Secularity

In my post about that southern continent that channels The Lost World pretty strongly in my mind, I say the natives had their gods and those gods helped them fight off The New Empire conquistadors. The question now becomes, are the god gods, or are they just super powerful entities, and does it matter if they are one or the other?

I go back and forth on this topic a lot. I think clerics and stuff screw up a lot about fantasy worlds. How can you have anything remotely resembling widespread starvation or disease anywhere in the world when there are two or three dozen different priesthoods of various bents that can provide meals and healing at a variety of low levels. A 5th level cleric can provide ten gallons of water and a meal that feeds fifteen people for twenty-four hours, and that is with only a 10 in Wisdom, which is highly unlikely. I suppose that relies on a church being fairly helpful in nature, but even "neutral" or "evil" churches could have those services bought by a government in dire straits. I dunno, it just seems to me like healing and such have the potential to muck up anything you try to run. If there does end up being some sort of apocalyptic disease you have to resort to "magic did it" to explain why all the useful cure spells suddenly no longer work.

Sometimes I wonder if the whole "there are no gods and everyone on Hekinoe knows it" thing is influenced more by my personal thoughts and beliefs than by any sort of logic. I don't suppose it matters ultimately. None of my players have voiced any concern over the topic. John seemed to really enjoy playing a Favored Soul way back when, although that was a pretty broken class in my opinion.

Would I ever allow Cleric, Paladins, and the like into my game? No. They're stupid. I remember back in 2nd Edition, the basic Cleric was not allowed to use anything but bludgeoning weapons because they weren't supposed to shed blood. Have you ever seen a crush injury? There is blood, I assure you. Eventually there were rules for customizing your clerics based on their faith, war gods allowed their clerics to use swords and other implements of mayhem. Made more sense, but the bludgeoning thing always struck me as patently ridiculous. Now that I think about it, I think it was based on some Catholic rule or something. Who knows, I'm not a religious scholar and this is all vague recollections. Paladins could only be good guys, because only good religions have soldiers empowered by the divine power of their god. Dumb.

Anyway, I never cared for Clerics in DnD, period. I never really cared for gods either. They were always too invested in the players and the world in general in typical DnD settings. I like Dark Sun and Planescape because the gods were non-existent or the Lady of Pain's bitches. In Forgotten Realms they were a dime a dozen (as common as magic items, which were pretty common in Toril's extremely high fantasy world). They were all over the place, ruling nations, or running around as demigods or souping up various entities serving them to make them chosen. The logic was that gods were dependent on their devotees for power, so they had to be invested in the world and their followers, they couldn't just sit on high and be Cromm-like. They had to wander out of God Town and do shit.

I like the Witch class in Pathfinder, I think it works well in lieu of the whole Cleric thing. You make pacts with various entities and gain supernatural powers from them. Basically amounts to a Cleric with less armor and a weird pet that is an agent of their patron. Besides, devotion and servitude are modeled with role-playing far better than they are with game mechanics.

I lately find myself wondering if I should play a game like "the old gods are returning" or something. Like maybe at the height of their power Kaleshmar decided that they would erase the knowledge of higher powers from the world because if all their Uncout slaves started throwing fireballs and challenging their might, well, it might compromise the stability of the mighty empire. I dunno, like I said, no one has voiced an opinion about the lack of deity-centric fun.

Live Nude Aoefel!

Just watched the live PAX Prime Acquisitions Incorporated DnD game with the Penny Arcade Guys, Whil Wheaton, and Scott Kurtz. Utter hilarity.

Go here and watch/listen: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Feature.aspx?x=dnd/feature/paxgame

How Minecraft Ruined My Marriage

I read Penny Arcade pseudo-religiously. It is on their lovely site that I learned of a game called Minecraft.

Rewind. A while back, years ago, Shawn got me into WoW, I think we started pretty close to the release date, maybe a month or two after it had been out. At the time I had no idea what an MMO was and how much time I was about to invest into this crack-like game. Perhaps it will surprise you, heh, but I am an awful WoW player.

