Tag Archives: RPG

Cannon for Pathfinder

Posted on September 9, 2009 | 4 comments

Field Grade Weapons

Most cannon are cast bronze, smooth bore, muzzleloading weapons, although some are breech-loading and older ones are constructed of iron bars welded and bound together. Because they are expensive and rare, many cannons are ornately carved and decorated, and larger ones often have unique names.

Cannon

Name	       Cost	  Damage   Weight      Range        Mount	Crew	Ready
Bombard	       10,000 gp  12d10    8000 lbs.   400 ft.	    -		6	10/4
Cannon          8,000 gp  10d10    6000 lbs.   300 ft.	    Very Heavy	5	6/3
Demi-cannon     6,000 gp   8d10	   4000 lbs.   250 ft.	    Heavy	4	5/2
Culverin        4,000 gp   6d10	   3000 lbs.   200 ft.	    Medium      3	4/2
Small culverin  2,000 gp   4d10	   2000 lbs.   150 ft.	    Light       2	3/2
Swivel-gun      1,000 gp 2d10/4d6   200 lbs.   100 ft./25 ft.	-	1	2/1

Damage: Assuming solid shot, this is the damage done on a direct hit. Cannon (with the exception of swivel-guns) cannot effectively be aimed at a specific person, but instead are aimed at a specific area with the intent of damaging a structure. Monsters that are size Huge or larger can be individually targeted (assuming they stay still for the several rounds needed to aim and fire the weapon). When a cannon hits its target area, it only does its listed damage to that 10x10x10 part of the structure, not any creature there. (On a natural 20, the cannon hits an unlucky person in that area dead on and does full damage to them as well.) However, cannons often do splash damage. If the cannon is using stone shot and firing into a stone environment (like most towns), this damage comes from stone fragments (slashing), or if the cannon is using any solid shot and firing into a wooden environment (like a ship), the damage comes from wooden shivers (piercing). Anyone in the 10×10 target area must make a DC 15 Reflex save or else take ¼ the direct damage inflicted by the shot from the fragments. For example, if a PC is hiding in a 10×10 wooden shack that is hit by a culverin inflicting 35 points of damage on the structure, he may take 8 points of fragment damage if he fails his save.

Crew: All members of the crew must have at least one rank in Profession: siege engineer.

Ready: Cannons all require the listed number of full round actions to reload and then aim with a normal crew. They must be re-aimed every time they are fired because their recoil moves them significantly out of place. If they are operated with a smaller crew than the listed minimum, the time it takes to reload them is proportionately longer.

Proficiency: All cannon require Profession: Siege Engineer (or Artillerist, or Cannoneer, or whatever you want to call it) to operate.

Inaccurate: All cannon have an inherent -4 to hit penalty due to the difficulty of aiming them precisely. This penalty may be reduced by 1 for every 5 points the gunner has in Profession: siege engineer. A gunner uses their base attack bonus, Int bonus, and other modifiers for range, vision, motion, etc. to determine their total attack bonus.

Misfire: Whenever you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll made with a cannon, the cannon might misfire. The crew chief must immediately roll a Profession: siege engineer check at DC 15 (the rest of the crew may assist). A successful check indicates that the wad simply misfired and the cannon must be reloaded. A failure by up to 5 indicates that the cannon is fouled and requires 2 full rounds to clear before it can be reloaded. A failure by up to 10 means that the cannon gains the broken condition and requires repair before further use. A natural 1 on this check means that the cannon has exploded and does its full normal damage to everyone and everything within 10 ft.

Weapon Descriptions

Bombard: Very large caliber front-loading cannon used in sieges. They fire hundred pound stone balls. Bombards are too large for most ships to carry. A variant of bombard that is used for indirect fire is called the mortars.

Cannon: A heavy bronze cannon firing a 36 to 50 pound shot, also known as a basilisk. These usually can only be placed on the bow mount of very large galleys.

Demi-Cannon: Also known as the cannon-perier, it fires a 24 pound shot. This is the heaviest weapon that can be fired from the side of a ship, and a large ship at that.

Culverin: The culverin is a medium cannon firing an 18 lb shot. These are the most common large weapon mounted broadside on sailing ships.

Small Culverin: Also known as the demi-culverin, this weapon fires a 10 lb shot and is suitable for mounting on many ships, including on the top deck.

Swivel-gun: Swivel-guns, which come in varieties also known as falcons, falconets, or robinets, can take a 1-2 pound solid shot or be filled with a dozen pistol shots. They do 2d10 damage with solid shot, but when loaded with pistol shot do 4d6 damage, less 2 points per range increment, in a 10×10 square. A gunner applies their Dexterity bonus to hit instead of their Int bonus with a swivel-gun.

