Inside My Go-To Gaming Cupboard

A couple of years ago there was a meme floating around RPG blogs where people would post the a pic of their game shelf and reveal a bit about what their choices said about them.

Now I've never been one to jump on a  bandwagon - more schlep along after it several years after it has whizzed by.
So here we go! This is what I turn to for inspiration when dreaming up encounters and adventures.

Looking at this picture, my obsession with monster books and dungeon masters' guides is pretty clear. I've got Monster Manuals from three editions here dating back to first. The first ed Monster Manual was one of my favourite DnD books for a long time, especially as I didn't actually own it but my best friend did. We would spend hours poring over the creatures and imagining what it would be like to fight them. It was at the height of the "DnD is Satanic" scare and having a book with devils and demons in it at the age of eight was pretty scary. Now it's still great for a flick through but the monsters are often wildly unbalanced, particularly when you get to those with magic resistance.

However I regularly turn to the great 4e monster books Monster Vault and Threats to Nentir Vale, even though I am running a 5e campaign. The simple but effective powers that a lot of the monsters in these books possess are cool for spicing up an important battle. I hack them for use in 5e, reducing hit points and armour class as well as stats to fit in more with the maths of the newer edition, but it's not too much work. I also have the Dark Sun Creature Catalog from 4e for when I need a strange creature (the 5e Monster Manual is great but sometimes you want something completely different!)

Another monster book that's really cool is Out of the Pit, the compilation of the beasties from the Fighting Fantasy game books that really got me into fantasy in the mid 1980s.
This might be less familiar to US readers but it's a treasure trove of mad ideas (stuff ripped off from DnD, yes, but other more original and esoteric monsters also). It's usually pretty cheap on eBay so track one down if you can.

As I mentioned I LOVE reading through Dungeon Masters Guides and there are a few of these here, including the 4e edition which is one of the best ever produced IMO. I have the third edition DMG II which doesn't have too many rules (rare for a 3e book) and has lots of advice on running towns etc.

I have a few select adventures too - including Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Princes of the Apocalypse, the Pathfinder AP Rise of the Runelords - just stuff you can easily dip into for an idea on a monster, encounter or NPC if you're stuck. And I just added the Goodman Games books from their recent Kickstarter - GM Gems, Dungeon Alphabet and the brand new Monster Alphabet. They're absolute treasure troves for fans or random tables. You could write a whole, totally random adventure using these three books and a bag of dice (now - that's an idea I'm going to have to try one day soon!)

I have smaller adventures mostly from third party, OSR publishers - I have stuff from Zak Smith and Lamentations of the Flame Princess in the right hand pile - just smaller bits you could throw into a campaign as well as the awesome Red and Pleasant Land.

The box sets complete the pile - of course the Monster Vault tokens as well as the fine 5e Starter Set and the awesome 4e adventure Madness at Gardmore Abbey which I hope to run in the future, probably hacked for 5e. It's a great sandboxy environment with nice random elements - harking back to the likes of the original Castle Ravenloft - but it does get quite "dungeon crawly" at times. So I think it would probably take an entire campaign to run it in 4e, with every fight taking over an hour! In 5e it could be faster and a lot of fun.

Er, at the back are some straw hats, stuck there since the last beach holiday.

Note that this is not even a quarter of my ENTIRE game collection. My 5e rulebooks sit here under my laptop, ready to be busted out on a regular basis. I have a whole crate of modules and other stuff next to my bed, that's my "waiting to be read" box. I have a couple of crates of modules out in my shed, mostly stuff that I've already played through or I didn't find too inspiring. And I have a LOAD of maps, dungeon tiles, and magazines in my attic. It's kinda taking over the house… but I am sure plenty of you know how that feels!

Back from the brink!

It's been over a month sadly. A combination of factors meant that November was a complete write-off. First the internet went on us, until November 20. Then the laptop computer completely died, eliciting a several-hundred-euro bill to recover all our precious files (no, we hadn't backed up…)

A crushing schedule in work, plus multiple bouts of sickness that swept through the entire family in several waves meant that it was largely a month to forget. 

And I certainly didn't have much free time to blog!

But just because I haven't blogged in ages doesn't mean I should give up completely, right?

I DID manage to get a SMALL amount of gaming done and I thought I'd use this post to update you a little. I have some hard-earned time off work this week so hopefully I'll get the chance to add some more posts. In the meantime, here's what rocked my world and rolled my dice:

1) Dungeons and Diesel! One of the coolest things of the past month or so was watching Vin Diesel get back to his DnD roots. I'm not a fan of the Fast & Furious franchise (nothing against it, I've just not seen the movies) but I appreciate the star power of someone like Vin Diesel. Watching him join forces with the team from Geek and Sundry and the Nerdist to roll some dice was awesome. And you can really see Vin getting back into the swing of things, the critical hits are classic!

I wasn't sure what to expect from the video but it's not too long and really entertaining. If you've not seen it yet, check it out here: Vin Diesel Plays Dungeons and Dragons Extended Version

2) Matt Mercer! Linked to the above. I wasn't familiar with the Geek and Sundry or Nerdist guys before I saw the Vin Diesel vid. I was impressed by how laid back, cool and talented they all seem to be. Matt Mercer is my new favourite DM. He joins an eclectic mix of guys including Zak Sabbath/Smith, Chris Perkins, and Mike Shea who have inspired my game. His main talent seems to be keeping the narrative flowing and in this instance, PACING. 

I heard an interview recently where he said he was hoping to get a 90 minute game with Vin D, he actually got 25 minutes. And yet he managed to cram in three encounters! He knows when to up the ante, raise the pace, and when to end an encounter at a climatic moment. There was a lot to learn for family games where everyone needs to keep their attention span up. The casual player (like my parents!) will not sit and mull tactics over a 90 minute miniatures battle - we want to cram in as much action as possible! Watching Mercer at work really inspired me to tighten my DMing chops further.

3) Halloween Special! On that note, I ran a Halloween game for my wife and parents based on Mercer's scenario about the curse of Bronnbog (sp?!) 