Do you remember a post on 4th Edition from a few weeks (months?) ago? I went on about how if you want to craft stuff, set up shop in town and don't play a player class and stay the fuck away from all the orcs with the sharp objects in their mitts. There is a reason all the wizards and fighters go into dungeons and the artisans, commoners, and aristocrats don't. It is because they die.

I was that one foolhardy artisan that adventurers lured into wandering down into the dungeon. Heh.

Other people would get in on raids and group quest, or they'd farm for loot to buy ever phatter lewts from the auction house. They would go far and wide to accrue xps and purples and such. Meanwhile, I wandered the Barrens farming hides or herbs so that I could continue passing armor kits to Smitty and potions to Shawn. I didn't care about cash or gear, all I wanted to do was watch Akulna make skinning motions as I created leather armor that was further and further above my level. I even toyed with the idea of playing EverQuest 2 for a time because of the robust crafting system. Later on, after quitting and restarting a new toon on WoW, Tony and I formed a guild called The Explorers of Azeroth. We swam literally from The Swamp of Sorrows north to Dun Modr, because we were Dogdamn explorers. Of Azeroth. It was difficult and involved traversing some unfinished areas that we should not have tread in, true story.

Back to Penny Arcade, at the time of this writing, the comic is only a few weeks old, it is called Mine All Mine Part 1 and 2. It is about Minecraft and the comic is 100% accurate. I bought the game for like eleven dollars. I dug a hole, punched a tree, and began building wooden axes, swords, and picks. I burrowed into the earth like a fearful grub and I waited in the night as zombies groaned around me and skeletons clattered about plinking my fragile hut with arrows. In the night, I heard a giant spider devour a pig.

At daybreak I destroyed my hut of sand and dirt and built a stone fortress with a door and a glass window. I burrowed into the earth like a mighty umber hulk and took coal and iron from their place in the earthen womb I was making. I lit my hovel with torches and built a furnace to smelt the iron. Then I built a shaft that hit the bottom of the map, I mined what I could and journeyed to the surface by building ladders and shoveling my way up out of the mountain I had taken refuge in. Then I built a bonfire atop it and built another stone fort for another mine. When I had mined too deep and too greedily, I fled the lava and creepers beneath the earth and built another tower. I then linked my two towers with a stone bridge studded with torches to bring light to the darkness. Then I opened a new world to start it all over again because I died and couldn't find the fort I had been working on when I respawned.

Your map is randomly generated as you explore is, it is populated with pigs and ducks and about five types of enemies to encounter. The countryside of your island can be quite striking at times. I like this game a lot and I've probably put far more time than is healthy into it at the moment. My architectural endeavor is building a tower of glass that currently rises into the sky above the clouds of my map. I'm still working on it.

All you do is gather resources and craft stuff, from boats and books to tnt and traps. Minecraft gives me everything I loved about WoW (moderately robust crafting and a persistent world) without giving me all the crap I hated (asshats, constant hunger for phat lewts, monthly fees, etc). You can also play the game in multiplayer, you do need a server to host it though. I like to think that if Tony and I set up a map together we will build a walled kingdom studded with penis-shaped towers to guard against the zombies and skeletons that come for us in the night.

Edit After The Fact: Tower is done, ran out of sky. Now I've got an underwater tunnel and am planning on building a moat around my glass tower.

Further Editing: The lake was dug and filled with water, then I decided to build a mansion from my Pathfinder game. Built the whole first floor of the mansion, then it accidentally lit on fire. Minecraft has real good fire physics, had to start over from scratch but now I almost have it done.

South 101

The South will rise again, mon!

Imagine for a moment that there is a continent on Hekinoe to the south of The Known World. Dry heat has turned to damp humidity that hangs thick in the air. Imagine that, like Fresgulen, there are rumors of this place, but they trailed off out of sailor gossip about a hundred years ago when an expedition to investigate them left the shores of The New Empire.