Ammunition: stone or lead solid shot are the most common ordnance in cannon. There is also chain or bar shot which is effective against rigging (normal solid shot passes through rigging doing only minimum damage). Grapeshot or canister shot can also be used; this does not do structural damage but targets the crew, doing half the listed damage to all crew in a 10x10x10 area.

Analysis

Taking the Stormwrack method of doing ship damage, where e.g. a caravel has 24 hull sections with hardness 5 and 80 hp each, and six must be destroyed to sink the ship – it requires 3-4 good hits with a culverin to destroy one 10x10x10 section. Given that the cannon can only fire slightly better than once a minute, that’s a good balance of enough damage with promoting resolution by boarding and melee. A heavily armed small carrack might sport 2 culverins below and 5 demi-culverins on deck per side, which at that rate could sink a ship of its class but only with some work.

Example of cannon fire: A pirate sloop approaches a merchant caravel and decides to soften them up a bit before closing. They aim their two starboard culverins and fire. The base AC to shoot a caravel is -3 because it’s just a big ass object really (value taken from Stormwrack), or AC3 if you want to shoot at a specific section. In this case the pirates just want to hit wherever on it to demoralize the crew. The ships are 200 yards apart, which is three range increments out for the culverin (-6 range). There is a moderate wind (no penalty) and both the firing platform and the target are moving (-5 for each, says Stormwrack, though that seems high ). Total AC to hit is 13. The master gunner (+5 BAB, +2 Int, 10 ranks in Prof: SE) and a crew of three is manning one gun and a bunch of gunner pirate mooks (+2 BAB, +0 Int, 3 ranks in Prof: SE) are manning the other. So the two shots are +5 vs AC 13 (about a sure thing) and -2 vs AC 13 (hit about half the time).

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Firearms for Pathfinder

Posted on September 8, 2009 | 24 comments

I’m preparing to run a pirate-themed Pathfinder game set in Golarion, the main Paizo campaign world.  You can’t have a good pirate game without guns and cannon, so I started looking into that.  The Pathfinder Campaign Setting book has rules for firearms but they are quite underwhelming in general.

I went on a mad tear of Internet research and comparison of existing D&D 3e/3.5e gunpowder rules, from the 3.5e DMG, Stormwrack, d20 Past, Seas of Blood by Mongoose, Broadsides! by Living Imagination, Iron Kingdoms by Privateer Press, Skull & Bones by Green Ronin…  What I wanted was something that hit the sweet spot of late middle ages gun tech without getting too “fantasy-ey” (arcane pistol with intelligent demon bullets!) or too late tech wise (flintlocks, percussion cap weapons, ships with 30 cannon per side on them…).  My players expressed the concern that usually when they see gun rules for D&D they either nerf guns so that they really suck and no one would use them, or make them so good that everyone would always use them.  Quite a challenge.  Here’s what I came up with in response for Pathfinder or D&D 3.5e – comments are welcome!

Gunpowder Weapons In Golarion

Handguns

The current state of the art in personal firearms is a smoothbore weapon with a wheellock firing mechanism.  Earlier matchlocks, which required a lit match held in a “matchlock” to fire, and the even earlier hand culverins, which required manual application of a lit match, are still in circulation but no regular forces use them.  Though most firearms come from the mass production gunworks of Alkenstar, there are skilled craftsmen in other locations that can and do build firearms.

The smiths of Alkenstar have just developed snaplocks, but have kept the innovation to themselves so far.  More reliable and inexpensive flintlocks are doubtless not far behind.  A couple artisans have made rifled hunting weapons but these are still unique curiosities.

Name                Cost      D (S)  D (M)     Crit     Range    Weight  Type
One-Handed Ranged Weapons
Pistol              250 gp    1d6     2d4      x3        50 ft.   3 lbs.  P
Blunderbuss pistol  500 gp    1d10    2d6      19-20/x2   5 ft.   5 lbs.  B and P
Two-Handed Ranged Weapons
Musket, short       500 gp    1d10    2d6      x3        100 ft.  8 lbs.  P
Musket, long        750 gp    1d10    2d6      x3        150 ft. 10 lbs.  P
Blunderbuss         500 gp    1d12    3d6      19-20/x2   15 ft.  8 lbs.  B and P
Explosive Weapons
Bomb                150 gp    1d10    2d6      x2          5 ft.   1 lb.   B
Smoke bomb           70 gp        Smoke        x2         10 ft.   1 lb.   -

Proficiency: All wheellock weapons require Exotic Weapon Proficiency (firearms) to use without penalty.

Reload: All wheellock weapons hold one shot and take two full round actions to load.  Reloading takes two hands and provokes attacks of opportunity.