We only had an hour or so to play but having seen this guy run it in 25 minutes, it was no problem! I even managed to squeeze in an extra encounter with a group of nasty, warty giant toads. The player all loved it and they especially loved the faster pace I set. I will now be looking to make each encounter last 15 minutes, tops. 

4) Slaying Lolth! As I mentioned before, I also have a "real" DnD group of more hardcore gamers who try and meet up a couple of times a month. This month we managed to find time for just one session, but it was a big one. All year I've been running a version of the DnD encounter adventure War of Everlasting Darkness, expanded and converted to 5e. It culminated in a huge battle against the Demon Queen of the Drow, Lolth, deeming the Spellcaves of Eryndlyn. With my son I built a massive game board using every bit of cavern terrain I could dredge out of our shed! That was NOT a 15 minute encounter I can assure you - it lasted almost four hours, but it was pretty cool and resulted in hard-fought victory for the PCs. With the characters edging towards 12th level it marks the end of the longest campaign I've managed to sustain (yes, 11 months, but I think that's longer than most these days…)

For some reason I cannot post any pics today, but I am gonna post this blog, just to break the radio silence. Adios for now….

Do we really need all six ability scores?

Yesterday I posted about hacking the ability scores to simply reduce the range to 0-5, and using the same, single number as your modifier.
To further simplify matters, I've been thinking about crunching the number of ability scores from six down to four. Here's my thoughts:

                                                                     They've been there since the beginning.                                                                     But I argue that the numbers down the right column are really the ones that matter.

STRENGTH: You've gotta keep strength, as it's a key indicator of how hard a character can hit in melee. It's one of the first things any kid will ask when creating a hero: "How strong am I?"
A single figure that you add to all melee attack rolls and all damage rolls is simple enough.
Lots of peolpe also confuse Strength with toughness (AKA Constitution) and for simplicity's sake I'm merging the two. You can therefore add your Strength score to your hit points each level. Constitution goes out the window.

SKILL: I'm keeping Dexterity, but I'm calling it Skill. That is a more accessible word for youngsters. It is also more accurate, because you add your Dex bonus to ranged attacks. And yet in real life, a person can be incredibly un-dextrous and still shoot a bow like a dream.
So Skill represents a person's nimbleness as well as their actual aptitude in shooting, throwing etc. You add your Skill score to ranged attack rolls as well as damage with ranged weapons.

MIND: Lots of people can't get their head around the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom. I mean, some people get it right away, but I guess they're the more intelligent players. Or is it the wise players? I'm not sure. Mind might be a better description of everything from mental aptitude to psychic toughness, magical ability and plain common sense.
This is the ability score you add your spell attack rolls if you're a Cleric or Wizard. It would also be used for perception/spot checks. It would be used in a fairly high number of saving throws against magical effects too - so it cannot be treated as a complete dump stat for non-spellcasters.

LUCK: Luck is a new one. For this I drew inspiration on both Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks of my youth. It always seemed appropraite, and somewhat edgy, when you were called upon to "Test Your Luck". It meant something arbitrary, unfair and ultimately very dangerous was about to occur. But while there would still be Luck checks and Luck saving throws, I'd also like to use Luck in a different way. The idea of luck "running out" is quite cool and has been used in both the DCC and FF systems. So perhaps each point of luck you have could represent one reroll per day. It gives players (especially my target audience, younger and new players) some get-out. But it's still a resource that needs to be managed carefully.
And when your luck runs out...

NB: I'm obviously dumping Charisma. It has its uses, but for new people starting to play RPGs, I think it offers too much of a get-out clause. Instead of relying on your character's high charisma and rolling a dice, why not act out the dialogue and get a little immersed in the action?
Of course that's not everyone's cup of tea but I think it's important to establish that this is not simply a game of trying to roll highest on a d20. And hey, if you get bogged down, you can always call for a Luck check.

Sense and Sensability Scores

Look, I know that ability scores have a sweet place in all our hearts.
I know we all have our favoured ways of rolling them up.
We all recall the unbridled joy the first time we rolled a character with an 18 Strength.
We all remember working out ways to cheat at getting higher scores.

Not a bad roll.

But they confuse every newbie that's ever sat at my table. My dad still cannot work it out at times.
The way the modifiers are calculated are confusing. And then you say: "Roll d20 and add your Strength bonus" and they inevitably end up adding their actual Strength score and it all gets very muddled.

There's no point in having two numbers to represent one stat.
The ability scores were part of the original game devised by Gygax and Arneson (although a surprisingly limited part, compared to the influence your choice of class might have on character progression).
But now it's all about the modifiers.

To that end I was intrigued in the days of the Dnd Next playtests to read somewhere (and I cannot for the life of me recall where, but I am convinced it was Mike Mearsl that wrote it) that they were seriously considering doing away with the old roll 3d6 type ability scores. Because I was thinking the exact same thing at the time.

Now Wizards eventually shied away from doing this, and I guess that nostalgia and familiarity are the main reasons. After all, telling someone they've an 18 Charisma is how most of us met our wives, right?
But in the same way they clung for far too long to the morass that was descending armor class, I think it could be time for the old school ability scores to take a hike.

The math is weird anyway, as rolling 3d6 or 4d6 drop lowest or whatever's your poison gives you a nice bell curve... while the modifiers they translate to are fairly flat.


Why not give every score a rating from, say, 0 to 5? That's your Strength score. That's what you add when you roll a d20. That is it. Nothing else to worry about.


With that in mind, I started to devise a more simple and streamlined version of Dnd which uses the 0-5 system (something like a retro clone but not TOO cloney). I've been tapping away at it all week and already written up most of the races and classes. I've also reduced the number of ability scores down to four and tweaked several other bits of the game, all in a view to make it more playable for complete newbies, and young kids.

Having the 0-5 system is handy because you can give them, say, five points to divide between stats at the beginning of the game and the system feels "fair". Then as characters progress up the levels, you can offer them more points to spend. It's simple but it still plays quite a lot like pure Dnd would, in practice.

I'll tell you more tomorrow.

