Nothing to see here (tumbleweed!)

No really, there is nothing to see here. I have unfortunately fallen off the role playing wagon having moved from Brighton to Leeds last year. I don’t seem to have found any roleplaying type buddies around in this area of Yorkshire. Are there no such types? Is Yorkshire a no – roleplay zone? I hope not. More updates when I have them. I need a RPG group to keep developing Fusion!

Take a Gander at Felicity ‘Flick’ Sparrow: Character Portrait

Flick Sparrow, Hedge Witch of the Lakes of Pleeiea.

Evening all. I trust you are keeping well. The player behind Felicity ‘Flick’ Sparrow, asked me to have a crack at a character portrait for his Hedge Witch from the Lakes of Pleeiea. So here’s Flick the youthful Hedge Witch. A Hedge Witch, in case you are wondering, is the term applied to ‘witches of the hedgerow’. They are rural village types, with local knowledge, typically skilled also with animals, tracking, nature, weathercraft, foraging and similar. They are ‘wise women’, sort out in times of trouble, when there is illness in the family or when fortunes need telling. Flick is training at the college of Ulris the White, and is a companion of Amberrh of the Cold Wastes and Tillie the Marshlander.

Flick is a hardy type hailing as she does from the Lakes of Pleeiea. She knows how to set a fire, skin and cook a coney, spring a trap and those basic skills Lakelanders rely on day in, day out. Not the sorts of the things the city slicker of a Lankhmarian would be able to turn their hand to if cast out into the wildlands beyond the city of Thieves. I’ve depicted Flick complete with her arcane staff of power (note the curious symbols carved into it). She’s decked out in her all weather head wear. (Yup a pointed hat). This is an acrylic painting on watercolour board and is postcard sized.

Gray’am Axesplitter: Hirin Dwarves – First Demi-Human Race For Hydra

Today I rolled up the first demi-human character in Hydra – the Hirin Dwarf, Gray’am Axesplitter. He’s a Hirin from the city of Xanth which lies in the mountains of the Elder Ones. I lucked out seriously in rolling up some of his attributes – particularly his Strength which ended up as Titanic. Even though he is a diminutive 3’9″ tall, he makes up for this with his sheer squat strength. He specialized in Hirinian Style Two Axe-Fighting and Hirinian Boxing – he’s an experienced and successful Pit-Fighter, so he’s pretty handy, nay, great with a battleaxe. He typically wields an Axe/Shield combo, and is well protected with Heavy Scale armour and chainmail. Alternatively he may switch to two Axes and use his Hirinian Two-Axe fighting style of which Gray’am is a good example in terms of skill. His PC Version Character sheet is as below. Hirinian Dwarves are now on the menu for player character material in the Hydra system. More demi-human races to follow!

And yes, sorry yet another change to the blog style, but in my defense I had to to accommodate the box.net download widget – so once again you can download copies of the character sheet. (Runs and hides behind sofa as rotten veg is thrown in his direction).

The Feisty Hirinian Dwarf from Xanth - the Noted Pit-Fighter Gray'am Axesplitter.

Seventh Session – Portents Unfolding – the Legend of Orton

Minor Preambling Words of Apology for Lateness

As mentioned in the previous post about playtest feedback we did have a session last week but I’ve been suffering with a stomach bug lately and not fit for much activity. So it’s taken me a while to write up this last session post. Here’s what I can remember!

Surviving the Dandy Highywaymen and Portents of the Future.

Working together the party are able to ward off the Dandy Highwaymen. Two of the brigands make good their escape, one succumbs to the frenzied blows of Iswann who aids the hold-up merchants exit to the netherworld with his blade. His days were numbered thanks to Glenda’s devestating shot to the eye with her short-bow. Antiva’s opponent decides on cowardice being the better part of valour as their struggle continues.