Inaccurate: All non-rifled firearms have an inherent -1 to hit penalty.

Exploding Dice: Whenever you deal damage with a firearm and roll maximum on any damage die, reroll that die and add that roll to the total as well. If you roll maximum on rerolls, continue to reroll, adding to the damage each time.

Misfire: Whenever you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll made with a firearm, your firearm might misfire. Immediately roll 1d20. On a 1, the firearm is broken and the powder explodes out the breech, dealing the weapon’s damage to you; on a 2–7, the firearm is broken; on a 8–18, the firearm misfires and is fouled; and on a 19–20, it simply misfires. A fouled firearm requires 2 full rounds to clear before it can be reloaded.

Melee: Pistols may be used as saps and muskets as clubs in melee combat, but they are reasonably fragile and whenever you roll a natural 1 on the attack roll the weapon is broken.

Pistols have a hardness of 10 and 10 hit points; long weapons have a hardness of 10 and 20 hit points.

Weapon Descriptions

Pistol: a single shot wheellock pistol.

Blunderbuss Pistol: Also known as a dragon, this is a large pistol with a bell-shaped barrel.  A blunderbuss pistol’s damage suffers a -2 penalty per range increment beyond the first.

Musket, short: A wheellock musket with a short barrel suitable for use in close quarters.  Also known as an arquebus.

Musket, long: A wheellock musket with a 4 foot long barrel.  The long musket must be braced on something or else suffer a -2 penalty to hit.  Many such muskets come with a inherent pintle mount so that they can be braced while standing; it requires a move action to set up the pintle.

Blunderbuss: This is a heavy musket with a bell-shaped barrel, also referred to as a musketoon.  A blunderbuss’ damage suffers a -2 penalty per range increment beyond the first.

Bomb: A bomb, also known as a grenade, is thrown as a splash weapon.  It requires one full round action to prepare and light.  Once thrown, it explodes and does damage to everyone in a 5’ radius from the target or target square.  Bombs do 2d6 damage to a directly targeted creature and 2d4 splash damage.

Smoke bomb: A smoke bomb is thrown as a splash weapon, and puts out a 10’ radius cloud of smoke.  It requires one full round action to prepare and light.  The smoke dissipates normally.

[Edit:  Dang it, forgot ammo and costs!]

Ammunition: Round lead bullets are sold in bags of 20, weighing 2 pounds, for 5 gp.  As guns of this era are often not in standard calibers, the shot normally require modification by the gun owner before use.  Many gun owners will simply cast their own shot using Craft (gunsmith).

Gunpowder:  Black powder is sold for 40 gp per pound.  It is usually carried in a gourd, horn, or metal flask to keep it dry.  In volume, it is supplied in 30-pound kegs (40 pounds total weight).  Creating gunpowder from scratch requires a DC 25 Craft (alchemy) check.  A thrown bomb takes about half a pound of powder; you can get 40 muzzleloader shots out of a pound.  For cannon, you need an amount of gunpowder equal to the weight of the ball.

Analysis

I took the exploding-die damage and the misfire (edited) from Pathfinder.  I thought those were good, but their damages, costs, and violation of tech level weren’t (they had percussion cap revolvers, for example).   I broke it up into a couple more weapons.  I’m tempted to go as far as d20 Past did and differentiate between the matchlock and wheellock weapons, but for a first cut thought this would be enough.  I tried to target early 1500s tech in general as consistent with other developments in Pathfinder.

I don’t mind gunpowder in my fantasy, especially if it’s kept to a realistic 1500-and-earlier kind of level.  With the same caveat as my players – it shouldn’t be too nerfed or too good.  I hope I’ve hit that balance here – the reload times make it unlikely you can get too many shots off in one combat, and the inaccuracy and unreliability and cost are down sides – but the lure of that damage potential is a big draw.  They’re too expensive for low level, not competitive at high level, but at mid level you’d be tempted to have a pistol on you that you’d fire in the first round and then drop and go to melee… Which is the desired simulation.

In my game guns will be rare enough that there’s no prestige classes or whatnot for them.  I will include a feat that lets you not provoke attacks of opportunity and a reload feat that lets you spend one full round instead of two, but that’s it.

Next time – cannon!

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Final Savage Worlds “Legends of Steel” Session Summary Posted

Posted on August 31, 2009 | 9 comments

In Legends of Steel Part IX, our brave heroes take on the invading Yarite army all by themselves, and are laid low by the invulnerable boss riding a demon wyvern.  But first, Manoj’s girlfriend poisons half the party; we strangle that elder from last time for the crime of “douchiness,” and Singh and Manoj are told by the Witch-Queen to “dance for me my little monkeys!”  Enjoy.

