gafiation

July 16th, 2010

Here’s a piece of vocabulary from Hartley Patterson’s 1977 article in White Dwarf:

Discussing a dead RPG group, he says “They actually got a couple of moves in before handing over to Geoff Corker, who suffered a sudden and total gafiation and killed the game stone dead.”

I’d never seen the word “gafiation” before. Looking it up, I found the term GAFIA:

Frodo gafiating from the Fellowship

Frodo gafiating from the Fellowship

GAFIA (along with derived form such as gafiate and gafiation) is a term used in science fiction fandom. It began as an acronym for “Getting Away From It All”, and initially referred to escaping from the mundane world via fanac. However, its meaning was soon reversed, and thereafter it referred to getting away from fandom and fannish doings. When fans say they’re gafiating, it means they intend to put some distance between themselves and fandom. This can be either a temporary or a long-term separation.

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The Ten Mile Tower – Mile 2

July 15th, 2010

Last week I posted about Mile 1 of The Ten Mile Tower. This week I present Mile 2, with an actual combat!

Main Premise: Due to the magical nature of the tower, anyone entering has 24 hours to exit or the doors of the tower will close to them forever, whether they are still inside or not! Thus, the players can sneak in no more than one extended rest while exploring the tower!

Overview of the 2nd Mile

As the players progress past Mile 1 through the labyrinthine chambers of the tower, they notice that the monsters on the 2nd mile are fiercer than in the previous levels. Many large and powerful creatures reside here, such as trolls, ogres, and minotaurs. The first few times the PCs encounter a monster, it attacks in a blind rage, only to be quickly cut down (unless you feel like throwing in an extra combat or two). After a few such encounters, either word has spread or the monsters are getting more intelligent, because they begin to avoid the heroes, that is if the PCs let them.

At some point, the players will encounter a group of Ogres (8 or so Bludgeoneers). Some will attack, but most of them will flee down separate corridors to get help! The PCs can try to cut them down before they escape. Otherwise, one of them alerts a Minotaur Berserker that is lurking in the hallways on the next level. He proceeds to climb to the top of this section of the tower (to Mile 2), where he alerts his lord, a conniving beholder, that the PCs are approaching. A PC may trail the Ogre as he runs for help and then follow this Minotaur if they’d like, in which case they witness the report of the Minotaur to the Beholder. He speaks of the party’s skill in battle (assuming they’ve been succesful so far) and suggests basic tactics for when they arrive.

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RPG history: Midgard

July 14th, 2010

Issue 1 of the Strategic Review (1975) contains an interesting ad: “POSTAL DUNGEONS & DRAGONS VARIANT, a game which combines D&D and MIDGARD will be handled through the magazine, FANTASIA. To obtain full details, write: FANTASIA, Jim Lawson, …”

I just noticed this for the first time yesterday, and wondered, what was “MIDGARD,” which was compatible in some way with D&D? Was it a 70’s RPG I had somehow never heard about? or was it just a D&D campaign set in a Viking world?

Strategic Review 6, in its ‘zine review column, Triumphs and Tragedies, has this to say about the Fantasia magazine:

FANTASIA TODAY is a “magazine of postal fantasy gaming.” It seems to be based on a massive game, using revised “Midgard” rules. The price varies with the size, so get in touch with Jim Lawson, … Vol. I, No. 6, had an excellent article on herbs and magic, complete with sketches of each herb. The printing, though, which runs from fair to poor, relegates it to the status of MINOR TRIUMPH.

I’d never heard of a 70s Midgard RPG, but then again, I’m not exactly a grognard. I got into D&D in the late 80’s: anything before AD&D and the Red Box is ancient history to me. But, as you’d expect from someone who is drawn to pseudo-medieval fantasy, I like ancient history. Just as mountain peaks gain majesty with distance, so do nerds (even putting aside any majesty-reducing hygiene issues).
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Every Book’s a Sourcebook: Little Women

July 12th, 2010

Elsewhere, I’m reading Little Women – slowly – and blogging about it in excruciating detail. Little Women may seem like an unlikely source for D&D inspiration, but that’s because you’ve forgotten that Every Book’s a Sourcebook.

Here’s a passage that Little Women‘s author, Louisa May Alcott, liked so much that she put it, or something very close to it, in two books (Little Women and A Long Fatal Love Chase):

Valrosa well deserved its name, for in that climate of perpetual summer roses blossomed everywhere. They overhung the archway, thrust themselves between the bars of the great gate … Every shadowy nook, where seats invited one to stop and rest, was a mass of bloom, every cool grotto had its marble nymph smiling from a veil of flowers and every fountain reflected crimson, white, or pale pink roses, leaning down to smile at their own beauty. Roses covered the walls of the house, draped the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the balustrade of the wide terrace, whence one looked down on the sunny Mediterranean, and the white-walled city on its shore.