 Kickstarting the blog! 

Wow... nearly two weeks since my last post. Sorry, that's pretty shameful. I have been busy in work, and kinda sick at the same time, which is not exactly conducive to finding the energy to blog.
Following the holiday weekend here in Ireland I'm hoping I can post a blog every day this week and try to get things back on (some sort of rickety) track.

But it's 10.45pm so I'm already running out of time to meet the target on Day One!
I'll go for a simple topic, so ... the projects I have backed or am currently looking at on Kickstarter.
Along with print-on-demand, this website is possibly the greatest thing ever to happen to gaming.

So many games, books and miniatures are being produced it's getting hard to keep up (not least in financial terms). From the gigantic success of the Reaper Bones miniatures (got in early and backed all three of those) to more niche projects, it's opened up tons of possibilities. My miniatures collection would be half its size if it wasn't for Bones. And I also got some neat books and boardgames over recent years, with no sign of things slowing down. In fact there are so many decent Kickstarters out there right now I do worry about whether it's reaching saturation point, but let's fret about that later. Here's some of the stuff I'm enjoying right now:




Folklore: The Affliction is one of those games I tried to resist but the number of minis just got too large and I caved! It's in its final hours as I type this and it has become a very good deal indeed with (currently) 160 miniatures for $149. I am a huge fan of the Ravenloft campaign setting and this reminded me of those adventures. It's not one for the kids, but in a few years they'll be old enough. I hope to break it out and play it as a board game but also maybe run some Ravenloft-style Dnd games ... even the world map/board included might be useful for an RPG campaign.

Here's that cool-looking map. Banana not included, I guess....

Zombicide: Black Plague: I missed the first Zombicide Kickstarter campaign but I caught up with the Prison Outbreak set. I've enjoyed several enjoyable games, particularly with my best friend who is crazy for the zombie genre. The number of miniatures in the box is great ... but I never really went for any of the other expansions, it was too samey. So I was stoked when I saw their most recent offering was medieval themed. This was a chance to get a new flavour of Zombicide PLUS some cool minis I can use in Dnd games. Not just zombies but necromancers, skeletons, even  murderous crows.

Death By Dice: Treasure and Loot Dice I am obsessed with dice. Cannot stop buying them. But these are dice with a difference. I acknowledge I wouldn't find a use for ALL fo these. So I bought a select few for helping to decide potions, magic items and treasure bundles on the fly. Younger players might enjoy rolling them too, to see what they pick up when they loot a body or open a chest.


Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG: I am absolutely in love with DCC although I haven't played it as much as I'd like. It really captures the wonder and craziness of early Dnd type games with a rule set that is somehow both wilder and tighter. It harks back to the days before fantasy became standardised and "vanilla" - before the Lord of the Rings movies and World of Warcraft etc. Those all did great things to spread the gospel of fantasy gaming ... but some of the wonder was lost. DCC RPG is gonzo without being silly, the characters start low-powered but can swing between insanely powerful and flat DEAD at the drop of a hat.

I must stress it's something I've been playing with my regular Dnd group as opposed to my family ... the more hardcore gaming guys really appreciate the flavour of the game.
 As for my family, I just feel they wouldn't quite get the subtleties and would end up confusing the two rule sets.
 But I do have plans to SOMEDAY get a huge group of relative newbies, give them all zero-level characters and see who has the wits to survive longest! DCC is currently on Kickstarter for fourth printing with a special deal for newcomers to the game, do not miss it.

Monster Alphabet Another one from Goodman Games (who make DCC) this is a sort of build-your-own monster toolkit. I cannot wait for my copy to arrive, I also ordered the GM Gems and Dungeon Alphabet to go with it. While the PDFs have landed, unfortunately the hard copies are taking longer than I expected. I really want the "proper" book because I'm getting less and less patient with reading PDFs. After a hard day in front of a screen I find I want a proper book. Also these are the types of books to stick on your shelf and flip through a few pages for entertainment or inspiration. Hopefully they'll be worth the wait!



Cthulhu Wars: Another one I missed the first time round. Since then I've seen the miniatures crop up on various other blogs and I've been drooling both at their size and sheer weirdness. What I like is that many of the Lovecraftian creatures look like nothing else available out there in miniature form. So I jumped at the second wave of the game. I am actually not going for the board game itself. While I'm sure I'd enjoy playing it, I really don't have time or space for ANOTHER board game. I am really just after the add-ons. Specifically, the miniatures.

The Others: 7 Sins I've also got into this one for the miniatures, although the game itself could be cool and the company has pedigree there. But THOSE DEMONS!! A ton of different types, again many resembling nothing I've ever seen before, giving even more opportunity to confound and terrorise players in an RPG setting.

AND TWO I AM RESISTING (FOR NOW...)

Super Dungeon Explore Legends SDE look awesome and appeals to my love of 80s and 90s video game RPGs, where I cut my teeth on the likes of Zelda and Secret of Mana. But for now, as I said above, I don't have room for tons more games in my life. And while the miniatures are super cute, their chibi look means that they don't easily crossover for use in other games.

Sword and Sorcery: Ditto as above. Looks cool but I already have Heroquest, Descent, and the Dungeons and Dragons adventure board games. Do I need any more? Do I? Hmm...
Plus the real clincher here is that so far the miniatures are all pretty generic fantasy fare ... orcs and the like. I already have more orc miniatures that I'd ever care to put on the table at one time. I don't need more.

But man - those Super Dungeon Explore heroes DO look cool!

Another Newbie joins the fold

I had friends staying here over the weekend - my old pal from back in school days plus his wife and two kids. 20 years ago he was one of the guys I gamed with - mostly Warhammer stuff, painting miniatures and a few board games. We played some Dnd too but it was never our go-to game. We rarely had enough players to form a proper table.

Despite most of the weekend being consumed by chasing toddlers around the house or park, we also played a few games. We squeezed in Zombicide which is always a blast, and tried the relatively new Dnd adventure board game Temple of Elemental Evil (decent enough but predictably, it is very similar to previous games in the series). On Friday night we decided to play Dnd.