I don’t know why the final battle scene only is one page in the summary, it took about 182 hours of real time.

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What’s Good For The Goose

Posted on August 30, 2009 | 6 comments

I wanted to talk a little about in-game GM rulings, and making sure you are not unfairly disadvantaging players in the name of realism.

This was inspired by a thread on the Paizo boards about “My GM doesn’t let me move with a loaded crossbow, he says the bolt will fall out.”  But it led me to think about a lot of related rulings and general tendencies I’ve seen among GMs over time.  A desire for “realism” is admirable, but it shouldn’t be restricted to just PCs and thus discriminate against them.

Think about it from your player’s point of view.  If you:

  • make them track encumbrance minutely
  • require them to make a lot of rolls to “wake up” in a campsite combat
  • make them not carry loaded crossbows
  • make them draw their swords in the first round of every combat
  • require lots of skill checks to distinguish their ass from a hole in the ground
  • and other stuff like that

You really need to think about whether you are requiring the same of NPCs and opponents.  Because most of the time, when I as a player wander into the bad guys’ barracks, they are all up and attacking on the first round.  None are ever dozing, busy taking a dump, out of their armor, thirty feet away from their weapon, slowed by their gear, et cetera.   They are all watching the door and immediately recognize that the PCs are no one they know from their whole fortress.  (Unless it’s one of those scripted “they’re all asleep if you make Stealth checks” rooms.)  No humanoid is ever encumbered (nor, seemingly, do they carry about the food and water and supplies that they likely would need to survive if they were a PC).

Which is fine, you can decide if you want a very simulationist detail-heavy kind of game or not.  But what’s not appropriate is to make the PCs deal with the minutiae and not inflict it on the enemy.  If your PCs are having to worry about their potions breaking when they fall ten feet, or about all the arrows falling out of their quiver when they get tripped, you need to be as anal on the bad guys.

You think you don’t do that?  Well, let’s see.  Do you require a Stealth check from everyone in the party (and when rolling 6 d20s, someone’s going to roll low)  whenever they are trying to sneak up on some enemy emplacement, and if so, do you make monsters do the same thing?   There’s a very common fallacy I see all the time here – PCs are sensed, and don’t sense anything, unless they take positive action to make a skill check.  On the other hand, bad guys are never sensed, and sense everything, unless a PC specifically is actively using Spot or Stealth to thwart them.

Do your PCs always have wounds, long term ability damage, and hangovers from drinking or fatigue from not sleeping the previous night?  Well, if the bad guys are a gang of berserkers in a war zone, why are they always totally fresh and unimpaired?

I’m definitely not anti-realism.  I like a gritty “everyman” campaign from time to time.  If you want to go that route, you *can* inflict similar hindrances on your NPCs. Remember that from their point of view, it’s the PCs who are the wandering monsters.

Give your players breaks!  If the alarm hasn’t been raised and they’re sneaking around a castle, why would the off duty guardsman intent on his whittling even bother looking up when someone in armor walks into the barracks?  He has a pretty good chance of just continuing and only realizing something’s wrong when someone runs at him with a sword.  Flat-footed should be a common ailment among bad guys in a location that’s not on alert.  Some percentage of people should be asleep, depending on their sleep cycle… Even if they run watches 24×7, at least a fourth of the people/creatures in the dungeon/castle/ruin are asleep at any given time.

Do quick ad hoc rolls for “combat readiness.”  Roll one bandit as a random encounter?  Roll d20, and “1” means he left his weapon and armor back in his tent and is sprinting to the latrine because he’s vomiting (“sickened”) from too much rum.   Not only is it “cutting PCs a break” (though not really, because you probably inflict all this on them), but it makes your world seem a lot more realistic.

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Sinister Lives!

Posted on August 29, 2009 | Leave a comment

Sinister Adventures is a small RPG imprint founded by Nicolas Logue, a fan favorite adventure writer.  He contributed a bunch of Dungeon adventures back in the day, and now is probably best known for authoring the demented ogre hillbilly horror of The Hook Mountain Massacre, third in Paizo’s Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path and various other adventures like Crown of the Kobold King, Hangman’s Noose, and Carnival of Tears (Paizo GameMastery modules),  Edge of Anarchy (first in the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP), Blood of the Gorgon (an Open Design project), and Voyage of the Golden Dragon (an Eberron module).

Well, Sinister showed up, threw out some great ideas, awesome concept art, and some PDF products/previews for some upcoming mega-adventures – and then sank silently beneath the waves for a long time.  Like more than a year long.  Even the forums on the site broke and things went to pot.  Nick would occasionally chime in on the Paizo boards or whatnot but the upshot was that he had way too many other jobs going on.

