A quick post, post-Furnace convention (Sheffield UK last weekend just gone). My fuzzled brain is still recovering from the sheer awesome that this con was, but for now some pics from my FULLY BOOKED Saturday night of D&D (powered by Labyrinth Lord) – The Furnace. More detailed analysis to follow, but it fully rocked 😀
From behind the DM's Screen
Labyrinth Lord powering the fun
As the con (Furnace, Sheffield UK) approaches this weekend, I’m taking a slow but steady approach to writing the Furnace.
Systems wise I’ve settled on Labyrinth Lord. Even though I’ve got printed versions of Swords and Wizardry and Osric, LL best sums up the way that I used to play back in the day from the old Red Box Basic/Blue Box Expert sets, with bits of AD&D thrown in when I finally joined the big boys club and got a set of books second hand. Another big deal breaker was that there’s a truly marvelous online character generator which allows you to roll up fully formed characters of any level (I’ve chosen 5th) and save them as pdf’s using the official character sheet 🙂 I should really get round to doing a similar webpage for OpenQuest. So in the space of 10 minutes or so a pile of ten characters where generated 😀
As far as the adventure goes I’ve made it a series of Micro-Dungeons, starting with the City that the adventurers meet up in, no more than 10 locations each. This is allowing me to get the grand “save the world” scenario that I have in my head done in the time constraints (this is very last minute) and that will play in 3-4 hours. I’m getting there, I’m currently a third of the way through, but this is against a backdrop of me sorting out other things for Furnace (which ends tonight). That third is fully stated up and written up. Theres’ a good chance that this will be our first release for Albion Adventures 🙂
I feel like a proud Uncle, the first independently powered by OpenQuest game is out 🙂
Ladies and Gentlemen may I introduce you to The Age of Shadow, from Crooked Staff Productions
http://ageofshadow.freehostia.com
From the Game’s webpage
The Age of Shadow is a free role-playing game based upon the OpenQuest system (by Newt Newport of d101 games). As such the game uses a simple d100 rules mechanic to resolve tasks (i.e. roll 1d100 and compare it to the skill being used), and is set in a fantasy world of elves, men, and terrible foes.
Inspired by Tolkien’s Silmarillion, it has some cracking graphics and maps.
I recommend you check it out.
When I envisioned this blog, I saw a big long post about what makes the formative Brit gaming experience different to the US one.
However fellow Brit Blogger The Fighting Fantasist summed it up back in April, much more eloquently than I ever could.
http://fightingfantasist.blogspot.com/2010/04/british-osr-starts-here.html
Some interesting stuff in there, like the reason why on we got art by such luminaries as Russ Nicholson and John Blanche (who I never knew did the cover for UK version of the original D&D game see below, which also had different internal art) instead of the rather cartoony art that our US peers associate so strongly with the early days of D&D and lots of differing cultural influences (which sent me down a trip down memory lane 😉 ).
John Blanche’s cover of the Games Workshop version of Original D&D, First UK print (Dec 1977).
A new cover by the wonderful Jon Hodgeson. Bringing it in line with all the OpenQuest supplements, which have or will have covers by him.
Available now from Lulu (Print/Pdf) or DriveThruRPG.com (Pdf)
A modified version of his The Quest piece, paying tribute to OQ’s heritage 🙂
As I developed as a gamer in my early-mid twenties I had a bit of a clear out. For reasons that I’ll moan about in a later post, I got rid of my Advanced Dungeons and Dragons collection. A couple of weeks ago via the magic of Ebay I got it back and then some!
So the creative part of my brain was engaged last night, helped on by a couple of Hobgoblin beers (see previous post), and this is what I threw up for my game for Furnace:
The Furnace
The Iron Moon hangs five kilometres up in the sky, held in place by giant iron chains it looms over an ancient necropolis city, which is known as the City of Eternal Shadow.The Moon was pulled down from the heavens by the Nine, a group of powerful ancient immortals, to act as a prison for an evil megalomaniac known only as The Mad Tzar, who once threatened all with his plots for world domination.
The Moon may be a prison, but it’s also rumoured a Furnace for the Tzar’s desire for vengeance and schemes to rule the world.
Two weeks ago a piece of the Iron Moon fell to Earth in the City of Eternal Shadow a sure sign that the Mad Tzar is about to break free.
Summoned by the last of the Nine, the White Wizard Arkasal, your small group of heroes must travel to the Iron Moon and stop the Mad Tsar. Remember the future of the world depends on you.
An Old School D&D game, for up to six characters of 5th Level.