His wife had NEVER gamed before but she was refreshingly enthusiastic about the whole thing. She actually loves the fantasy milieu and is a big Harry Potter fan so I pretty much knew she would play a wizard of some kind. My friend had a fighter and my wife brought out her usual ranger character.

I had no prep time so I just bust out the DCC adventure Sailors on the Starless Sea. It is fairly straightforward but really evocative, it deviates somewhat from the hoary old orcs and goblins fare, with a lot more sinister beastman stuff going on, and I had also run a (hacked) version of it for my full 5e campaign over the past couple of months. So I was familiar with how the adventure went, and also had some ideas how to make it more appropriate for the newbie group.

Well worth picking up. It has a great mix of pulp, weirdness and creepiness

The session went down a treat and was great fun. Here's a few reminders about things you can do to help new players:

1) Give them obvious choices ... with consequences. In the original adventure, the PCs are presented with a path up to the castle and are pretty much railroaded past some plant zombies and then into the courtyard, unless they're clever and go off and think of more inventive ways to approach. In my version, there was a path leading straight up to the gatehouse and another path veering off left with a sinister hanging tree (the zombie encounter) just visible in the distance. The players were given a choice. They actually chose left, fought the weird plant zombies and then snuck into the courtyard through a crack in the wall.

There's them weird plant zombies again.

2) Make them feel useful. On a couple of occasions - in the tomb of the chaos warrior and on the longboat - there are strange runes. I ensured that the wizard character could decipher these runes. The wizard player felt invaluable. If she hadn't been there, it appeared, then the runes would have remained a mystery. Of course I might have figured out a way for a different set of characters to work out the runes, eg they might have been old dwarven glyphs if I had a dwarf in the party. But the illusion remains: if that player wasn't there, then the party would have been stuck.

Not sure where this pic is from but it's a cool image for the adventure

3) Make them feel powerful. Keep the monster AC low. Keep their hit points down. There's nothing more frustrating than swinging and missing, swining and missing. But ensure the monsters are also dangerous - make sure they CAN hit and CAN do some damage to keep the players on their toes.
The beastmen in this adventure only have 3hp (I made them 4e style minions so one hit would kill them, regardless). But I also made sure that if they hit, they delivered 1d6+1 damage which is quite a lot versus low level characters.
Once they were familiar with the combat rules, I upped the ante. I threw a wight AND a flameskull at the party at one stage. My dice were rather cold, but they survived and it was a memorably tense encounter.

As I said my friend was a big Warhammer fan so it was good to roll out some beastmen

4) Pay attention to their character sheets. They've only just created these fresh new characters so both as PCs and DMs it is important to remind each other of what the character can do, and what their personality quirks might be. I saw that the fighter had chaotic tendencies so I tempted him with the chaos warrior's helment and the cache of hold on top of the disintegrating pyramid. I saw that the wizard had Levitate on her character sheet so I let her use it to zip up the pyramid edge. I encouraged the fighter to use his action surge to close down the final boss and smack him in the face with an axe.

A lot of fun was had and we agreed to play again on the Sunday before they went home. It was a little more sedate as we were all exhausted after a busy weekend, all with work or travel the next morning. But everyone enjoyed and I'm certain there'd be no problem getting another game underway next time they visit!
Maybe not converts for life, but I'm still spreading the gospel. Job's a good one.

The adventure continues ... battling for birthday cake in the 3D dungeon

It was another Saturday and a chance to continue the adventure with my son. I've been pretty busy the past couple of weekends so it was nice to have him demanding we play a game from Thursday this week! As it happened I was clearing out the loft that morning and dug out a huge box containing my prized 3D dungeon.

This was the first big project I worked on when I got back into gaming in 2011. Before the bug truly hit, my goal was just to create a 3D board that I could play games like Heroquest or Warhammer Quest on ... and I thought I'd be okay with a few orcs, zombies and skeletons to populate it ... suffice to say my collection has grown somewhat since then ...

This is one of the more advanced rooms ... with spider and fomorian

Anyway, this was back in the BC days (Before Children) so I had plenty of time to work on the project. Pretty much any weekend, or any day I was on a late shift in work, I could put in a couple hours. And I had space to leave polystyrene, knives, glue and paint scattered about the shed which would not really be advisable these days! I managed to make a pretty sizeable dungeon, but as the baby was born and life turned manic, the work had to be put to one side and the rooms and corridors packed away in a dusty box to be home to a few fat spiders.

All the while I was making it, though, I was thinking how someday I might get to use it in a game with my son ... as yet unborn. Yesterday it got a new lease of life as we took over the lounge floor and spread out the dungeon to his design. He delighted in seeing the water room with the dragon fountain, and the pit full of snakes.

Every dungeon needs a dinosaur. And in the background you can just see the snake pit.

It was his birthday during the week so this time the "treasure" was bits of left over cake and blue icing! Cut up pretty small - that blue icing does crazy things to kids.

We had the Paw PAtrol out again as the heroes of the expedition! And when he realised their vehicles could fit inside the corridors - wow. There was huge excitement. I actually argued AGAINST bringing a fire engine into a dungeon but hey, it's as much his game as mine. And it paid off when he started to use the imagination: "Marhsall will climb the ladder to get to the bridge. He can use his water cannon to shoot the dragon's mouth".

We needed to take over the living room floor to fit the dungeon in!

He also put the Roper in the water room because he thought it looked like an octopus.
And he has a point...

'It's a bit lika an octopus! He likes the water'. Fair enough....

By the way, in case anyone's interested in the making of the dungeon:

The technique was pretty simple and the early rooms and corridors were fairly basic. I would get a flat sheet of polystyrene, score it with a pen and ruler to divide it into a grid of 1.5 inch squares. Onto this I used chunks of packaging polystyrene cut into bricks to build up walls, pillars and doorways.

Initially I was using some messy epoxy glue but then I found Hard As Nails which is great stuff. It is cheap (I get it in the bargain store for 1.50 euro) and it has a texture like tile filler, so it glues pretty much anything. It is not quite literally Hard As Nails, you do get the occasional breakage, but a dab more glue does the trick.