Luckily for you and I, that has changed, and Nick and Sinister have resurfaced, fixed their site, and are charging towards a date of Sep 1 for their first, Razor Coast, to go into layout!  Pirates, cannibal cultists, shark gods, and more tangle in a blood-soaked orgy of violence.  Many previews and blindingly beautiful art pieces are posted on their site!

And the best part, it’ll be for 3.5 and Pathfinder…  I am psyched.  I was actually getting set to run a Pathfinder Pirates campaign and was dusting off my old Freeport stuff; I had given up hope of Razor Coast ever happening.  But now, it’s on and on for soon!   I do so look forward to watching my players weep in fear.

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Fifth Alternity “The Lighthouse” Session Summary Posted

Posted on August 26, 2009 | 1 comment

Sadly, I was out of town, but the rest of the guys seem to have had a good time in the fifth session of our Alternity campaign.  Our other “B team” characters (ambassadors and other space station hangers-on) swing into action, attending a lovely Void*Corp charity ball and hobnobbing with the rich and famous and buying them drugs.  Meanwhile, our “A team” Concord command staff characters get cut to bits by mutated alien croath thingys down on Meribel.  Then, they spread the plague up to the Lighthouse itself!

Really, a game session that has both strippers and PowerPoint presentations…  How can you resist?

Read the Full Session Summary

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Penultimate Savage Worlds “Legends of Steel” Session Summary Posted

Posted on August 24, 2009 | Leave a comment

In Legends of Steel Part VIII (10 page pdf), some wyvern-riding moo-rons show up and convince the local yokels that pass as the government in this farm town that they should hand us over to the evil empire.  In retaliation, we murder three wyverns and everyone who dares open their bitch mouth to us.  And Manoj gets a crazy psycho stalker girlfriend!

We were pretty confused and frustrated by the RP session after that.  So the hapless city, now that we’ve murdered their prospective new overlords, feels they are probably going to be razed to the ground in retaliation by the bad guys’ army.  This is probably accurate; from what we can see a bunch of Catholic schoolgirls could raze them to the ground.

So then they want someone to take a message asking for help to their King.  We volunteer, if only because it will get us out of this dunghole.  They go to have an Important Council Meeting that they try to get us to come to.  Being averse to boredom, we go get drunk instead.  Then this local elder shows up and makes the following pitch “behind the back” of the local baron.

1.  Some people don’t like kicking taxes upstairs to the king.  But everyone’s scared of acting on this.  And the Baron is scared of asking for help.

2.  So we should delay the King’s forces in getting here.

3.  Because they will then throw off the invading army by themselves, and have enough mojo left over to throw off the King’s army too.  Freedom!

4.  And we should do this because we “owe them” for provoking the bad guys’ wrath.

My rebuttal, admittedly somewhat obscenity-laced, was:

1.  “Sounds like you’re a bunch of scared motherf***ers all the
way up the chain of command. What do you need us for?”

2.  …

3.  “But your farm town here couldn’t fight off a dozen drunken goblins on a good day.  You’re asking for help to fight the one army, but now you think you can take two?”

4.  “I’m sure you mean to say there’s something else in it for us…  Because if we owe anyone for the impending violence, which you brought on yourselves in the first place, you’d think we’d owe the Baron, the actual legitimate ruler of this place, and the King.  And not some random fat f**k like you.”

But no, that was his best offer.  I tried to help what appeared to be the railroad plot out.  “If only you were to offer us positions of power in this new regime…  Or money or booze or something…”  But no.  So I told him he’s better f**k off or else he was going to get three feet of steel rammed through his guts real soon.  The rest of the players all nodded sagely in agreement. He scuttled off.

The elder, and the GM, seemed somewhat taken aback.  But we were getting grumpy and don’t like nonsensical adventure hooks – come to a party with an offer that has an up side.  If we just want to kill people there are a lot of takers – why should we kill for you?

It’s one thing if the hook is what “good” or “heroic” characters should do, which is a mistake in a game where most characters are amoral mercenaries, but in this case it isn’t even the good, or brave and glory-filled, option. It’s the craven and bad option for zero compensation. Huh?

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Fourth Alternity “The Lighthouse” Session Summary Posted

Posted on August 24, 2009 | 1 comment

In the fourth installment of our Alternity science fiction campaign, we rescue the ground troops and sesheyan VIPs off the pirate base before the Void*Corpers pummel it into plasma, and get a turncoat spy in the bargain.

Then the space station command staff, in true Star Trek fashion,  heads to Meribel to investigate a murder at a terraforming outpost, which goes all District 9 on us real quick.  A mad doctor in a big ol’ diving suit gives us problems until we run 1.21 gigawatts through him.  Then, the alien plague!!!

Read the full session summary!