The coachman returns with two members of the city militia just as the party have successfully helped the badly wounded Iswann into the coach and have stripped the highwayman of his valuables and anything useful looking. The city guard take names and details, eye-witness statements, and somewhat begrudgingly inform the party that there is a reward for the death of the highwayman, which can be collected from the guard house captain when convenient to them. They also sort out the small matter of the highwayman’s body. They appear shocked by the attack, pointing out that up until now they Dandy Highwaymen had confined their attacks to outside of the city – and that this is the first known incident within the city walls. Glenda liaises with the local branch of her guild and has the fleeing, injured Dandy Highwayman trailed by a local member of the Guild Jeromy, who reports back to her at intervals.

The party make their way in the coach again to the grand house of Iswann’s family. It is a luxurious rambling gated mansion and they meet the various members of his family as he is treated by the house physician and tended to by the Under-butler Greaves. With the expert ministrations of the house physician and some minor potions he is back to fighting fitness within a few weeks. Meanwhile Glenda is able to follow up with LilyBlack and Silver on the various small deals she has been making with them, which have been successful. She has been able to sell on the Gems via LilyBlack and Silver the Alchemist has been able to make the poison mixture she required for her arrows. Only a few uses, but potentially lethal to the bear-creatures. Iswann has also entrusted her with the Jade and Diamond Gludlitch coin he’d misappropriated from Pilsbury’s oaf of a man, and she contacts Moolsh to discuss a way of fencing it within the Guild. This will take some time, but Moolsh thinks he knows the right person in the Guild for the job.

Antiva spends his time training on the estate with the family guards, improving his stamina and fighting skills over time as he does so. He also has the opportunity to observe the Master physician Mika at his work as he tends to Iswann, and has occasion to meet some of Iswann’s family. Notably Achiellos, his younger irksome brother, and the delightful artiste Helena – who takes great pleasure in being able to complete Iswann’s portrait given that he is relatively immobile for the duration.

The party are finally able to meet up with Iswann’s uncle, Finkbartel the Knowing who listens gravely to their enquiries about the Tower of Orton and the Hag’s clairvoyant vision. He tells them something of the fabled stories. Orton was a wise an fabled master of magics many many summers ago. Elders have told elders of the story and passed it to the current generation, it a mostly forgotten fable. The story has it that Orton, a master mage who was known for his grand abilities to control the animals upon his estate – hence ‘beast master or beast maker’ – learned that his beloved and betrothed lady wife – Frantasy -  was in fact an evil priestess in league with the demon lord Baal hap Blum.

Horrified Orton fled his estate and vowed, it is told, to find a way to destroy his wife and the demon. For many seasons Frantasy searched in vain for him. The story goes that Frantasy, swore a pact with her Demonlord to pursue and punish her vanished spouse. To this end the Munificent Ruby Rings were created by the pair and literally hundreds of hapless adventurers have died since. Finkbartel tells the tale of those co-erced by the rings makers to do the bidding of Baal hap Blum and Frantasy to locate and uncover the secrets of the Tower of Orton, where the beastmaster Wizard Orton laid traps and where magic ran wild and defeated in the past Baal hap Blum’s demon horde attack upon the mighty Magus. This is all in some effort to locate the hidden Magus who fled the tower and must be several great elder’s lifetimes old by now if he is still alive. Finkbartel says that there are many stories linked and concerning the Tower of Orton and that he will undertake whatever research he can to find out more regarding these stories and let them know what he uncovers.

Reports dribble back to the party that another minor Temple has been attacked and ransacked by the terrorists,  and that the locals of the district have been petitioning the city guard to do something about all these attacks. This has caused even more civil unrest in the area and is making the district notoriously unsafe to enter. A decree from the Overlord has been issued stating that there is now a reward of $5000 smerduks for information leading to the capture of the perpertrators of these terrorist offences and that all citizens should assist the city militia in their investigations of these crimes. The decree also states that should a private citizen capture/kill/bring forward these criminal Grungh then they will be handsomely rewarded to the tune of $10,000 smerduks. However, it is advised that even approaching these terrorist criminals is at the citizens own risk and that the militia cannot protect those who attempt to take on these villains in order to claim these rewards.