 I coated all this with a mixture of plaster-of-paris, water and PVA glue, to give it a rocky effect and seal it. This was important as if I wanted to spray the polystyrene, it needed to be sealed otherwise it would melt when sprayed.  I then discovered Stone Effect spray paint. It created a decent finish which I sometimes then painted over AGAIN with basic acrylic craft paint and a large, cheap brush.

Bear in mind this was back in 2011 and my modelling and painting skills / knowledge were EXTREMELY rusty after a 15 year hiatus! But at least I had plenty of time to work on them...

The later rooms got a bit more sophisticated. I added extra features like pits, pillars, wooden bridges (using coffee stirrers stained with brown ink), stalagmites (chunks of polystyrene coated liberally with the PVA mix as above). I also inserted a few wall features, mostly stuff scraped from bargain stores like plastic skulls, shields and so on.

A Miniature Matter

Partly to try out the panoramic feature on my new camera and partly because I thought the shelf just looked cool, I took this pic at the weekend. It shows some of my larger monsters and terrain which I have on display (sorta - this shelf is located in a shed in my back garden).
This represents less than 1/10th of my total miniatures collection though. I am lucky that we built the new shed a couple years back as my collection was burgeoning and I made sure to put in plenty of shelves! However most of the other stuff is packed away in plastic shoeboxes. I'll have to show you that collection some time...

A few of my favourite minis are hiding among the pile on this shelf!

Included in the view are some sweet mini including an Otherworld Purple Worm which is HUGE, a toy squid which I converted into a giant Kraken, a couple of Balors, a cool Mage Knight giant with a dwarf riding his back, a demon statue resembling the cover of the first Player's Handbook, an old Ral Partha skeletal mammoth, and lots of Reaper Bones minis including a big zombie dragon. It is worth noting for scale that the smallest mini you can plainly see here, the bright green demon near the centre, is actually a 'large' creature (an old Citadel Greater Demon of Nurge - A Great Unclean One to use the lexicon) that towers over most human-sized minis.

Seeing this collection on camera has actually made me think about how I use minis in my games and whether it's actually worth using them anymore. Bear in mind that I built up most of this collection when 4e was at its height and minis seemed ESSENTIAL. Then Wizards pulled the plug, there were no more miniatures, no more dungeon tiles and very little in the way of support with game maps etc. Luckily companies like Paizo took up the mantle and I'm sure the success of their own Pathfinder lines has made Wizards do the U-turn that resulted in new sets of official Dungeons and Dragons miniatures reappearing over the past year.
In the meantime however I do think Paizo has stolen a march. The quality of the detail on its miniatures seems better (although both ranges are produced by WizKids I believe?)
But more importantly the range includes more weird and wonderful creatures.

When I started collecting minis again after a 15 year hiatus I was desperate for lots of orcs, goblins, skeletons, zombies. But those come easy. I soon realised that it was time to indulge the fancies of my youth. As a teenager I always wanted, but could never afford, those metal DnD miniatures of weird beasts like Ropers, Mimics, Cloakers, Displacer Beasts.

I was delighted to be able to get hold of these creatures at last. Even if the resale value of some of them was quite high, eBay was a great source. And I figured I was making some sort of investment ... sure these things never drop in value, right?

Miniatures are fantastic for playing with the more "casual" gamer and kids love them. They're essentially an imagination aid and are great for simply showing to a newbie: "This is what you see right in front of you now". They also really help work out positioning, who is standing where and how far away they are. And if you've got a decent collection of terrain and minis it helps make a battle seem epic.

But they can also bog things down. When you should be roleplaying and stretching your imagination, instead you're counting squares. Measuring area effects down to the inch. Checking positioning like an overly-complex game of chess. Also, you can spend hours building a scene using terrain then feel compelled to use it. You have to railroad your players into that fight, otherwise those hours are wasted. That's a bit of a trap it's best to avoid.

Not everyone wants to play a grid-based tactical game.

Over time I've learned to not rely on miniatures for every single scene, every single combat. If I do use them I'm likely to be free and easy with movement and area effects (within reason). 13th Age has a great system for loosening up movement - combatants are either 'Engaged' or 'Nearby' or 'Far Away'. That means you don't have to waste loads of time counting squares, but you know who's going toe-to-toe with the ogre and who is hiding at the back.


Meanwhile, back to the picture above ... at the far back on the left you might just be able to see the heads of a Tiamat model I made for under 15 euro. I'll need to do a blog post telling you how I made that, someday soon...

A problem of pace

Adventures designed to last four hours, but really last six.
Dungeons so large that it takes five hours of real time just to schlep between the interesting bits.
Boss fights that drag on for 90 minutes.
The biggest problem I encountered early on when playing with family was the pacing of the Dnd RPG. As I mentioned in a previous post, most people are used to playing board games which run half hour to an hour in length.
Unless your an aficionado, even a three-hour session of Monopoly would feel like a marathon.

Dnd takes a while to set up, a while to get going, and there's an expectation of some sort of satisfactory climax to the story. But it felt impossible to cram that into, say, two hours.
This was especially a problem with fourth edition, where even a simple fight would likely run to an hour. Fifth edition promised you could play in an hour (I remember Mike Mearls talking about this during play testing). But it's not really the case. You can run an encounter in an hour, but not really a proper adventure.

Beating the clock is more difficult than beating any dragon

When I designed what I thought were "short" adventures with four encounters, these ran far too long and in general we were only half way through at the end of three hours' play.
I compared this to the experience you'd get spending the same amount of time watching an action movie or even playing a video game.
It didn't compare.
A fight in an action movie might last five minutes tops. A big climatic battle? Twenty minutes.
The number of beats you're hitting in terms of fights, character interaction and exploration of fantastic locations just did not measure up.
Here's some of the things I started doing to tackle that problem. I did them piecemeal, and some of them seem simple in retrospect, but they added up and now I'm well able to squeeze a decent adventure into two hours.