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Indie RPG Awards Are In!

Posted on August 20, 2009 | 3 comments

The yearly Indie RPG Awards have been announced.  I like these awards; you get to learn about  a lot of fringe stuff you may not have heard of, and a lot of it’s free.  I like the way they run the awards, too, they have a judge point system and they list the points each nominee gets so you can see who came in first, second, third, etc. and by how wide a margin.  Here’s the rundown:

Indie Game of the Year

  • Mouse Guard, by Luke Crane and David Petersen.  No huge surprise, this won three ENnies and at Origins!  Burning Wheel mechanics plus licensed comic plus lil’ mice equals goodness.
  • 3:16 Carnage Among The Stars, by Gregor Hutton, also an ENnie nominee, came in second.

Indie Supplement of the Year

  • Don’t Lose Your Mind, by Benjamin Baugh, for Don’t Rest Your Head comes in first.  They got the silver ENnie for writing as well.
  • Magic Burner, by Luke Crane, for Burning Wheel is a very narrow second.

Best Free Game

Best Support

  • Uncoincidentally, two of the award winners in other categories win here.  Mouse Guard comes in first and Don’t Lose Your Mind comes in second.

Best Production

  • The 900 pound gorilla, Mouse Guard, comes in first.
  • 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars comes in second.

Most Innovative Game

  • Being “Most Innovative” in the indie crowd means your game is probably weird enough to give D&D players hives.  That makes me happy.  The winner is Sweet Agatha, by Kevin Allen Jr.  No dice or anything, it’s a story creation game where the players cut up the game book/investigative journal.
  • In second is In a Wicked Age: sword & sorcery roleplaying by Vincent Baker.  Kind of a negotiating player conflict game like Amber.

Congrats to all!

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Cthulhu Resurgent?

Posted on August 17, 2009 | 10 comments

I’m a long time fan of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, owning 62 various products in the line by my count, and have several Cthulhu Master’s tournaments under my belt to prove it.  But pretty much the line has been lagging for a long time.  The last “big thing” that shook it up was the release of Delta Green, back in 1997.  (The 2001 release of d20 Cthulhu sank beneath the waters without a trace.)  Other than that, it’s been a bit of a litany of republishing all the same damn stuff, lightly reworked, as “Dreamlands v7.8” and the like.  Chaosium just about went down for good for a while there and is only barely starting to get back in the saddle.

However, there has been a burst of activity lately, and I find it odd I haven’t heard much about it.  First, there’s the “variant” Cthulhu games, like the True20 Shadows of Cthulhu, the GUMSHOE-based Trail of Cthulhu, and the ENnie-winning CthulhuTech.

But besides that, I was surprised to see actual new third-party classic CoC modules in my FLGS.  Looks like more people are getting into the licensed supplement biz.  Goodman Games has put out Death in Luxor and Madness in London Town.  John Wick has written Curse of the Yellow Sign, Act 1: Digging for a Dead God.  Pagan Publishing, long time licensee, has released The Mysteries of Mesoamerica and plans to release an adventure anthology, Bumps In The Night, this year.  Super Genius Games has Midnight Harvest, The Doom From Below, and Murder of Crows out already and has The Horror At Red Hook, A Peculiar Pentad, and October Surprise in the pipeline.  Even Chaosium got out Terrors from Beyond and appears to be set to release new products, including Cthulhu Invictus (Romans!) and Secrets of New Orleans (THAT’S NOT GUMBO!!!).

This is kinda exciting.  The BRP system used for Cthulhu, being straight percentile, has its flaws but it’s super fast for anyone to pick up; it makes a great con game.  For gamers and genre folks, Cthulhu has become like ninjas, pirates, or sexual repression, a ubiquitous trope shoved into everything.  But the original game was really quite good, and it’s nice to see activity and new products so a new generation of gamers can discover the thrill of being held helpless by cannibals, or shooting an invincible cackling wizard, or going nuts and cutting up your friends…

So yay!  If you haven’t ever tried Call of Cthulhu, pick it up – version 6 is the newest but to be honest every version is mostly the same.  Get whatever your FLGS has and try one of these new adventures!  If you need some investigators generated real quick – well,  you can always use my favorite batch of  CoC characters, the Scooby Doo crew!

Is anyone out there playing some real CoC these days?  Report in here!

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2009 ENnies Winners – Questionable At Best

Posted on August 15, 2009 | 50 comments

The winners for the 2009 ENnies, the yearly RPG awards, have been announced at Gen Con.  Let’s review and see how that stacks up to my picks.

Best Cover Art:

  • Gold: CthulhuTech, Catalyst Game Labs
  • Silver: Pathfinder #19: Howl of the Carrion King, Paizo Publishing

I had picked 3:16 for the win, though the CT art is nice enough.  There were a lot of good covers this year.