Evaluating and Modifying Combat: Some feedback from the Hydra Playtesting

So we had a game session last week, and there will be a write-up post for that shortly, but in the course of it – more feedback and constructive criticism from the playtesters. Which was welcome, and triggered some on the spot debate which I’m attempting to summarise from my selfish perspective here. I’ve also opted to create some writing accounts on this blog for the hydra playtesters so they can publish their own entries on the blog directly. I’ll simply maintain some editorial control, not over the content, but just to keep an eye on formatting and spelling etc. In this way we can have some other views on things rather than just my distorted burblings. Anyway onto the playtesting feedback.

The combat engine: Thoughts and directions.

Vincent raised some good constructive criticisms of the combat engine particularly in respect of counterstrike and number of hits per round and we looked at alternatives. Here are my collected ruminations. There is a counterstrike option in the game which as it is at the moment is not a skill but a tactical choice of defence – an alternative to a parry/block/dodge action option. It enables you to strike back and ignore the incoming strike as a defence option if a person attacks. This of course means that you get effectively two attacks in a round if you decide to counterstrike as a defence. The downside of counterstrike is that inevitably at some point you miss and take a crunching hit. Even if you hit – you are taking a blow from the opponent if they are successful so it’s not a very protective defence.  A hit with a counterstrike is therefore not the same as a hit from your own attack. This has been proven risky with the mystic-monk’s Antiva’s repeated use of counterstrike and how close he has been to being very dead on a number of occasions. NPC’s have also come a cropper using the counterstrike defence option.

There is a rule that could be invoked to limit things which is – one main action per round, which could therefore exclude having an attack if counterstrike is chosen, and is parallel to the rule about not being able to attack if dodge has been selected as an action option. There is also a rule I have waived which is you can only defend against one attacker you specify you are guarding against – again because I haven’t wanted things too restricted – this has opened up the number of actions people have been undertaking per round as a result. I’ve mostly waived these two rules  in play-testing because it would knacker up the ‘fiorintine style’ of fighting and it doesn’t do the flow of combat much good. I don’t like these kinds of restrictions much and am not so bothered about a perceived ‘imbalance’ in the action if ultimately the risk of the action options chosen leads to characters  (PC’s and NPC’s) getting heavily bashed/paying the consequences. That is -  it evens out over time, and also, NPC’s can chose the same action option and take ‘advantage’ of this imbalance as much as PC’s. The advantage of the one major action option per round rule is that it means that everyone labours under the same limitations.  The disvantage of this is that it is an artificial restriction on activity and inhibits activity flow. It’s a core rule of the game engine that I’ve mashed that I’ve ignored to allow more freedom of activity so far in the combat mode of the game.

We have a ‘fiorintine’ fighting style in the gameworld that enables, for example, the swordsman to have two attacks a round by virtue of having two weapons – e.g. Iswann’s sword/dagger combo. So theoretically he can have three attacks in a round if he counterstrikes as an action option during an NPC’s attack. I think it would not be unreasonable to make this fighting style a trained skill so that the initial attack has to be under the fiorintine martial style for the second attack to happen. This is one change I am considering – it would continue to make two-weapon fighting a real option, just a little more challenging. After all, my personal experience from using two-weapons in fighting is that it is more difficult than one-weapon fighting. (Just to explain I’m a martial artist and have been training mostly in unarmed combat as an ongoing interest but have trained in armed combat too – mostly nunchuk, knife and sword).

You do get some of this emulated in the engine by having a 1h and a 2h skill for the various weapons – you have to develop a left-hand dagger skill for example so that takes care of that aspect. But at present it doesn’t represent the extra difficulty of having to co-ordinate left-handed attacks when you are right-hand dominant in a two weapon fighting mode. It is also not a justifiable to prevent someone with only one-weapon from not counterstriking when you attack with the two-weapons each time if they are set up to do so just because that means they would get as many attacks as you. That to my mind does not create balance – it creates an advantage for being a two-weapon fighter. The practicality of one-weapon/two-weapon fighting is that two-weapon fighting is more difficult than one-weapon, but it does give you more options of weapons to attack with. It is just as easy to bash multiply and quickly with one weapon as it is with two – so the rate of attack explanation will never provide a justification here for restricting things.