Dump Healing Surges (or whatever they're called these days): They effectively just give your players more hit points. This makes them harder to threaten, diluting the tension of the game. It means you have to either throw a lot more enemies or a lot more encounters at the PCs. Either way, it drags things out. If your PCs know they have just their starting hit points, plus whatever spells or potions they have to hand, it tightens things up considerably.

Three encounters max. Your party are only going to have time to deal with three proper encounters. Choose your best three, make them flow together and dump the rest. Have one or two others on standby in case the session progresses quicker than expected, or the PCs use a powerful spell to blast through a fight you thought would last half hour, or whatever. It's nice to give PCs a choice of which encounters they tackle, so I use flow charts or mind maps, but I don't let it be possible to meander through five encounters before they reach the finale. THREE encounters, folks!!

Run a timer. Stick an alarm on your phone and set yourself goals to hit before those alarms go off. Maybe you need the PCs to blast through the first fight before the half hour mark. If the alarm goes off and the dice are still rolling, you need to wrap up that battle.
Perhaps you can integrate this into the game. Imagine the PCs are exploring a haunted house - when the clock strikes midnight (an alarm I use myself on the phone) then something happens to move on the scenario: a secret door opens, or monsters attack, or perhaps the spirits that had been harassing them fade away.

Play against the clock. Similar to the above, but actually limit the number of turns the PCs have. In a recent game based on the Labyrinth movie I gave the PCs 13 turns to escape the labyrinth and defeat the Goblin King. It was great fun and everyone appreciated knowing how much time we had left! It added tension and it was also reassuring to the players to know they wouldn't be stuck at the table all night in real life.

Yes, this dude. Again.

Tweak the monsters. Veteran players love working out how to hit monsters. How to target their weaknesses and which spells to pick to capitalise on those with high AC but low WIS, or whatever. More casual players just enjoy hitting monsters. So I lower their AC to ensure they can hit AT LEAST two thirds of the time. It only takes dropping the AC by one or two digits.
I also drop hit points for some boss monsters, to stop the entire fight becoming a grind. But I use the trick of upping damage in order to keep the fight threatening. I don't quite use the old 4e trick of DOUBLING damage to speed up fights, but I might move up to the next dice or add a few more points of damage. It's enough in fifth edition, particularly when there is limited healing.
A feeling of fear and danger is essential, otherwise there's no point having the fight. But make your players feel powerful and satisfied by allowing them to hit the red dragon. Then make them terrified when it deals so much damage with one claw attack.

Because this is what it's supposed to be all about, right?

Believable Female Miniatures

I'm back after a weekend away in Cardiff, watching the Rugby World Cup and revelling in the atmosphere created by Irish, Welsh Canadian and Uruguayan fans, as well as seeing Japan beat the might of South Africa (I watched that one on TV but it was still amazing!)
Yet... this is not a rugby blog.

In a roundabout way I want to tell you about the Dice Bag Lady and her Believable Female Miniatures.

One of my favourite things about going back to Cardiff, apart from catching up with family and friends of course, is a visit to Firestorm Games on Trade Street. This shop has grown from being a good local games store to an amazing warehouse dedicated to gaming. It switched venue about a year ago and is now run out of what used to be, I think, a furniture store. So there's masses of space, huge gaming tables, couches, toilets, everything you need really. Plus loads of really cool miniatures, board games and terrain on sale.

This is the old venue which was a little ... cosy

The new place is unbelievably cavernous

I always love a chance to go down there and browse, and because I only get back to Cardiff two or three times a year I rarely come out of there without blowing a small fortune! They're celebrating their sixth birthday at the moment with discount on their website, and some of the prices are already pretty decent, so check them out.

However the main point of this post is to tell you about those miniatures. Last week I spotted The Dice Bag Lady / Bad Squiddo Games on Twitter and got tempted to buy! I had no idea that Annie actually operates out of Firestorm Games and offers loads of weird and wonderful things including handmade dice bags (want one of those), flickering smoky explosion markers (got some of those) and what is claimed to be the largest collection of female miniatures in the world.

To quote DBL herself,

"The theme is “Believable Female Miniatures”, this means the focus is on attire and poses that are realistic to the task that lady would be performing. In a nutshell it can be summed up by “no chainmail bikinis or oops-I-dropped-my-pen stance”.

There are some very cool fighters and other sculpts of non-humans including heavily armoured dwarves which I really like. Check them out here

I wouldn't object to someone using a mini with a chainmail bikini at my table if they really wanted to. But as I am gaming with my parents, wife and kids, it's nice to have a choice of genders that doesn't involve lots of pink bits on show!

Battle Systems - Apocalypse NOW!

(Well, not NOW - but tomorrow anyway)

Just a quick post tonight because it's very late here and I've been working flat out for the last nine hours. It's time for BED! But very excited for tomorrow (not least because it's the start of the Rugby World Cup) - it's also the start of a new kickstarter from the brilliant terrain company Battle Systems.

It's basically 3D cardboard terrain that folds and clips together - but, oooohhhhh. What terrain.

This is just a small slice of what their dungeon kit has to offer

I backed their dungeon terrain kickstarter last year and was blown away with what I received a few weeks ago. I blogged about the first game I enjoyed with my toddler son here but also my disastrous decision to leave a window open on a summer's day in Ireland here.

In doubly good news, the majority of the stuff recovered which is incredible testament to its quality and durability. Other dungeon tiles I had lying nearby which got wet simply fel apart (cough* Wizards *cough)

And furthermore the fine guys at Battle Systems said they'd send me a few sheets to replace the bits that got absolutely soaked beyond repair.

Now, THIS!

Battle Systems Urban Apocalypse terrain in all its apocalyptic gloriousness

 

 

The new Urban Apocalypse terrain features buildings, sidewalks, crates and other street furniture which means it's going to be awesome for modern, superhero and most importantly ZOMBIE games!
I was chatting to Colin Young of Battle Systems and he said like me, he's a big fan of Zombiecide. So this is a pic they took during one of their home games when they were testing the new terrain.


