Returning to the Fold: Aremorican Addendum

Every good adventurer needs a Pigeon Companion.

So last myself and T. Hamingston managed to get together, collect our girlfriends, and play a game of Labyrinth Lord using my Aremorican Addendum. It's kind of cool how easy it is to get people to play games with you when you ask for "help playtesting." No, seriously. Try it out sometime and see how the reticent player in your life suddenly shows up ;)

But it was a good time! Let me list each other players' credentials so we get a better idea of what's going on.

T.Ham: My longtime player, having played the Basic and Expert part of the BECMI game, 3.5 a good bit, a dash of White Wolf gaming in forms of Aberrant, Vampie, and Mage, Palladium (to the extent anybody can play Palladium), Donjon, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and Dead Meat: Ultima Carneficina Dello Zombie.

A.O.(my girlfriend): Has so far played 4th edition, on my two-session runthrough of the system. Has notably complained about magic constantly missing (due to bad luck with rolls, but still), and about how combat takes forever to resolve. These are the two same complaints I had with the system. She's a big fan of Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland, that Dracula movie with Keanu Reeves, and B-grade zombie movies. No wonder we're dating, right? ;)

J.B. (Hamingston's girlfriend): Has played nothing, ever. This would be her first roleplaying game of any sort. She was the reason I was nervous, since it's easier to game with people that already know how to play, and with people who know the sword and sorcery, fantasy, steampunk, or some sort of popular gaming genre.

The result: Everybody had fun! They managed to storm two of the towers, and smash some Plague Orcs into pulp. They looted a magic shield and managed to accumulate a small pile of gold and silver, just enough to whet their appetites for more looting and slaying. The session unfortunately ended short of what we would have liked since I had to get my uniform back from the tailor's, but such is life.

Some quick highlights, then I'll get out of your hair:

• Labyrinth Lord is easy as hell to teach to new players. Character creation took no more than five minutes, once I explained dice nomenclature and how both hit points and armor class works. THAC0 (my preferred notation) was also explained.
• The character sheets look great. No, seriously. If I haven't mentioned them before, they're the ones located here: http://dwdstudios.com/node/201. Use them. Seriously, they're beautiful. It might take a little tweaking to get them exactly where you want them, since you have to make sure your printer will put ink on the very edge of the page, but by god is it worth it. Easily the best-looking character sheet I've used in 10+ years of gaming.
• I used the house rule where on a natural 20, you not only do maximum damage, but you also get an additional attack. The caveat is that you can't make the attack with your primary weapon. For example, the Crusader got a natural 20 on his first attack roll of the game, where I informed him of the rule. He then decided to knock the orc on his ass with his shield, and then chopped the orc's head off. Badass.



Snicker-snack, motherslapper.

• The other best house rule I used was the one where you tell me how your enemy dies. It can be anything- you earned it. The Crusader's sword turned vorpal, slicing heads and emptying braincases onto the dusty ground. The Diabolist was conjuring pillars of fire and exploding her foes like popcorn. The Marksman was emptying bolts straight into her foes' heart, and through their eyeballs. This really helped people loosen up, since it's a little silly to hear yourself say, "My bolt goes straight through his eyeball, killing him," but damned if it wasn't awesome. It helped that my players were rolling hot, often killing zombies and orcs with a single hit, so they got to feel pretty awesome while still being in danger. 
• The Crusader (bless his soul) managed to get attacked by a putrid, obese, bestial plague orc with five-inch long nails that managed to rake him through his armor. I decided that this particular big nasty would grant Pus Pox, and he dutifully obliged by failing his saving throw. I informed him that the ragged wound had infected him, but hadn't taken effect yet. The next time we play, it will.
• The party ended the game by descending 40+ feet from a trapdoor in the laboratory/tower into sheer darkness. If you've read the module, it's a pretty badass place to be and my favorite section that I never thought of in the initial game. Hopefully they have as much fun as I have next time. We should be able to game again soon- wish me luck!

Aremorican Addendum: Playtesting!

Today's the day that I get to take my recently released Labyrinth Lord supplement, Aremorican Addendum Volume 1: Player Option for a test drive! Exciting, right? It's a good chance to see what works and what doesn't, and to see what character options are the most popular. It's been a metric of mine for a long time that if you can't decide what class to be, then the classes are all awesome and your job is done. Keeping in mind player preferences, that is- there's no accounting for taste, right?