There's this continent to the south of The Known World, still a bit north of the south pole of Hekinoe. It is a hot jungle full of jungle type stuff. About a hundred years ago, possibly more, perhaps even a lot more, some ships left The New Empire to explore south when they found that expansion into The Fallen Empire of man was going to be far more difficult than they expected.

When they found themselves near this southern continent, they sailed to a beach and set up camp. It was a tough land full of oversized flora and fauna, but resource rich. Lots of big trees and big animals to eat and take hide from. Unfortunately, as conquistador types often do, they ran into some natives. Things went quite well for the natives, the explorers had some guns and cannons, but the natives knew the forest and they knew the denizens of the forest. They also had the help of their gods.

They call/ed them The Gods of the Deep Earth, there were/are/? ten of them and the tribes of this southern continent worship them as, well, gods. Not as mighty beings of power that they serve, but as god gods, the creators of everything. Anyway, the gods were good to their worshippers and wiped the beaches free of these invaders. The explorers lost their ships and a lot of their supplies, but they survived.

Once the explorers could not steal everything not nailed down and flee, the natives left them alone to forge their own destiny. Their gods were benevolent, and they were happily willing to follow the example laid down by their creators. So the explorers got all factiony and some went native, others were determined to conquer the damn place in the name of their king. Others went against decades of propaganda calling cultists madmen and delusional and decided to start worshipping The Gods of the Deep Earth.

The natives are an old race of lizardfolk types from various clans all over the continent, they use obsidian weaponry and live in a fairly primitive tribal society. Obsidian is quite abundant in the area due to the volcanic activity of the place, which is a result of the god's activities within their mountain domain. The jungle is large and jungle-like with lots of poisonous critters and insects, and what might be called Hekinoeian dinosaurs. Sorcery is only really known in its druidic form on the continent, and it keeps the theme of unreliability we're all used to.

It's kind of an untamed place with only the lizardfolk and their gods. The explorers from over a hundred years ago have fallen on hard times for the most part. As I said, some went native and took to jungle life. Others became cultists. The largest chunk of explorers became a militaristic society obsessed with the idea of conquering the place in the name of The New Empire.

Those descended from those that have gone native so to speak are tolerated. They tried to start some shit and the god bitch slapped them, but they and their descendants have changed. They're not welcomed among the various clans of lizardfolk, but they don't hunt them.

The crazy cultist types are considered fools and madman, mainly because the lizardfolk believe that they were created as crude representations of their gods and no sane god would create something that looks like an Elduman or Elduman descended human. Seriously, they have no scales or talons and that is just plain gross.

Those that claim they want to conquer this land are hunted pretty extensively. They usually live in tree forts and keep lizardfolk captives as slave labor. They take as much as they can from the areas surrounding their encampments and from those they slay in battle. They are pretty straightforward examples of foreign conquerers that feel they're entitled to everything.

The god(s), they live in their mountains doing god type things.

I'm not sure if this jungle place matters, but it is there.

Short

So my other group, the one Shawn DM's, had some problems using MapTool. We are playing through Keep On The Shadowfell at the moment, and we got lucky and found a campaign file that someone had used to convert all the maps and enemies of The Keep on the Shadowfell into MapTool usable data. It is a really nice set up that works rather well. Unfortunately, we happened to game at my house one time. Shawn and I were in my living room, Lance and Kristina were in Seattle. Shawn forgot his laptop at home so he had to run the session off of my desktop and he did not have the data for the campaign. So, MapTool was not feasible.

We got Skype working and were chatting with Lance and Kristina while Shawn was fiddling with something in Excel. I didn't quite see what he was doing, but it looked like he was basically converting the pdf maps of the adventure into an Excel spreadsheet. He then created and labelled little shapes to represent Erevan, Blinders, and Cerra and the hordes of Kobolds we were about to face. I believe we were outnumbered two to one in that fight.

