Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: 1st Session

I will be running the inaugural session of the St. Albert Mission Pathfinder Adventure Card Game ("PACG") Organized Play program on Sunday, October 19, 2014, at Mission Fun And Games in St. Albert, Alberta.

Participants will partake in the introductory session of Skull And Shackles PACG Season 0, as their characters cooperate to jointly face the villains and monsters of the Pathfinder universe's pirate-infested seas.  And after all, who doesn't like battling were-sharks while brandishing cutlasses and pistols?

Game sessions are no more than 2 hours long.

A demo game for first-time PACG players will be run from Noon to 1:00 pm on Sunday, October 19, 2014.

The first adventure, "On The Horizon", will commence thereafter at 1:00 pm and will end no later than 3:00 pm.

Participants will benefit from reading both the Skull And Shackles Adventure Card Game rules and the Organized Play rules (both available as free downloads from the Paizo website).

A Pathfinder ACG Class Deck (a $20-$25 investment), colored card sleeves, and matching colored polyhedral dice are necessary for participation, all of which are available at Mission Fun And Games.

Anyone interested in participating can leave a comment here, or can register their interest with Mission Fun And Games.

Thanks!

Event #	51256
When	Sun, Oct 19, 2014 afternoon (Noon - 3 pm)
Where	Mission: Fun And Games 560 St. Albert Trail St. Albert, AB T8N 6A7 Canada

DnD Spells: Massmorph

Messenger To Macbeth

As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.

MACBETH

Liar and slave!

Messenger

Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so:
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.

MACBETH

If thou speak'st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pull in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!
If this which he avouches does appear,
There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.

While Shakespeare's march of Birnam Wood was an effective, if mundane, ruse, Gygax and Company give us the magical alternative:  Massmorph. 

This is yet another of the many utlility and miscellaneous spells that provide early versions of Dungeons and Dragons with their richness and depth. 

While my preference leans towards the player-created or organically-introduced spells, the existence of Massmorph and other non-combat spells within the DnD lexicon is welcomed. 

And it doesn't hurt that the apparent inspiration for this spell is found within the works of one of the greatest playwrights of western civilization.

DnD Spells: Shape Change

Shape Change is a ninth level Magic-User spell that evokes remembrances of that wonderful wizard's duel in the Disney film, The Sword In The Stone. 

Like the Magic-User spell, Gate, it's a shame this spell is reserved for high-level Magic-Users, as it would be fun to play out a wizard duel at low to mid-levels.

DnD Spells: Gate

"Jagreen Lern has succeeded in making a sizable breach in the Law-constructed barrier which has hitherto kept the creatures of Chaos from wholly ruling our planet.  He is forever widening this breach as his power increases.  This explains how he could summon such a mighty assembly of Hell's nobility where, in the past, it was hard to bring even one of the Dukes of Hell to our plane."

-- Michael Moorcock, "Stormbringer"

Few of the DnD campaigns that I participated in ever reached the player character levels necessary to access ninth level magic-user spells.  One of those spells, Gate, permits the magic-user to open a gate to another plane and entreat a powerful entity to come to the caster's aid.

I've always wanted to include scrolls with spells like this, as treasure.  To have a powerful one-shot item that the players could use, in this case, to gate in a powerful entity, would be handy for those occasions where the party is overmatched and otherwise needs some deus-ex-machina intervention by the DM to survive.

The problem is that a lower-level magic user are more apt to write the spell into their spell-book (for use when they reach the necessary level) as keep the scroll as a one-use item, thus defeating the point of scrolls as one-shot magic items.

Slapstick Humor And DnD

I'm cheating just a bit here, putting the above image and the magic user spell, Fumble, together.  The preceding Sutherland illustration appears on page 11 of the ADnD Players Handbook, while the Fumble spell description appears on page 77.  Combining them in this post helps highlight an important feature of early versions of Dungeons and Dragons: humor.

I've already spent some time on this blog discussing the illustrations of Will McLean.  Will McLean's cartoons graced the pages of the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide and early Dragon Magazines.  His style of humor was welcome tonic to the too-serious arguments over rules minutia that occurred during Dungeons and Dragon's early development.

What I like most about the preceding Sutherland illustration is the great contradiction inherent in the barbarian's fall: did he truly slip on a banana-peel, and if so, what is the point of the spell-casting wizard's inclusion in the cartoon?  Or did the spell-caster just recently summon the monkey which ate the banana and dropped the peel, which the barbarian then slipped on?

Absolutely Enchanting

Sometimes the artwork attached to an ADnD spell description is just ever so slightly incongruous.  The Dave Trampier illustration attached to the spell, Enchant An Item, is one of those situations. 

While it's true that the illustration shows an item being crafted -- one of several steps involved in making a magic item -- it would make more sense for the illustration to show the spellcaster interacting with the item, and somehow imbuing the item with the desired dweomer, rather than a weaponsmith busy with his more mundane tasks.

The last two paragraphs of this spell description fall on the next-following page in the ADnD Players Handbook, and I think it is easy to forget that the process of enchanting items came with some unpleasant risks, chief among them the chance of losing a point of constitution while casting Permanency on an enchanted item.