Best Interior Art

  • Gold: Dark Heresy, Fantasy Flight Games
  • Silver: Mouse Guard, Kinoichi / Archaia Studio Press

I had actually picked CthulhuTech for this category instead.  I feel like the winners for interior art, cover art, and production values are just assigned at random from the “pretty games,” not sure people really distinguish correctly.  In this case I like Dark Heresy’s production values, but the interior art is sparse enough I don’t think it deserves a win for this subcategory specifically.  What art there is splits between good and “black blob style.”  The good ones are really really good but… Gold is a stretch.

Best Cartography

  • Gold: Pathfinder Chronicles Second Darkness Map Folio, Paizo Publishing
  • Silver: Star Wars: Scum and Villainy, Wizards of the Coast

Exactly my picks in that order.

Best Writing

  • Gold: Kobold Quarterly, Open Design
  • Silver: Don’t Lose Your Mind, Evil Hat Productions

I had picked Don’t Lose Your Mind for the gold.  Nothing against KQ, it’s serviceable writing equivalent to Dragon Magazine of times of yore, but this is an instance where the “D&D popularity” factor overwhelms actually artistically superior work.

Best Production Values

  • Gold: Dark Heresy, Fantasy Flight Games
  • Silver: Mouse Guard, Kinoichi / Archaia Studios Press

Though all pretty, I thought the game Anima was actually higher in this all around area.  But it was a very tight field this year with many very deserving contestants.  Yay to everyone.

Best Rules

  • Gold: Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Players Handbook, Wizards of the Coast
  • Silver: A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying, Green Ronin Publishing

I had picked Dark Heresy for best rules.  Though it’s pretty, I don’t think its art should have won over other contenders, but its rules really are better than 4e’s.  “Of course I hate 4e so I’d say that.”  I like Green Ronin but don’t find the SIFRPG rules really that awe-inspiring; they seem more servicable as the line is more about the setting.

Best Adventure

  • Gold: Pathfinder #19: Howl of the Carrion King, Paizo Publishing
  • Silver: P1 King of the Trollhaunts Warrens, Wizards of the Coast

Of course Pathfinder for the gold, they make the best adventures hands down.  Not familiar with “Trollhaunts Warrens” but I never hear anyone talking about it online (while they do talk about Shadowfell Keep, etc.) so I’m suspicious on that count.

Best Monster Supplement

  • Gold: Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Monster Manual, Wizards of the Coast
  • Silver: Dark Heresy Creatures Anathema, Fantasy Flight Games

Oh, major boner here in leaving out Freedom’s Most Wanted for Mutants & Masterminds.  And the MM has been one of the least well received 4e books, definitely no brilliant new monsters that will be part of everyday RPG conversation.  Well, the ENnies got their start coattailing on the 3e release so I reckon you can’t criticize them for sticking close to their roots.

Best Setting

  • Gold: Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, Paizo Publishing
  • Silver: Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Atomic Sock Monkey / Evil Hat Productions

Golarion, the setting of the Pathfinder Chronicles, is the new Greyhawk.  It’s the clear winner, which is a little bit of a shame since the rest of the field is very innovative too – Hot War and Candlewick Manor I wouldn’t have minded seeing in a three way tie for second…  Setting and production values had a lot of very qualified nominees this year.

Best Supplement

  • Gold: CthulhuTech Vade Mecum, Catalyst Game Labs
  • Silver: Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Wizards of the Coast

I had picked Clone Wars, definitely.  Good for Cthulhutech for grabbing the gold.  I just can’t get into the game, and this is from someone who has a huge shelf of Call of Cthulhu stuff. And I’m an Evangelion fan to boot.  You think those two would combine to make me love it but it just doesn’t grab me.  But I don’t begrudge it a win.

Best Aid or Accessory

  • Gold: D&D Insider, Wizards of the Coast
  • Silver: Kobold Quarterly, Open Design

Spare me.  The most delayed, incomplete, incompetent item on the list gets the gold?  Let’s give Boston’s Big Dig awards for engineering too!   (Well, people have in that case as well…)  I am willing to say maybe the 4e rules could win best rules but Insider is one of the worst things WotC has failed to deliver on.  They still haven’t delivered the stuff they said would be part of it at 4e launch!  You only have to visit any online forum to see people unhappy with their current functionality as well.

I had picked KQ for the win, as a post-rant aside.

Best Miniatures Product

  • Gold: Game Mastery Flip-mat: Waterfront Tavern, Paizo Publishing
  • Silver: DU1 Halls of the Giant Kings Dungeon Tiles, Wizards of the Coast

I gave silver to the Tavern but the E-Z Terrain cliffs are so much neater than both these 2d tiles!