Shawn then uploaded his little spreadsheet and sent it to us via Gmail. We then played what amounted to DnD Battleship. Blinders moves to J3 and Weight of Earth's the Kobold at K3. The Kobold at J7 bloodies Erevan as he moves into and out of J6, etc. It actually worked quite well. Shawn really rather liked the way it went so apparently we will be using that till further notice.

Which is fine, it works and we don't really need all the tool tip displays and dice rollers and chat features of MapTool. They're nice, and the macros are handy for using healing surges and rolling initiative, but I find myself nostalgic for "old school" gaming with reams of paper and pencils and dice clattering about like plastic thunder.

It was a neat little thing Shawn did and I like it. I am excited to play again.

That Went Well

It is currently September 26 as I write this, but it probably won't be published to post for like a week. That said, I gamed yesterday with the group I GM for (and I game with my other group tonight! So much gaming!). Once again, my players have amazed me with their forethought and planning. They did good. The mission was to kidnap a big bruiser of a dude that practiced sorcery. They very neatly and intelligently sidestepped the inherent dangers of such a task.

I had planned, and when I say planned I mean I had assumed, on them just storming the guy's house and beating him into unconsciousness. I tend to plan my scenarios based on the most straightforward route to completion. In the past, that is generally how the group has done things. Lately they've been surprising me though, and I really enjoy that.

Anyway, what they did was scout the tower (a little four story stone thing), once they determined it wasn't bustling with activity they tried to find and disable any sorcerous protections the guy had. They were very concerned about taking him alive and without any sort of bloodshed, good on them, the mission was to kidnap the guy but make it look like he just up and left and not like he was taken by a band of banditos in the night. They almost left his sword behind though, heh.

Anyway, they ended up using stealth and Gaseous Form to infiltrate the tower and ended up drugging the target with the most potent transcutaneous paralytic agent they could find. Eric even had Xein make a Heal check to see if he could use his Craft (Alchemy) to alter the chemical composition of the poison so it would have greater potency against their target's race. He ended up making it easier to resist by getting a 1 on his Craft (Alchemy) check, heh. Such are the vagaries of fate.

There were a few things I wish they would have done. They did figure out that it seems like reavers have been leaving the city they were in, which is important. But I don't know if they understood that Nakmander's operation was a one night only thing and he isn't responsible for all the other reavers that have been leaving the city for the past few weeks. They also didn't grill Nakmander too hard on why they were kidnapping reavers and why he was collecting them in his basement. Some missed opportunities there for getting a view of the wider picture.

That said, I really had a lot of fun watching them do their thing. They were on the ball last night. Everyone contributing and going about things as a team. I even stopped in the midst of everything to say that this is what I love about GMing. I really liked just watching them work, and it wasn't the counter-productive running in circles planning they ran into in previous scenarios. They came up with a few plans, settled on one that seemed promising, and got shit done. It was great. I loved hearing them reason and plan things out.

Eric got super frustrated about the money issue and everyone not caring, but the role-playing went well, although I don't think he would agree with that statement. Jeremy and Fred played their characters fairly true to the material though. The missing money will never be resolved at this point I think. Spineplate felt he was entitled to his full share, he never wastes group funds on food, drink, clothes, or booze, and he usually gets pretty beat up in fights. D'alton just doesn't care. Again, good on everyone for playing their characters right during the conversation.

The little Gonigi Montoya thing went well, I was hoping they would be more concerned about what he was up to, but I think Derf's actions were kind of distracting. It went well though.

Overall, I was pleased with everything that went down. Good job gentlemen.

I asked the players for a bit of info about Tesla's Boil and the staff there and a little bit about their (the players) personalities and how much they know about each other. Got some useful information for a later date. Heh. Xein will apparently be adding caffeinated beer to the Boil's stable of booze. I have ideas for that.