What the hydra system is trying to do is not fully emulate combat - but get a decent enough approximation of it, have it lethal so that you fight appropriately and make sound choices – and make combat a relative activity experience rather than an absolute time-frame experience. Again, I wouldn’t tend to want to restrict the action option to counterstrike as a response to an attack as over time selecting this mode of defence will be costly to the aggressive defender. Vincent’s suggestion that could be implemented was that somekind of penalty to using the counterstrike option if it goes wrong – making you more vulnerable to the attack would be a way of ‘balancing’ it more as well as another suggestion to making it a particular skill.

Again given that it is a defence option (counterstrike) I’m not going to make it a skill but the possibility of DM imposed penalties (making the person easier to hit or more vulnerable as a result of the counterstrike option) sounds a more do-able tweak to me – but I’m not sure how necessary this is. The fact is – if you chose counterstrike then you accept getting hit as a consequence – that’s the negative of choosing it as an action option for defence – it has an inbuilt penalty. It therefore makes you more vulnerable as a form of defense. You are banking on the opponent missing their to-hit roll and hitting them better yourself. It seems to me it already carries its own penalties. If you are a better fighter taking on a weaker opponent then counterstriking is a fine option, if not then it is a dumb option. If they have a better weapon and armour than you then it is a dumb option, if not then it is a good option. If they are wounded or fighting with penalties then it is a good option, if not then it is a dumb option etc. If you are a lucky so and so with your rolls it is a fine option, if not it can be a dumb option – we all play with the risks.

Restrictions that could be applied are – if you counterstrike then your next attack is lessened (e.g. efffectively halved in chance). If you dodge as a defence then also your next attack should be halved in chance. (That’s a rule in the engine that I’ve mostly been ignoring in the rule-set so far but maybe should come into play if such a counterstrike penalty is going to be applied). I tend to think though that neither of these limitations/penalties is worth applying.

Everyone labours under the same potential advantage from choosing these options. If I can be bothered my NPC can be fiorintine trained and get those advantages that the PC can have. My NPC can chose to counterstrike every incoming attack if he wishes and labour under the same risk as the PC. Every PC can chose to do these things if they wish. It’s about choice with regard to risk of these manouvers. The only imbalance I’ve perceived is that those with a two-weapon fighting style get more attacks per round because they fight with more weapons. This is harder to do then having one weapon – and therefore there should be a skill restriction – as per martial artists and the damage advantage they get from having the martial arts skill. It can therefore be a DM option to penalise those who chose the counterstrike option in terms of making the attack have some advantage if the counterstriker muffs up – above and beyond what it already confers within the system. So with this adjustment you could also make it so that if the counterstriker fails his strike, then the attacker/opponent gets a bonus to his hit as the failing counterstriker ‘walks into’ a strike or opens himself up to being more vulnerable by trying to hit his opponent. This could be done by subtracting the failure margin from the opponent’s blow whether it is successful or not. It may turn a marginally unsuccessful attacking attempt into a success, or make a successful attack more successful in the process. Let me explain!

So – to illustrate:

Horace the Guard piles in swinging his shortsword (1d6+1) and Geoff the heroic bard counterstrikes with his d10 bastard sword. Horace rolls 54% under for his to-hit, which is a reasonable success. Geoff, however rolls 80% and fails. The DM knows that this is a 20% failure margin, as Geoff only has a 60% skill. The PC doesn’t know his exact percentage. He therefore gives Horace a post-roll modification of 20% to his roll, so it is as if Horace rolled 54%-20% i.e. 34% with his roll. This is a better level of success than he had initially because the counterstriker failed and walked into the attack. In Hydra the better the level of success the better the location of the attack which may mean hitting an area with relatively little armour – e.g. in the face or under the arm etc. In this case it makes relatively little difference as the success level of the attack is still not 1/5th of Horace’s to-hit chance. If it had been more marginal – e.g. Horace had rolled 34% – an even better to hit, and Geoff’s fail had been the same – a 20% miss, then we would end up with Horace getting a 14% attack.