Valrosa sounds like a beautiful city: overgrown with flowers, perhaps so overgrown that it is in fact abandoned. What if my campaign’s Undead City, instead of being a depressing gray ruin overrun with ghouls, is a beautiful, sweet-smelling garden city overrun with ghouls? White roses climb up the city’s walls and choke the alleyways. They blossom through the eyesockets of ghoul-devoured corpses in the street. A cool grotto with a flower-covered marble nymph sounds like a great place for the fleeing PCs to get beset by skeletons.

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lankhmar linkhmar

July 12th, 2010

Scrolls of Lankhmar has a nice post about my discussion of Lankhmar and early D&D.

Srith of the Scrolls points out that Pulgh is not the only mystery in the Nehwon mythos in Deities and Demigods. Who is “Cold Woman”, who looks like a sort of Halloween-ghost sheet monster?

Cold Woman has a bizarre list of powers. “This creature is basically a huge white pudding. Her powers include illusion generation…” “Her corrosive secretions dissolve metal at the same rate as a black pudding.” “Cold Woman lures persons into her lair with gems and jewelry, which are scattered about her cave. She then paralyzes them and inserts one of her eggs into the body.” “Her young are known as Cold Spawn.”

I don’t remember any such creature anywhere in Leiber, but I did find this passage from The Jewels in the Forest that I think may have inspired whoever wrote up Cold Woman. Fafhrd rants:

“Oh, by Glaggerk and by Kos!” he roared. “By the Behemoth! Oh, by the Cold Waste and the guts of the Red God! Oh! Oh! Oh!” Again the insane bellowing burst out. “Oh, by the Killer Whale and the Cold Woman and her spawn!”

That’s all I can find: 6 words, “Cold Woman and her spawn.” From that, the author (Ward, or Kuntz, or whoever) presumably spun the rest of the entry: the combat stats, the adventure hook, and the classic first-edition PC-devouring egg attack.

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gaming with the bullies

July 9th, 2010

The first D&D game I ever played was in my 5th grade classroom, right before summer vacation, when our teacher had basically given up and let us do what we want. Everyone – nerds, jocks, bullies – was united in their obsession with D&D. (It was the 80s.) The DM was one of the Bullies.

“You walk into a room,” he said to one of the jocks, whose fighter was on point duty. “Where do you walk, the middle of the room, or the sides of the room?”

Most of us didn’t really know the character generation rules, so we’d all given our characters 18 in every stat. The jock had brought his beloved character sheet from home. His fighter had a 13 intelligence, so we called him “Stupid.”

“I’ll walk in the middle of the room,” said Stupid.
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The Ten Mile Tower – Mile 1

July 8th, 2010

A couple weeks ago I posted about the Ground Level of the Ten Mile Tower as the beginning of an 11 part series detailing an exciting adventure in the Ten Mile Tower, a tower that stands over 10 miles tale and touches the stars themselves! I ran this adventure with my weekly gaming group to their delight (and mine), and now I present it to you in an exciting easy to digest format!

Overview

I had already decided that though the Ten Mile Tower has thousands of levels, each worth exploring in their own right, the tower is basically broken up into ten sections, each ruled over by a powerful leader. However, since I wanted to create a sense that the tower is filled with MANY different creatures, from the lowely bullywug to the noblest dragon, I didn’t want to bring out the big guns just yet.

The 1st mile up the tower is filled with goblins, orcs, bugbears, lizardfolk, and kobolds, standard fare for most adventurers in heroic tier. By paragon tier (this adventure is intended for level 11 heroes), there’s not much here that can challenge you. Exposing higher level heroes to monsters like this is fun since it reinforces how badass they’ve become. However, it’s also helpful to remind them that while a dozen kobolds can be dispatched with relative ease, a tribe of hundreds of kobolds is not going to be quite so easy:

And thus:

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The Twilight Saga: Escort

July 6th, 2010

I just saw Eclipse, and it seems like it could be turned into a magnificently terrible D&D 4e campaign.

It’s a high-powered paragon level campaign. In addition to their regular powers, everyone gets to choose a few cool powers from the Monster Manual. However, every adventure is concerned with protecting a level-1 NPC minion.

The NPC, Bella Swan, a) has an annoying personality and b) always acts in the most suicidal way possible. Bella Swan has no standard actions. She can, however, Mark as a minor action. In combat, Bella’s usual strategy is to move adjacent to the most powerful enemy and then Mark two opponents.