We also discussed some of my plans for the next campaign. Fred thought they (my plans) were stupid and that they (the group) should never sit down and make plans for what they want to do. Fred is dumb though and we forgive him. I kid. The way I think it will end up going is that we have scheduled planning sessions where there is a scenario going on, but the majority of it will be role-playing or jotting out goals. Then they assign levels of importance to said goals, and I do the GM thing and make their goals reality. We play a few scenarios, see where we are, then we have another planning session. I envision the planning sessions as relatively relaxed, we hang out and bullshit, jot down a couple ideas, bullshit some more, watch a Youtube video, plan more, call Eric a bitch, then call it a night.

Fred seemed slightly more open to that idea, but I sensed hesitation. We'll see how it goes. I'm just sick of having to have Bob Quest Giver on hand and trying to find ways to get the players to associated with him and do things for him in a reasonably believable fashion. I'd like it more if the players were working for themselves and making their own decisions about their own goals. My main goal is for us all to have fun, but I want them to get invested in the world and the characters they are playing.

Then, once they "care" about their characters and the world, I want to have Rhetkhan Kannunn burn everything to cinders and make my players cry. Heh

Edit After The Fact: Apparently I missed it when the players asked why they were going after this particular reaver. What I would have told the players if I had been paying attention would be that Cenn is taking his reavers out of Hell for his own reasons and he and Nakmander have made an agreement where Nakmander will remove those reavers unwilling to leave the city without killing them. Nakmander will then be allowed to capitalize on the weakened government of Hell.

Character Concept

So I have this somewhat goofy idea for a character. I was kind of thinking of something in the vein of an NPC that the players pick up in a situation where they have to bring this bystander along with them, or they (the NPC) almost assuredly just die. Or perhaps kind of a follower that won't get the fuck away from them. Just someone, a normal person, that ends up tagging along with the party. It would definitely be a bit of a change from the undying combat monstrosity that Kethranmeer is.

The concept behind the character is that he would be a commoner, just a person that the players run in to during their adventures. Maybe in a bar or something. He spends most of his time screaming or crying or just generally being terrified and whatnot. Eventually a point would come where everyone is occupied and there is stuff going on during the battle and he is forced to do something other than bystand. So he picks up a flagon or a bench or something and starts beating people with it to help out.

He would be centered around the Pathfinder feats for improvised weapons and he would kind of just run around going "Yikes!" and lobbing rocks at enemies or bashing them into people's heads while the players occupy their attention. I really like the feel of those improvised weapon feats and it is a fun idea for a character I think. Someone who is totally unprepared for combat and still manages to have some effect on his surroundings.

He wouldn't have a player class starting out, despite being the same level as the players. I have an idea that he would start out with levels in Commoner. As the campaign progressed the goal would be for the players to kind of help him out and teach him and form a bond of friendship or something with him to help keep him alive. They so rarely interact with NPCs on a regular basis (even Kethranmeer) that it would be a growing experience for all of us.

As the players helped him and interacted with him, he would upgrade. Perhaps something in the vein of converting his levels in Commoner to Warrior and then to Fighter. Perhaps he'd go down a different path if they just ignored him and let him survive on his own. I haven't decided on that yet. The gist of it is that he would maintain the improvised weapon/punches thing throughout his career, but as the players help him he would become more of an asset to the team.

I think it is kind of a neat idea and I think I'll try it for the next campaign arc. The difficult thing is that the players are not terribly caring individuals. Even their character backgrounds have most of them as self-centered individuals with only their goals and survival in mind. I have a difficult time coming up with a reason why they would bring such an individual along with them on their adventures, other than because I ask them to. Also, why won't this individual just pick up a sword or mace and start busting heads?

I have some ideas about how to go about this, and they work nicely with some events going on right now that are only tangentially related to the whole rebellion idea. I should be able to make it work, but we'll see. We're adding Sean into the mix for the next campaign arc, and Jeff may rejoin us after his three scenario absence, so we may have too many people as is. If the party is too big, an NPC might be unnecessary, and I'm not going to negatively impact game time just because I have a story in my head that needs to be tied up.