Best Regalia

  • Gold: Battletech: The Corps, Catalyst Game Labs
  • Silver: Art of Exalted, White Wolf Publishing

I refused to pick a winner here because “Regalia” is a totally stupid category that’s a mishmash of totally unrelated products.  (I’m surprised the Gygax posthumous novel didn’t win out of sheer Gygaxity though.)

Best Electronic Book

  • Gold: Collection of Horrors: Razor Kids, White Wolf Publishing
  • Silver: Tales of Zobek: An Anthology of Urban Adventures, Open Design

I liked the other Open Design entry better since it’s by Nick Logue, but different strokes.

Best Free Product

  • Gold: Song of Ice and Fire Quickstart, Green Ronin Publishing
  • Silver: Swords and Wizardry, Mythmere Games

Sad.  There was actually a movement generated by this category; many of the entries were quickstart rules, which should not be in this category.  A company can spend their loads of money developing a game and them at no cost to them clip part of it out and release a “quickstart”.  This category should be only for “real” free games that are full games released for free, not advertising teasers.  The ENnie judges apparently don’t see the wisdom in that even though a lot of the community does.

I like Green Ronin but they don’t deserve a win in this category for this reason.  I had picked S&W for the win.

Best Website

  • Gold: Obsidian Portal
  • Silver: Kobold Quarterly

I like Mad Brew Labs more but these are great sites too.

Best Podcast

  • Gold:  All Games Considered
  • Silver:  Order 66

I don’t listen to podcasts, so have no opinion.

Best Game

  • Gold: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, Wizards of the Coast
  • Silver: Dark Heresy, Fantasy Flight Games

Dark Heresy was my pick here!  (I am disregarding 4e because it’s a plant, see below.)

Product of the Year

  • Gold: Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Players Handbook, Wizards of the Coast
  • Silver: Mouse Guard, Kinoichi / Archaia Studios Press

Mouse Guard was my pick here!  (I am disregarding 4e because it’s a plant, see below.)  But this one is even more egregious.  Mouse Guard is a) a complete game, b) uses innovative rules, c) merges with a rich licensed setting…  The D&D PHB, even if you like 4e, is just player rules and is nowhere near a complete game.

Best Publisher

  • Gold:  Wizards of The Coast
  • Silver:  Paizo Publishing

And this boils down the suck-up nature of the ENnies to a clear point.  The company that bungled the 4e launch, failed to deliver on D&D Insider, pulled all their PDF products off  the market permanently, alienated the industry with the GSL and the fans with website shutdowns and failure (till after voting) to deliver a fansite policy – they’re “best publisher?”  It’s OK to like 4e, but to pretend that WotC has done anything but fuck one thing after another up this year – this ENnie is like Pres. Bush giving the Medal of Freedom to George Tenet, or passing up Metallica for Foghat [edit: Jethro Tull] for a Grammy, it simply degrades the award’s worth in the future.

Conclusion – 2 Strikes For The ENnies

ENnies – you are on warning.  Two strikes this year – allowing quickstarts to win in the Free Games category and in blindly allowing WotC/4e to win categories that they are clearly not contenders in (electronic product, best publisher especially).   How is someone else supposed to feel good about their award when it’s clear so many of the decisions reward the *antithesis* of the award category?

Again, sure, maybe the 4e PHB wins best rules.  But the across the board 4e/WotC wins in clearly laughable categories?  What’s up with that?

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Open Gaming FTW! Pathfinder SRD Already Up

Posted on August 14, 2009 | 4 comments

In all the release hullabaloo it’s easy to miss, but Paizo shows how committed they are to open gaming by putting the Pathfinder RPG System Reference Document (or PRD) up the very same day the game released!

Be warned, it’s really slooooooow right now ass hordes of people are paying their $10 to download the whole 500+ page PDF from the Paizo site.  But if you’re just dying to see how Combat Maneuver Bonus is calculated in the final, it’s there in the Combat section!

To prioritize the extra work required to get this out “the day of” the RPG and PDF release (and Gen Con) is an amazing statement about their dedication to open gaming.   Heck, many OGL games leave it to the fans to create the SRD, or do it months-to-years after they release the game.  It’s great to see that Paizo doesn’t hold any archaic notions of how that will “inhibit their sales.”  They are releasing a free SRD, a $10 PDF, and a $50 book on the same day; the first print run of the book is already sold out and a mob of people at Gen Con are surrounding a huge stack of books trying to get theirs.  Congratulations to Paizo for understanding at a deep level that the open model is not “charity” or a detriment to sales, but in fact is a force multiplier that will bring you even more success!

Somebody give me a “Hell yeah!”

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