Besides fighting their opponents, the PCs must nursemaid Bella: use forced-movement powers to get her out of danger; mark opponents to override her marks; Grab her and drag her out of danger; hide her in a box or a cave, with at least one PC assigned to keep her out of trouble. Oh: concealment doesn’t work very well, though, because all the DM’s monsters always know exactly what square she is in because of her unmistakeable smell. They will also attack her instead of any other opponent.

Actually, maybe Bella’s not strictly a minion. She has 2 HP. When left unattended, she’s always getting Bloodied by, say, cutting herself on a sharp knife. If this happens, the party cleric had better immediately use healing resources on her, because there are more sharp knives lying around the world. (Let’s give Bella another ability: whenever she becomes Bloodied, she immediately Marks all opponents and allies within 5 miles.)

If any PC kills Bella, he immediately gains a level. However, the campaign ends.

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Every Book’s a Sourcebook: The Riddle of the Sands

June 28th, 2010

(continuing my goal of using every book as a D&D sourcebook)

The Riddle of the Sands is is a pre-World War I British spy adventure, written by a real British spy who was later EXECUTED FOR TREASON. I think this adds a lot of authority to a book. Imagine if Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire novels, died by FALLING OFF A DRAGON. That would give her a little something called AUTHENTICITY.

The characters in The Riddle of the Sands spend a lot of time poking around the German coast in boats, and there are a lot of details about Admiralty charts and tide tables. Some sailing exploits, and sights, are only possible at high tide. For instance, there’s an abandoned church on an island: at high tide, the island is underwater and the church can be seen sitting on the surface of the water.

Imagine the temple crypt below such a church. A macguffin entombed in the deepest part of the crypt might only be accessible at low tide, for, say, an hour; soon afterwards, water would start flowing in, giving the DM a great excuse for the classic rooms-filling-with-water hazard. On Earth, it takes about 6 hours for a tide to come in; so in a reasonably-sized dungeon, the PCs won’t be in danger of drowning unless they get caught in a trap or there is some sort of delaying terrain. This dungeon should probably have both.

What monsters would be in such a dungeon? In order for water to flow into the crypt, there must be an outlet to the sea somewhere. Mermen and other aquatic creatures can definitely be hanging out in whatever portion of the crypt is currently underwater.

The currently-above-water part of the crypt is more difficult. It must only be inhabited with amphibious creatures – which, luckily, includes undead, the most obvious dwellers in a church crypt. Imagine a skeleton which has spent half its time underwater for hundreds of years. It and its axe would be trailing weeds and slime; it might or might not be part coral (depending on how much you like The Tempest: does that sea change stuff actually happen?); and it would undoubtedly have something gross in its eye socket, skull or rib cage: a dead fish or scuttling crab.

The rest of the dungeon would be pretty unpleasant too: the church itself, up to a few feet up the walls, would be coated with weeds and slime, and paved with muck and stinking fish. Every level down would be successively more unpleasant.

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the storm’s dilemma

June 27th, 2010

Hamster Hoard wrote a cool magic item, a pair of shortswords called Waiting Storm.

Each blade of The Waiting Storm is a shortsword +1. With every successful strike, a blade will generate one hit point’s worth of stored damage to a maximum of six points stored in each blade. These points may be expended as electrical damage during an attack; alternately, three points may be expended to hold a target for one hour if a save vs. paralysis is failed.

I really like paired magic items. I like to give them to different members of the party, though, and have them interact with each other. I’d just make a couple of tweaks to this item.

1) Instead of shortswords, I’d make them (or at least one of them) a two-handed weapon. I don’t want one ranger wielding both. Perhaps they are Mjollnir-like hammers? Or, if they’re shortswords, they hate each other: anyone holding both takes electricity damage.

2) Instead of damage potential “stored in each blade”, I’d have them both feed a single damage counter. Either player can expend the stored damage – which means that the other player can no longer do so.

3) To increase the game-theory jockeying, I’d maybe add another effect that is more obviously selfish than causing extra damage or paralyzing an opponent. Perhaps by expending 3 points, the user of one of the weapons can become become invincible for a round – or, more diabolically, expending 3 points does 3 points of damage to the other wielder, while giving, say, 6 points of healing to yourself. (The amount of healing can be tweaked: it should be just enough to make it an agonizing decision for the PCs. Maybe the hammers are evil and offer different amounts of healing based on circumstance.)

There, I’ve taken a perfectly nice magic item and turned it into a cursed source of interparty conflict. This is how I’d like to handle cursed items, by the way: not with -1 to hit, but with a mix of good and bad effects that the PCs can’t quite turn down. It’s like the One Ring: It causes invisibility, that’s pretty awesome. But it causes the end of the world, that’s bad.

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