The whole thing goes live at 8pm BST tomorrow, Friday September 18 (which incidentally is the EXACT same time as the rugby kicks off, so I've a busy evening lined up!)

You can check out the Battle Systems homepage  or else have a look at some more lovely pictures on their blog.


Until tomorrow evening of course, when I expect this kickstarter to kick off big time!

The Clean Slate - stuff to remember when playing with kids, parents, and other newbies

Every newbie DM makes mistakes, and even the veteran DM running for a new game group is going to put their foot into it sometimes. But there are even more mistakes that can be made when trying to corral together a disparate group of misfits and ne'e-do-wells (ie your own family) and get them engaged in a fantastic world.

Believe me, I should now.

Fortunately, the sword in this instance is very much double-edged:

The Positive

1) The wonder of it all - The first time a skeleton comes alive and swings a rusty scimitar, your players will be scared. The first time a fat and hairy giant spider drops from the webs onto their face, they will be terrified. The first time they open a treasure chest and count out 100 silver pieces, they will feel rich. Embrace all this.

Remember, to most people in the real world, the idea of the dead coming to life is actually terrifying.

2) They don't read modules at bedtime - They don't know that Expedition to Barrier Peaks involves a crashed spaceship (er, sorry - spoiler alert there). They don't know the drow are the major force behind the giants. They haven't flicked through the latest Wizards or Paizo adventure path just to see what's in it. Don't use these products as written (too complicate - see below). But certainly steal all the best ideas and mash them into a simplified adventure

Spoiler, this module also involves you getting attacked by a plant thingy

 
3) It's only game - Your players will equate gaming to fun and expect to have fun around the table. That in itself is a good start.
 They shouldn't get into tedious arguments about rules lawyering or interpretation of area effects. Because they don't actually know the rules. And you can bring in any house rules you want. Just be sure to keep the game light, positive, and empower the players by taking on board their ideas. If a PC wants to use a pot of melted cheese to make a spider too gunky to climb through its webs, go for it.

The Negative

1) Time is of the essence - Most family board games take half an hour, or an hour tops. Even the more in-depth games can be done in an evening. Dnd can theoretically go on forever. Don't let it. People will be overwhelmed, they will get tired. I'd plan for 90 minutes at first. That is VERY short when it comes to Dnd so you'll have to really move fast to get in two encounters. You can have a spare encounter on standby if things are moving fast, or if people are really getting into it.
Believe me, that will be enough. I've tried to cram four encounters into an evening and it ended up running almost four hours. That's fine for a RPG group but it gets far too long and drawn-out for most casual gamers.
2) What the heck are you talking about? - Your players will not have watched every fantasy film or game show, played every RPG video game or read every Dnd novel. In fact they have probably done none of the above, being more interested in kids cartoons, reality TV, or gardening shows, depending on their age. So they won't necessarily recognise the meaning of words like sage, scimitar, wight, rogue, caltrop, barding, stave, or electrum. That's just the basic vocabulary.
You cannot tell them they're in Waterdeep and expect them to picture the City of Splendors. You have to work hard to paint that picture.
You can't describe a monstrous, bulbous creature with one central eye and several twisting eye stalks floating eerily towards them and expect them to scream 'BEHOLDER!' and run away. They might try to pet it, or think it's some kind of mook.
They won't get the in jokes, so don't bother making any. But at least everything will seem new, wondrous and fresh (see above)

Well, he MIGHT be a friendly one ...

3) I'm confused...! There will be a player who doesn't understand how attack and damage dice differ. There will be a player who doesn't understand how ability scores translate into ability modifiers. There will be a player who doesn't understand how the Vancian spell system works (and they won't be alone). So you'll need to stop and explain. You'll need to take things very slow and help them understand.
The best tip I can give here is to keep the rest of the moving parts simple. Keep NPCs to a minimum. Two per adventure is grand. Keep the monsters basic - something with one attack like a goblin swinging a sword. If a fight is dragging on to long, then reduce the enemy's hit points and get through it quicker.

And remember the goldern rule: have fun!

You can now follow me on Twitter @Awakenedshrub to see all my musings in shorty form.

RPG village in 30 seconds - how to generate population and make a map with only a pack of playing cards

This is a cool idea that came to me for generating a small settlement for any RPG of any genre. The examples I give will be fantasy, Dnd-style stuff because that's what I play - but I see no reason why it shouldn't work for a Wild West town, modern day hamlet or even a settlement on a remote planet.

The best thing about it is it takes mere seconds and only needs a pack of playing cards. And you can either do it in advance, use it for inspiration and try to flesh things out further, or simply chuck it on the table and run it completely on the fly.

It came to me when I woke up early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep as my mind started racing. So, now I am tired. But those sleepless hours are when some of the best ideas come, right?

By the way I read that the Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure Scenic Dunnsmouth also includes a system for generating a village using playing cards. I haven't read Dunnsmouth yet, so apologies if this is similar - but I stress, any similarities are purely coincidental. 

Getting Started

1) Grab your pack of cards and a surface to place them. you might want to use a battle mat or flip-mat for some kind of scale, but really a floor or table top will do just as well.

2) Each suit is going to represent a different family or faction, so decide what suits your campaign. For my purposes, let's keep it simple. Clubs = the Butscud family, local ruffians. Diamonds = the Effington-Smythe family, local posh toffs. Hearts = members of the church of the high priestess. Spades = the Tumpkin family, mostly agricultural labourers or peasants.

3) Decide how big your settlement will be. Shuffle the cards then deal as many cards as you want buildings. Place them face down on the surface. Put a card wherever you want a building to be, roughly aligned the way you need to create 'streets' or 'squares' on your 'map'.

4) Now you can flip over the cards to see what's in each building. You can do it in advance to allow you as a DM to plan ahead and map out some ideas, even draw a full map on graph paper if you wish. Or you can simply run your PCs through the village asking them where they want to check out, flipping the cards as necessary.

5) The cards that turn up represent what's found in each building. The number shows the inhabitants, the suit shows who they are. So if I flip over a six of clubs, that's a nest of the rough and ready Butscud family, no doubt living in some rundown hovel. I flip over the next card - a two of hearts. Maybe there's two nuns living there alone, devoted to the high priestess. But ... maybe they're unhappy with their neighbours? Already the ideas are percolating.