Then we could also apply the impale rule for the weapon (if it’s an impaling one) and he’d get more damage. (Although shortswords don’t count as ‘impaling’ weapons – but if it was a spear he’d get a double damage roll which would make the counterstrike fail even more dangerous). We don’t count shortswordsto be impaling weapons not because you can’t successfully prong someone with such weapons – of course you can, but because compared to weapons like bows and crossbows or spears which are pure stabby-thrusty weapons there is a relative difference in type of effect. The only sword capable of generating an impale would be a rapier type sword.

With Horace’s 14% attack though the DM may rule that his blow cut across the opponent Geoff’s eyes where he has no armour and therefore gets no armour absorb protection. That would be a considerable advantage as all the 1d6+1 damage would come straight off his hit points regardless of his armour profile. This would also enable Horace to penetrate armour that would otherwise preclude him doing damage – so if Geoff has 8 points of chest armour, but walks into an attack by Horace with a counterstrike then the DM has the option to rule that Horace’s blow cuts into a spot where the armour is missing (e.g. weak under the arm points or similar) or where there is damage to the armour, or the armour  for some other reason is simply ineffective to the lethal blow (a flaw in the substance/metal for example).

So it also stands given this rule that if Horace was not as skilled and had rolled  a 60% which would have been a failure, (if his skill was 55% say) but the counterstriking Geoff failed by 20%, then Horace’s failed attack would suddenley become successful to the tune of 40%. So it’s possible by doing this to penalise the failing counterstriking effort to the attackers advantage – both in terms of potential damage, hit location, and chance of successfully hitting changing if the counterstriking fails.

My proposals for modifications are therefore – have a ‘fiorintine’ fighting style skill (or two-weapon skill for any combo). Your first attack must successfully come under this two-weapon skill otherwise you cannot use a second attack with the second weapon. This just makes two-weapon fighting a little harder to implement rather than readily run of the mill otherwise we will all be popping two weapons in our hands and doing it all willy-nilly. Counterstrike fails will be offset to the attacker as described above making it an even more dangerous action option for all characters to select.

Character Development

Vincent was complimentary about the character development – in that the system is extremely flexible in the design of characters. The downside being that rolling up is a long process. Being able to tailor each character with packages of skills is a major plus to the system. Each rolling up of a swordsman, or a thief for example will create a different variation of a swordsman or thief – they should not be the same. This is evidenced by the differences between Moolsh and Glendawynn. You can check out their differences by taking a look at these entries which has their rolled up character sheets. These are two characters with the same occupation – but they are very different types of thieves. The downside is that this requires quite a bit of work from DM and PC – so you have to roll with the problem of lengthy roll up times. You can’t have a quick and dirty character class system that generates nicely rounded out invidiually crafted variations of characters. You need to take time over that and this is why I’ve chosen to do so in the character generation system. Hydra is not a character class based system – it’s a skill-based occupational experience collaborative co-creative system which is a different kettle of fish.

As Vincent pointed out – this is not a first-timers system. It’s crafted out of a relatively sophisticated and advanced appreciation of the pro’s and con’s of different RPG engine types and system types. This is a kind of Cthulhu-type game engine for a fantasy world – it’s not taking any prisoners in the process!

Encounter Heavy!? and some Hosting Issues

There was also a general comment about the games being a bit ‘samey’. A fair point but mainly because this is still a playtest and I want to trial and push the combat engine as much as possible. Certainly there has been a lot of – getting badly injured, need to rest up a lot and then get injured again going on. That’s because I have been pushing the number of combats a lot in the sessions, but also because of how PCs are prepared/not prepared for fights. Also we have only about an hour and a half to two-hours to game in. This means the various plot arcs haven’t got much room to develop because of time limitations and because I’m throwing in quite a few random encounters to get the combat engine well tested. Naturally this is going to distort the game. I therefore deliberately didn’t push a random encounter into the game and tried to develop some of the plot-arcs this session. Don’t think I did so well at that as I can do, but it’s difficult sometimes in the setting of the  busy noisy role-playing club to do it. At times there are interruptions, thrown in comments (not always positive) about your game from people not playing, it can be noisy and all these things play on my DM nerves. I’m starting to think that hosting at home – where it will be quieter and uninterrupted will help in hosting the game. Either that or getting a game session in on a quieter night as Thursday is their busiest evening at the RPG club from what I can surmise.

