RIP Scott Hall

 Scott Hall, also known as Razor Ramon, passed away at 63 from complications following hip surgery. 

Yet another pro-wrestling legend from my youth that left us way too early. 

In my college days, some friends somehow managed to get front row seats to a WWF event, and when one decided he didn't want to go, I snatched up that ticket. The headline match was Macho Man Randy Savage (I was a huge fan at the time) vs Razor Ramon. Macho Man gave me a high five as he went around the ring before the match. But Ramon won. 

Later, after I graduated, my Evansville group would play D&D in the evenings until WCW came on, and we'd watch Hall and Kevin Nash, the Outsiders, and later with Hollywood Hulk Hogan as the NWO. We loved to hate those guys. They were excellent heels. 

Rest in Peace, Mr. Hall. You provided me and so many others with a lot of great entertainment over the years.

Square Circle Retainers

Yesterday in my West Marches game, the players managed to complete the Bugbear Cave in the Caves of Chaos. Those of you familiar with the module will remember that...

Spoiler Alert if you've never played it!


...the bugbears have two prison chambers. In one of them is a renegade bugbear and a captured 4th level Fighter (or Hero). In the previous session the players managed to free the other prisoners. Yesterday, they freed these guys (after slaughtering the captured gnolls, who to be honest had it coming).

Now, I've been having a bit of eye trouble (an eye infection I had a few weeks ago seems to be lingering but of minor annoyance level) and I was having a bit of trouble focusing on the printout (I have the module in PDF, so printed it out for use at the table). 30 year old module with cramped typesetting, then scanned however many years ago and converted to PDF, then printed out doesn't make it the most readable.

The description of the human prisoner is also spread over two pages.

Anyway, I read the beginning of the description: huge and muscular, with a shaggy beard and wild eyes. I kinda glanced over the back side of the description while the players were asking me about him, and saw that he's a berserker who has a chance to "accidentally" strike the players if they fight alongside him.  But I didn't keep reading to the part where it says he'll betray the party the first chance he gets and abscond with the treasure.

Anyway, they were asking for his name, and how big he was compared to the party's Berserker (my homebrew version of the 3E/5E Barbarian for Classic D&D) and the Muscle Wizard (just a Magic-User, but with a 16 Strength and good Constitution as well). He's more muscular than both, with a Str 18. And the wild eyes and beard description made me think of Macho Man Randy Savage.

So, Randy the Savage he became. Oooo yeah!!! And he didn't end up hitting an ally during the next fight with fire beetles. But since he had no armor, when they found the shield +1 in the store room, they gave it to him. So he did abscond with some of their treasure. :D

Anyway, he's now an NPC in town who might be persuaded to accompany the PCs on future adventures.

TL/DR: I made an impromptu characterization of an NPC as a classic era WWE wrestler.

Last night, I was looking for wrestler-themed fantasy art. I've got a picture of Hulk Hogan as a Conan-style barbarian from somewhere (had the picture for many years). I've seen luchador fantasy before. But no one seems to be producing art showing WWF/WCW/WWE wrestlers facing dragons and zombies and whatnot. Curious.

Anyway, I now have a plan to turn a bunch of 80's/90's wrestling characters into NPCs who could become retainers. And they won't all be warrior types. Some will definitely be spell-casters!

I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum (March Madness, Day 25)

25 Which game has the sleekest, most modern engine?

Let's take a closer look at All Outta Bubblegum, since I haven't looked at it in a few years, and it's only one page long.

Each PC starts with eight sticks of bubblegum. All rolls are made with a d10. For non-ass-kicking activities, roll your bubblegum or lower. For ass-kicking activities, roll over your bubblegum. You may sacrifice a stick of bubblegum to automatically pass a non-ass-kicking activity. If you take damage, you lose a stick of bubblegum. When you're all out of bubblegum, you're unstoppable in combat, but completely useless for anything else. In this situation, if someone else succeeds on ass-kicking against you, they roll a d10, if it's a 10 you're knocked out. Non-combat situations may also confound you and lead to defeat.

That's fairly elegant, is it not?

The one time we played it, as I mentioned in a previous post, we had to come up with a suitable action genre to play in.  Zombies being popular these days, that was one of the first things we hit on.  Then, someone of course made the connection to the game's title to John Carpenter's "They Live" and suggested we play in that milieu.  Rowdy Roddy Piper starred in the movie, so someone suggested all our characters should be WWF wrestlers from the 80's.  Then we came full circle, with someone suggesting WWF wrestlers vs. zombies.   