Anyways, it's going to be a group of four, with T. Hamingston being one of the usual suspects, and also my girlfriend and his as the other two. Three PCs isn't bad, especially not if you consider that half of the time, I'm DMing for two PCs instead of three. It's exciting, because Ham's girlfriend has never played any sort of roleplaying game before, isn't really into sword and sorcery and hell, doesn't even talk that much. So hopefully we can have a good session without me running her over with my evil, evil killer DM instincts. That's sarcasm, by the way. I know we're going to have fun, since we always do.

The module of choice in this situation is going to be none other than my own Servants of Plague module, mostly because it's the one that's freshest in my memory and all of my attempts to sit down and read through one of the more classic modules like Keep on the Borderlands or the Outpost on the Edge of the Far Reaches (available free from the Warlock's Home Brew, if you've missed it) have failed for a week straight. This is due to my personality, mostly- in case it doesn't come across in the blog, I'm an excitable fool, always chattering and thinking and writing and tinkering and all of that fun stuff. I'm not particularly good at sitting still unless it's at my computer and even then I'm not very good at it, preferring to write a couple of hundred words all at one sitting, without any particular foresight or direction. My girlfriend jokes that I'm bipolar sometimes. That just shows you how cruel she is.

But back to gaming! Servants of Plague is actually a pretty good module, assuming that your tastes in fantasy run towards B-movie zombies, nastiness, and a little bit of grit. For example, the first time I ran the game, the players made it to the first room of the keep, where the garbage pit lies. I looked at my skeletal notes, and decided that a couple of plague orcs were there, looking for scraps to eat or possibly any sorts of missed treasure. The players rode in on their horses, and the plague orcs, surprised, burst out from underneath and beside the piles of garbage. A deadly game of hide and seek broke out, as the plague orcs used the enormous filth piles to hide behind, while hurling straight lengths of rusted metal as javelins and smaller chunks as slingstones. One plague orc leapt out and attempted to use his own intestines to dismount a player!

The players did eventually win, though we weren't able to complete the module. It's for that reason that I'm using it again on poor Ham, since he had only gotten roughly halfway through. There's plenty of secrets to be had, even if I played it "by the book" both times. That's the real secret to using the Servants of Plague and something that I think marks a difference between old-school and new school; old-school gives you the bones and says "make something of it, or just steal from it, whatever" and new school says "I know better than you, if you don't run this as written you're doing it wrong."

But I digress. Heavily.

Servants of Plague Translated!

Something seems different about you,
Servants of Plague.

In case you are more comfortable in German than in English, the fine folks at Herr Der Labyrinth have translated my adventure, Servants of Plague into German. I know, right? How cool is that? In addition, their maps are better looking and cleaner than mine, so it deserves a check out even if you don't speak German.

Seriously, they did an awesome job and I couldn't be happier that they've translated my work. Thanks for everything, guys! You guys are awesome.

Here's to productive partnerships with our German brothers and sisters in the future.

Servants of Plague Released TODAY!

Even though it's my birthday, I'm giving you guys a present: The long-delayed Servants of Plague pdf, available now from Scribd. It's designed for a small low-level party, and it's a fairly minimalistic set of notes, clocking in at under 20 pages. That's despite there being stats for three new monsters, a couple of new magic items, five or six diseases, 20+ areas, and two maps. If you're looking for a quick bang-for-your-buck deal, then Servants of Plague has got your number. For the low, low price of free, you can have a 20-page quick-playing adventure for you and your buddies.

Even though it's up on Scribd, I'm still not sold on the cover layout or the two-column style of the text on the inside of the pdf. Let me know what you guys think- good, bad, or in between.


I hope you like it as much as I liked writing it!

The link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35352402/Servants-of-Plague

The forum link is here.

The German-language version is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35878497/DieDienerschaftderSeuche

A Map for Servants of Plague

Just a quick question: Are maps an area of serious concern? Would a seriously amateur map (drawn by me, more than likely) be especially noticeable? Is a bad map worse than no map whatsoever?

Just wondering. The closer my module gets to completion, the more questions pop up before it's ready to be seen by the public.