We’ve therefore talked about an alternative game day – Sunday evening – so we can have more time, and we’ll see if this turns out to be feasible next time. Don’t think I was able to find out if this would be ok with George (aka Glenda), so will check this out during the next Thursday evening session. I also have a meet up with my other players – finishing off their characters and planning on how to get them into the developing campaign.

The Hydra Campaign Flavour – Mmm Cheesy :)

Brief Notelet of Introduction

Shock-horreur – here’s a brief summary of the campaign setting that Hydra operates in as per a recent request from the Nth Doctor Nathan. Don’t say I never give you anything Mister!

Where is our campaign set exactly?

I decided to run our new fantasy rpg system Hydra in the world of Fritz Leiber – Nehwon – where he set his fantasy novels largely about his cult characters Fahrd and the Grey Mouser. The rationale behind this decision was blogged about very early on here.

Where can I found out more about this place?

I recommend the Scrolls website (see my off-site linkage list thing) if you want to know more about Mr Leiber’s world. Yes ‘Nehwon’ is indeed ‘Nowhen’ backwards. Fritz obviously had one of those Dylan Thomas type whimsical humours when it came to his fantasy novel writing. In case that means nothing to you Dylan Thomas quite famously made up rude place names for his writing- like Llareggub (bugger all) for example – by reversing words.

Is your campaign setting the real McCoy then? Leiber through and through?

I wouldn’t say that our version of Nehwon is particularly authentic. I’m inspired by the works of Leiber rather than constrained by him. So our Nehwon is considerably more liberal. My source materials are the 2nd Edition AD&D City of Lankhmar source material, and indeed the City is the starting place and focus of our gaming activity at the moment. I have played to my strength having found that I thrive as a DM upon city settings. It’s the constant opportunity for skullduggery, politics, and socialisation that makes my DM-ing tend to liven up when I’ve played out games in cities. They make good jumping off points for my games.

Which bit of this Nehwon world are you in? What’s it like?

And what’s not to love about Lankhmar? It’s a city of thieves – where Pratchett is alleged to have got a lot of ideas for his Thieves Guild and city based writings. It’s a murky, misty, seedy underbelly of a sort of place. It’s also a fantastic sort of place in our version of the game. It isn’t overly wrought with magic, but it’s not magic starved either. I’ve upped the magic quotient I suspect over what a true Leiber advocate would care to see. I’m also not being too shy about littering the place with non-humans. Oh, the PC’s are human (although I have no doubt that will change in due course just as soon as I’ve finished the relevant creation system chapters), but why should everyone else be so constrained? I’m using a combo of AD&D, some RQII and other more esoteric sources to inform my non-human species generation. There’s a strong touch of whimsy about my NPC’s as well.

How are you growing it?

I’m sowing the seeds of future scenarios by making the City as rich with legends, stories, big characters, and back-story as I can manage. I’m fairly junking it up with rumours and tales or derring do and people best avoided. Scattering the old myths and wives stories about. Some of this is coming from Lankhmar based material and other bits I’m stealing wholesale from sources like Greyhawk and my fetid brain. I’ll happily weave in components and variations of such things that the players come up with as long as they don’t violate the growing hopefully shared vision for the immediate world the players inhabit.

Is that all we get to know about?!

Yeah – I’m bushed and this writing malarkey takes brain energy (maybe a whole watt to write!). That’s a few broad strokes of the brush for you to give you some clues as to what we are up to – if you want more, well read the game session entries in the session journal category. You’ll get a game by game account of how our plots are unfolding. Any more specific questions – just chuck ‘em my way. You know where the comment link is I’m presuming.

A Bit of Light Figure Painting – You Scurvy Knave!

Some Words of Humble Apology

Foolishly I promised “uploads a-go-go” so to speak in a recent post on the topic of rolling up new player characters. That’s because I’ve been on leave from work and thought I’d do nothing but work on the game and the site, but of course that has been a silly, unrealistic thought. I have in fact done relatively little work on the game except for some more mostly ongoing scenario prep work on the game world.  This relates to the current scenario I am running for the playtest (an adapted Greyhawk Campaign scenario) so I won’t publish anything on this work until the relevant game sessions are complete.  So, sorry for the lack of content flood.  You can stand down that Ark. I will be running a campaign session for the playtesters  this very evening – so we will  at least find out how things are proceeding with our would-be heroes in the city of Lankhmar.