I’m going for 5th Level characters, because as my Albion Adventures co-conspirator Sacha says ;
5th level is good. Fighters will have an extra attack every other round. MUs and Clerics will have access to 3rd level spells. Thief abilities should be over 50% in most cases if you factor in DEX and racial bonuses. As the DM you can start throwing in more interesting encounters and dangerous monsters. Clerics automatically turn skeletons, zombies and ghouls so the scarier undead beasties become an option too. Basically 5th level is where the PCs are becoming hardy, seasoned adventurers.
Even though the adventure blurb suggests a higher level characters, I’m sticking with 5th Level since this the power level I feel that I can handle as I ease myself back into DMing after a 20 odd year break.
I’m either looking at using Swords and Sorcery for quickness and speed, or Adv Labyrinth Lord, either of which I can print off and give the players a copy of. I shall of course be sitting behind my Ad&D DM’s screen, that I recently got in my amazing AD&D Ebay haul (more of this in a later post) 😀
The concept behind the Iron Moon was inspired by seeing my son’s 1st Birthday balloon, a helium filled thing, hovering over his Happy Land space station in the living room. I love the creativity that is being unlocked by this old skool trip 🙂
This is my favourite beer, Hobgoblin ale brewed by the Wychwood Brewery in the Cotswolds.
Some Newt related triva.
A last moment Saturday night slot has opened up at Furnace (a RPG con in Sheffield UK Oct 9-10) ieand I’ve bagsied it to run some Old Skool D&D. Two weeks to the con, now need to go think up a scenario.
More once the details emerge from the creative fog….
So I start this blog’s journey proper with what for alot of UK gamers was their entry point into the hobby.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
First published in 1980 by Puffin this was the first of Ian Livingstone’s and Steve Jackson’s (a Uk based chap, not the owner of the US games company that bears his name) “Fighting Fantasy” series. This pair play a big part in the 80s UK role-playing scene, and will be the subject of a future post for sure, but for now its worth mentioning that these two men had already set up Games Workshop, which at this point specialised in selling Dungeons and Dragons and other US RPGs of the time to the UK market. Fighting Fantasy was their successful attempt to put D&D in a ‘choose your own adventure’ format , where you go though a series of numbered entries each of which gives you the choice of what to do next which in turn leads to another bit of description. The genius of the FF series was that Ian and Steve married this successful format with a very simple RPG system; Three Stats Skill which was used for practically all skill tests (Fighting, detecting traps etc), Stamina – your hit points as you take damage this stat got marked down, and Luck which was used whenever the situation called for completely random resolution – but with some indication of how ‘Lucky’ the character is.
Warlock was not the first FF book I read. That honour goes to the second book in the series “The Citadel of Chaos”, which I found in my high school library in about ’84. I was hooked on the spot and I knew from a quick skim that this was for me and was going to be ‘my thing’. It was the beginning of my journey through Fantasy role-playing games, but it was an influence that has stayed with me always.
How FF has influenced my game design
This line from the Hints and Tips’ section at the start of the book has always stuck with me;
“The one true way involves a minimum of risk, and any player, no matter how weak on initial dice rolls, should be able to get through pretty easily.”
I interpret this in many ways, which would probably make a post of its own, but this phrase has influenced me more in my reffing and adventure writing over the years than any other piece of GM’s advice. However that’s not to say I’m a push over, because…..
Grit, I like my fantasy Gritty and dark. Warlock and subsequent FF books had this in bucket-loads, partially down to the wonderful art of Russ Nicholson. This is probably why I was never impressed by things such as Dragonlance and other fantasy that had shiny soft rock happy looking heroes on the front cover.
Its out of this world Fantasy. Almost as counterpoint to the gritty ‘realism’ evident in the books, there are moments of Fantastic almost whimsical fantasy. One of my favourite examples in Warlock is where you come to a dead end and there are a bunch of magically animated tools digging the tunnel to the tune of “Hi, Ho, Hi, Ho its off to work we go…”
There’s always a strong narrative both in the back story and in play. Even if its merely the search for a chest of treasure, as is the case with Warlock (although Ian Livingstone later gave the Warlock a name and a more detailed back ground in Return to Firetop Mountain FF Book 50 – but by then I had long given up on the series).
For me The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and the next six game books (up to The Island of the Lizard King), really do sum up all that is good about Fantasy UK roleplaying in the 80s. And the good news is that none of this is out of print – Wizard Books currently publish a range of FF books including the Warlock, as well as bringing it to the IPad/IPhone (see links below).
Finally here’s Russ Nicholson’s iconic illustration of the Warlock himself
Links
Sorcerer Under Mountain 