Now, surely you could have a genre, milieu and adventures planned before hand with this game, but it is a true beer-and-pretzels sort of game, really.  There's no advancement mechanic, no "goal of play" other than to kick ass, and no rules for creating opponents/challenges.  Pretty much everything fits under the "not ass-kicking" category, or the "ass-kicking" category, determining your chance of success.  A clever GM could give opponents their own bubblegum, but there's not much point.  Pretty much everything rests on the players' side for rolling, so it's fairly easy to just wing the whole thing.  

At least, I managed to wing an entertaining, if overly silly, game while drinking beers in a dark bar!

RIP Macho Man (1952-2011)

One of my favorite wrestlers died in a car crash.

Had front row tickets to a WWF event back in my freshman year of college ('92/'93), and got to slap the man's hand when he entered the ring.

Why RPGs DON'T Suck

No matter how good or bad any individual game's rules, supplements, modules, published settings or the like may be, if you think RPGs suck you're probably part of the problem (no, I'm not providing a link to Mr. Sheppard's blog, you've likely seen it already, and if you haven't you aren't missing much).

What's right about RPGs?

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

Exhibits D-O (pictorial)

With all the potential AWESOME out there, who cares if something is not 'creative' to some douche on the internet with a few RPG publishing credits?

All Outta Bubblegum

Josh is back in Busan for a month, and last night we (me, Josh, Pat, Steve and Alex) gathered at a local beer mart (a sort of bar that's run like a convenience store--it saves money somehow, but that's beside the point) for a few games and catch up with Josh.

While we were waiting for Pat to come, we played two quick games of Coloretto, then when Pat got there we got out All Outta Bubblegum RPG. 

I'd printed up a few copies of the rules, and a few One Page Dungeons and 5 Room Dungeons in case I was stuck for ideas while we played, but it turned out I didn't need the help.  I figured they'd want to play something either modern or sci fi with the game, rather than bog standard fantasy, and I was right. 

At first they thought sci fi, then zombies (Josh suggested Evil Dead as a setting).  Of course, They Live was mentioned, and Steve said he wanted to play Rowdy Roddy Piper.  That clinched it for me.  We would play 80's WWF wrestlers in the zombie apocalypse.

Pat quickly chose The Ultimate Warrior and Alex was Hacksaw Jim Duggan.  Steve decided to switch to Macho Man Randy Savage.  Josh had never really watched wrestling as a kid, so he wasn't sure who to be.  He was about to default to Hulk Hogan when I suggested Mr. T. 

I decided it was Wrestlemania 10, in 1985 (not sure if that's when it actually happened, didn't really care).  Vince McMahon is just going out to open the event when zombies (the bush-league wrestlers who are there just to get beaten by the big name guys in the early matches) climb into the ring and rip him appart.

The guys swing into action, trying to take down the zombies.  But since they've all got full supplies of bubblegum, they're not kicking much ass.  They quickly figure out how to start losing gum and the chaos commenced.

In short order, all four of them have been turned into zombies.  Then the game switches to "let's turn NYC into their zombie kingdom."  Except the Ultimate Warrior, who was trying to pump himself up on zombie 'roids, but failed a roll.  I decided he injected himself with hemorrhoid cream.  His next roll ended up converting himself back to normal.  Preparation H was the cure.

In the meantime, zombie Mr. T had escaped the city, Hacksaw Jim Duggan was leading zombified wrestling fans, hookers & junkies from Times Square, and the zombified cast of Cats into New Jersey, and Macho Man was having existential crises as he had pissed off Miss Elisabeth by grabbing Cindi Lauper's ass.

Somehow Zombie T goes and crashes a plane into the Pentagon and hits the big red button.  Then he makes it back to New Jersey after failing to escape Earth on the space shuttle Challenger, and all four of them engage (with zombie Hulk Hogan who had gotten pulled into the mix) in a cage match in the Pine Barrens just before the bombs dropped.

Tons of fun.  Even Steve, who dislikes RPGs, had fun because it was just a lark, rather than some over-serious attempt at simulationism or narrativism or even gamism.  Just goofing around with some beers, some gum, and some dice.