I have done some light figure painting today. It’s been a while since I’ve wielded a paint brush in anger. I’ve bought some recently from my favourite gaming emporium and RP club, Wargamers Heaven, along with a splendid Chessex Vinyl Table-top RP gaming mat (and that’s a switz-swoo bit of kit I can recommend to any DM). I’ve finally got round to daubing some paint on, so here’s a first effort at a return to figure painting. (Cue, drum roll). He is clearly a salty sea-dog  type from the quay side of the city of Lankhmar judging from his cutlass type sword and eye-patch.

Figure Painting and Roleplaying

You scurvy knave! Get off my lawn!

I’m probably not the best figure painter in the universe, but I do enjoy daubing my collection. This is just a stock NPC type for the city. I’ve used water-based acrylics for this little chappy. A little glue was used on the over-coat to act as varnish and give it a ‘wet’ texture which hasn’t come out too clearly in this highly squashed into a jpeg image. Well, you can just make out some of the sheen on the right shoulder. The grass around his feet is a little sprinkled parsley. I can recommend herbs like parsley as a good grass substitute. Dried tea bags produce leaves that are also good grass/dirt clumping substitutes for your figure bases.

Painting figures is a treat as a DM; for me anyhow. I also like to create, as you  may know from a prior post or two, gaming props like the olde phial of magic potion and dioramas. I am working on a gaming board for this current campaign – which will be a key location ‘modeled’ into a combat board. This is admittedly only in the conceptual stage so far as I have to make it fit into the series of scenarios/modules that are being run. It will be a centrepiece for the campaign at a later date.

I love using figures. It means you have to collect a lot to try and represent all the various beasties and opponents that your group will come across in gaming – but it’s worth it. Having some figures plonked down upon a floor-plan focuses the mind of the players and DM on the task at hand. It helps with the combat sequences and dispels arguments (and creates others). Mainly I find it helpful as a concentration focus. It puts gaming attention somewhere tangible, and is a place to redirect player’s attentions when they are wandering for whatever reason. Sometimes you need something concrete with your players (and yourself as DM) to ground everything, when you’ve had long bouts of description, dialogue and imaginative roleplay.

Some physical gaming objects (like props), floorplans, maps  etc are helpful to use when your descriptive powers or interactive powers are flagging and wearing thin. So, don’t neglect the possibilities afforded by drawing out a floorplan of where your party are, bunging some figures on the plan if there is some puzzle or logistical problem to work out to help focus everybody’s minds. It can help divert their attention whilst you work out, as a DM, what on earth to do next. Physical props or plans create a talking point that can give you space to think as a DM and marshall your forces so to speak. I typically have a prop in the wings just for this purpose. It’s also a fun activity creating these bits and pieces to wheel out in your game and as good as reason as any to get your crafty, creative side going to enhance your roleplay.

New Player Characters and Content Incoming!

Very excited that I will be rolling up some new PC’s with my old chums tomorrow evening. This will be their first look at the Hydra system (currently at 1.1.2), built to our collective group preferences. I will also be having some time off work (for good behaviour) and will have some time to update the site. As a result you can expect a bit of a posting frenzy as I’m able to catch up on getting more content to the blog – you’ll be seeing more player character summaries, the inside spin on the NPC’s, some places fleshed out in more detail in Lankhmar. I’m also going to be working hard on some more artwork, some gaming figures and of course the on-going mission of writing the gaming manual.

So standby – lots of exciting things coming to Hydra and Fusion Roleplaying Concepts for the spring. Tell your friends. Bring your Dad :)

Introducing Moolsh – An Example DMC Stand-In

Moolsh of Lankhmar – a spy/thief of the Guild.