Does the same circumstance threaten magic-users in 3E and 4E?  I suspect, like many other game design features inherent in early versions of DnD, all of the advantages have been transferred into subsequent rule sets, while the risks have been discarded as "not fun" for the players.

Otto's Irresistible Dance

I was mentioning a couple of days ago that several spells in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons are named after famous characters from the original DnD campaigns.  Otto's Irresistible Dance is one of those spells.

The accompanying illustration by Dave Sutherland, of a capering Umber Hulk, once again demonstrates the capacity for creators of the early versions of DnD to have fun, and make fun, of themselves and the game they were playing

New school DnD, by comparion, takes itself far too seriously.

Leomund And Named Magic User Spells

Unlike Larodrm the Leaper, Leomund is well-known for his magic user spells.  Two of Leomund's more useful non-combat spells appear in the 1st edition ADnD Players Handbook published in 1978:  Leomund's Tiny Hut and Leomund's Secret Chest.

The above illustration, by David Trampier, accompanies that later spell.

It's intriguing to consider the number of spells appearing in the Players Handbook, named after one of the magic user characters participating in the earliest Dungeons and Dragons campaigns.  Tenser, Nystul, Leomund, Rary, Bigby, Mordenkainen, Otiluke, Drawmij, Serten, Sustarre and Otto all have spells appearing in the Players Handbook. 

What is more telling is that there is not a single Illusionist spell named after its creator.  It could be argued that unlike Magic Users, the Illusionist class was not an organic ougrowth of actual game-play, thus explaining the lack of character named spells.

At any rate, Larodrm has a long way to go to have any of his spells recognized in a treatise on famous spell-casters and their invented spells.

More Tinkering With Resource Cards

Nothing to see here ... just some more tinkering with resource card structure, including card colors and the related attribute for each class.

Resource Card Sets

If I was publishing sets of resource cards based on classes, I would probably prioritize them like so, with the four base classes (F,M,C,T) and the Witch and Barbarians published first, and sets 2, 3 and 4 published in order, thereafter.

Percentile Dice Abuse

A little pet peeve of mine:  the over-use and abuse of percentile dice for results generation.

Mirror image, a second level magic user spell in ADnD, contains a system for random determination of the number of mirror images that appear when the spell is cast.  From one to four mirror images appear, depending on the result of a percentile dice throw.  A roll of 1-25 results in one image; 26-50 creates two; 51-75 summons three; and 76-100 invokes four.

Clearly, a d4 is equally suitable, and more appropriate in this circumstance.  What am I missing here?  Why bother using percentile dice for this spell?  I can see using percentile dice if, for example, you added your character's level to the roll, thus having a higher chance of more mirror images as you increase in level.  Otherwise, the use of percentiles in this instance just seems like overkill.

Structuring Resource Decks

Still giving some thought to the development of resource cards.  In particular, how to structure the decks.

It seems to me there are at least two ways to structure resource decks.

The first way is to structure the decks based on character class.  For example, developing separate decks for Magic Users, Clerics, Fighters, Thieves, Barbarians, and Witches.  Each deck would contain the cards necessary for that class, including spells, character statistics, character illustrations, abilities, treasure and equipment specific to that class, and might cover three character levels.

The second way is to stucture the decks based on type of resource.  For example, separate decks for spells, equipment, treasure, character illustrations, and so on.  So you might have a deck of weapons, a deck of first-level spells, a deck of character statistics, a deck of monsters, and a deck of magic items.

Perhaps both kinds of decks would be useful.  For example, you might want a deck of spells, but you also might want a deck that is specifically for Witches, containing all the cards you would need to build a Witch character.

DnD Spell Cards

Over the last two years, I've seen several putative variations of DnD spell cards. 

My interest in spell cards is quite simple: i've been tinkering with the idea of a card-based Dungeons and Dragons accessory, where all of your game resources are in card form, and can be swapped in and out of a three-panelled sleeved booklet, as you aquire and spend resources. 

Those card-based resources would include, treasure, magic items, spells, equipment, relationships, and other trackable items.

In addition to  the home-brew spell cards featured by several old and new-school bloggers, Wizards created a card-based accessory for 4th Edition, tied into their AEDU system, by issuing decks of powers cards.  I really loathed those cards, for a couple of reasons: one, they lacked artwork; two, the 4E powers themselves were too mechanical; and three, WOTC ignored all the other in-game resources.

On the other hand, Paizo published decks of item and treasure cards, featuring lush illustrations, but the related game mechanics were absent from the cards, as were resources like spells.

One of the things I loved about the ADnD Players Handbook was the inclusion of artwork  accompanying the spell descriptions.  Case in point is the spell, below, Dancing Lights. 

Although uncredited, I believe this spell features a Dave Trampier ilustration. It would be lovely to have the above artwork in color, though the black and white version is perfectly serviceable. 

Yes, the spell description is probably sufficiently clear that an accompanying illustration is unnecessarily decadent, but having an illustrated set of resource cards like this would be a dream come true for this old-schooler.