.

I’ve only done a cursory glance at the rulesets, but it looks to be spun-off of the 3.5 SRD. It uses a spell-point based magic system and seems somewhat simplified, but I don’t see any really new ideas in here. Still – it is free and releases under the Open Game License.

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Saturday, March 29, 2008

Goblin Holiday

— Matt Harris @ 1:20 pm

I took part in the Paizo.com Christmas sale. They had lots of books and items that were only a couple of dollars each. Unfortunately, the order was delayed due to them overselling some items, so I didn’t get my stuff until early January.

Included with my order was a Christmas Card with the following song:

Sneaking through your yard,
Going through your stuff,
Hope you didn’t like your dog; we got a little rough!
Tied him to a stump.
Lit the stump on fire.
Maybe you’ll wake up in time to put out puppy’s pyre!

Now we’re in your house,
It’s fancied up so nice!
With shiny things set all about, there’s lots to break and slice!
Here’s a stocking full,
And there’s a gift-wrapped toy,
For a bit we stand agog-there’s so much to destroy!

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

In a pile, Goblin style!
What could be more fun?
Breaking toys for girls and boys
Until we’re finally done!

When you wake, hearts will break;
Because we’ve had our way!
This is great! Let’s celebrate!
A Goblin Holiday!

The really funny thing was that the card offered a 10% discount on my next order, but the offer was void after 12/31/07. As I didn’t receive my order until early 2008, the discount was worthless. A “Goblin Discount” for the “Goblin Holiday”.

P.S. Later in January (unprompted by me) Paizo did give me a 25% discount on my next order, due to the delays etc. in my previous order.

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

SpellTrack

— Matt Harris @ 2:10 pm

I have been using SpellForge for quite some time. It is a wonderful program and I highly recommend it. With high level characters, who have a lot of spells (especially clerics), spell lists can get very long and unwieldy. In one of my D&D games I am playing a 10th level cleric whose spell list (as generated by SpellForge) using the Player’s Handbook and Spell Compendium is 9 pages long. In my last game session, it seemed to take forever to select spells.

To speed up the spell selection process, I created a spell selection wizard called SpellTrack. This is a simple Excel program designed to import spells from SpellForge and then provide a wizard designed to make it easy to select and keep track of spells.

Here are some screenshots:


Spell Selection Wizard


Spell List In Excel

After spells have been selected using the wizard, they are in an Excel worksheet which can be printed out or used to track them as a game session progesses.

While SpellTrack works, I have not done exhaustive testing, a.k.a I am sure there are bugs. Feedback is always appreciated.

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Sunday, March 9, 2008

Ardivan’s Keep Map Moving Up In The World

— Matt Harris @ 8:16 am

My map of Ardivan’s Keep, which is basically a redraw of the moat house from T1: The Village of Homlet, has moved up in the world. It has made it into the Dueling Analogs comic honoring the passing of Gary Gygax.

It is certainly a step up, being in the company of the co-founder of D&D and God.

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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Magic Item Compendium Index

— Matt Harris @ 4:47 pm

I purchased the 3.5 Magic Item Compendium shortly after it came out. It is a wonderful product, but it can be hard to find a specific items. While it has several indexes, they are by type of item and cost. There is no simple item index by name.

Mid-December, I typed up an alphabetical item index in pdf format.

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