Moolsh is a guilded thief who works, sometimes, alongside Glendawynn. He works the patch/quarter next to Glenda’s and you can read a lot more about Moolsh if you check out the session write up’s number three, and four. He’s a DMC (that’s Dungeon Master’s Character) but he’s also my ‘stand in’ if one of the PC’s die mid-game. One way in which you can keep the player occupied if he dies mid-game, rather than sitting, brooding and watching everyone else survive and perhaps haul off loads of treasure and experience checks, is to give them a DMC/NPC to play. So, have one or two of your DMC’s well rolled out – making them, in my terminology ‘major’ DMC’s, as I consider the minor DMC’s not worthy of a full character sheet – they get a mini-potted version.

Here’s his Hydra character sheet so you can check out how a spy/thief looks in the game-system as it stands at the moment (this is a version 1.1.2 character). If you have a stand in character the player can take part, at the same time take some off the load off of you as DM – one less character to run – just don’t make it too major a character. They can then hand the DMC back to you for the next session, when they introduce the new character you have co-created with them, or it might turn out that they want to stick with your minor-DMC you’ve given them to take over for you in the game. This takes some of the aftermath of the immediate sting out of a character death, and is one way as a DM that you can enable a player to manage the ensuing transition from one character to the next.

A Bit About Hydra Character Generation.

Just to say some points about the differences between Hydra character generation 1.1.2 and 1.0 (not that you know much because all that interesting stuff remains ‘protected’ and I’m still writing it). First some of the attribute names changed. Just in an effort to make them sound more like how they should be, and what they are meant to be representing and capturing. You can see the differences if you look at an earlier 1.0 character sheet. Then work history or occupational development, I’ve just abandoned proscribed occupational skill lists as unnecessary thanks to rolling up Moolsh and leaving my occupational skill list behind. I realised that I had it so flexible anyway, that it is better to negotiate the skill selection based on thinking about ‘what would be reasonable for a Woodsman from the Lakes of Pleea to have developed?’ rather than slavishly following a list. The occupationally based skills was already flexible – you could discard and plug in skills you wanted with little restriction, and now its completely open ended overseen by the DM to maintain sense. The most important thing is how the work history years carves up the categorical increases pool (ooh revealing some mechanics here!), and this is subject to negotiation now rather than being in anyway proscribed. The end result is the same – a spread of skills based around different working histories, varying in depth according to lived experience opportunities, social background, location and length of occupation. Yummy!

Moolsh the Thief Spy of Lankhmar

Using Gaming Props – Making a Phial of Magic Potion

A small phial of some alchemical solution.

Game Props – Making a Phial of Magic Potion.

I love using small props in any kind of game I’m DMing. Here’s a little something I put together today that I’ll drop into a future game. I’m planning on making quite a few of these over time as I collect suitable vessels. Keep an eye on the stuff you would otherwise chuck out or recycle – it could turn out to be something you can modify for a game. Little notebooks make excellent diaries to be found or spellbooks.

What is this draft?

I like to use stuff the players can really interact with. I recently used up a small plastic bottle which had some vanilla essence and had a screw cap. It looked just right for an alchemical phial of potion so I tucked it away.

It was then a relatively simple job to saw off the top part of the bottle – where the screw cap went to get rid of the ridges. I then simply stuck on some pretty robust thick paper labels. Then some judicious painting using acrylics, and also using glue. The clear plastic then suffered at the hands of an emery board (or sand-paper if you have that, but emery boards are ace tools for gamers). It also suffered from the little coping saw I used and from a craft knife to scuff it and age it.  And there’s nothing like some dirt and dust to age things – no cost there. I made a cork by trimming down a wine cork to stop up the bottle. The label is enscribed by the potion’s creator but so aged and worn that it’s tough to read what it says – so some identifying work will be needed by the player. So nice when they suss this out by looking at your prop rather than having to describe it to them!

I will then have the phial filled with a brightly coloured, possibly alcoholic shot drink, and tucked in a fridge at the game. At the right point when someone in the game finds the phial of potion (or buys it or whatever) it will come out and they will just get handed the prop. If and when their character actually uses the potion – the player has to drink it for real – so make sure the inside of your prop is hygienic and the drink is safe! At the moment it is filled with jagermeister – but I suspect I will top it up with something even more vivid for the actual game :).