6) The face cards are specials. I suggest the Jack might be a tavern, the Queen might be a store, and the King might be something grander - a temple, tower, fortified farm, manse or large coaching inn. The suit can again give you inspiration as to who controls this property. The Joker can be a special too - perhaps a derelict house that is home to a monster, or the entrance to a dungeon, or something else bizarre.

Expanding it further

This works best for small settlements, which are the most common type you'll need to generate for your PCs in a pinch. It works less well for larger towns or cities because there's likely to be more than four families living there! But if you have grand factions at play in your campaign (a la the 13th Age RPG) then you might work something out, where the Spades represent the Dwarf King, the Diamond represents The Emperor, or whatever works for you.
These factions may not exactly the inhabit the property as such, more that they have an interest or connection there.

Or you could theoretically make a giant table of all the possible cards and run it from there, as specific or as general as you like, eg:

Ace of Diamonds - Rundown house of grumpy old dwarf who has lost his prized pocket watch.
Two of Diamonds - Apparently deserted, this is really the hideout of an urban-based druid scheming to turn the entire city vegetarian by poisoning the local abattoir.
Three of Diamonds - A smithy where basic weapons can be repaired or purchased at PHB prices
Four of Diamonds - House of four peasants - father, mother, two young children

But that's not this post was about, that is surely a job for another day...

Appendix N for Generation Z

A heck of a lot has changed since Gary Gygax placed Appendix N at the back of the very first Dungeon Master's Guide. Gary was writing for a select audience - wargamers, fantasy and sci-fi freaks, people to whom he could suggest books that had inspired different aspects of the new game - be that mood, monsters, or spellcasting.
In the 1980s this was a revelation, because the only books I knew at the time were the Lord of the Rings trilogy and even then, it was heavy going.

Now we live in a different world. Kids understand what hit points mean (or at least 'energy bars') and they know what statistics like Strength, Dexterity represent from playing video game RPGs.
They understand Plate Mail +1 and Potions of Healing from games like that too.
They have their own ideas of magic items, magic mounts and spellcasting from reading Harry Potter.
Vampires and zombies are ubiquitous. 
The most popular drama series on TV features dragons, dire wolves and an army of the undead.

I'd actually missed out on most of this, dropping out of fantasy fandom for a few years and actually not having read JK Rowling's efforts, nor watched Twilight.

So I started considering a list that would help frame a 'modern' view of a fantasy world, and instead of just books I included movies, video games and even anime that I felt had either been influenced by Dnd or indeed could themselves influence a young gamer.

This is a huge list but by no means exhaustive so if anyone out there reads this, I'd appreciate your thoughts... 

FILMS

Star Wars series

Indiana Jones series

The Hobbit/ Lord of the Rings series

Pirates of the Caribbean

Alien quadrilogy

Conan films – original and modern

The Mummy series

Blair Witch Project

Dungeons & Dragons trilogy

Hellboy

The Descent

The Cave

The Abyss

Willow

The Dark Crystal

Labyrinth

Krull/ Legend

Clash of the Titans – the modern remake, and the original films including Jason and the Argonauts/ Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

Van Helsing

The 13^th Warrior

Ladyhawke

The Goonies

Inglourious Basterds

Kill Bill

Snow White and the Huntsman

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

Jack the Giant Slayer

300

47 Ronin

Disney – Aladdin, Hercules, Frozen, Robin Hood, The Black Cauldron, Alice in Wonderland

Big Trouble in Little China

Avatar

How to Train Your Dragon

Brave

Howl’s Moving Castle

Sherlock Holmes

Pan’s Labyrinth

Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail

A Knight’s Tale

Braveheart

Kingdom of Heaven

Princess Monoke

Highlander

Alice in Wonderland – movie with Johnny Depp et al

Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves

Flight of Dragons

The Road

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Coraline

Spiderwick Chronicles

Gladiator

Thor series

Dune

Shrek series

TV SERIES

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

Game of Thrones

Merlin

Supernatural

Rome

Adventure Time

Atlantis

Grimm

Once Upon a Time / Once Upon a Time in Wonderland

Vikings

Dungeons and Dragons cartoon

Record of Lodoss War

Legend of Cristania

Rune Soldier

Scrapped Princess

He Man/ Thunder Cats

Gorgoth of Barbaria

Grimm

Sleepy Hollow

Xena Warrior Princess

Kindred: The Embraced

Arrow

The Walking Dead

Mysterious Cities of Gol

The Heroic Legend of Arslan

Red Dwarf

Black Sails

GAME SHOWS (!)

Knightmare

The Crystal Maze

VIDEO GAMES - these are just some of my own favourites or games I've heard good things about!

Diablo series

Dungeon Hunter

Zelda series

Elder Scrolls/ Skyrim

Fable

Final Fantasy

Secret of Mana

Dragon Quest

Dragon Age

Baldur’s Gate, Eye of the Beholder etc

Kingdom Hearts

Phantasy Star

BOOKS

Anything at all by Robert E Howard

Chronicles of Narnia

Orcs trilogy

Fighting Fantasy gamebooks

Grail Quest series and Barmy Jeffers books (by JH Brennan)

Harry Potter 

Skullduggery Pleasant series

Pullman’s Dark Materials - Golden Compass etc

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett

Chronicles of Prydain

The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings

Dragonlance series

Usbourne Puzzle Adventures (an awesome source of story and puzzle ideas, DMs!)

Horrible Histories

Spiderwick Chronicles

The Sword of Truth series

Joe Abercrombie’s books

 The Road

The Myth series by Robert Asprin (esp Myth Conceptions)

Gotrek and Felix (only the first book unfortunately although younger readers might enjoy the formulaic instalments that follow!)  

HP Lovecraft, including: The Call of Cthulhu

·       The Whisperer in Darkness

·       At the Mountains of Madness

·       The Shadow over Innsmouth

·       The Shadow out of Time