Campaigns I'd like to run someday

I usually come up with more ideas for what I think will be fun campaigns than I can actually manage to run. Currently, my West Marches game is going great so I've got no desire to change it. And realistically I shouldn't be running any more face to face games. The occasional test of Caverns & Cowboys is the exception to this.

But if I could, I'd be running all kinds of games. I'd need to be independently wealthy to run them all, of course. Maybe when I'm retired this will be a way to spend my time and keep my mind sharp as I get older.

In no particular order, here are ideas I have that I've never gotten to run, or ideas that I attempted but got cut off due to my schedule, lack of player interest, or problems with the execution on my part (which I think I could do better now).

The Maritime Campaign. Back in 2010, I worked up this campaign and started it off. But the players and I had differing expectations of what the campaign was to be about. I set it up as an island hopping treasure-seeking band of heroes with a ship (like Jason and the Argonauts, or Sindbad). One player wanted it to be a mercantile simulation, another wanted it to be a game of piracy and fleet building. Other players were pretty uninterested. It died because I lost interest in figuring out markets for fleece in foreign lands and dropped it.

With the right group of players, I still think it could be a blast.

Terminator: War Against the Machines. This would be a game set in the "future flashbacks" of the Michael Biehn character in the first Terminator (and other films in the series). A short term campaign with a set goal of either to take down Skynet or die trying. Not sure what game system I'd use. d20 Modern/Future could work, but it's a bit clunky in areas. Stars Without Number might be a better fit, except without the psychics. There's also the venerable Star Frontiers, or maybe something generic like the WEG Open d6 system.

Land of 1000 Dragons. This is a fairly new idea I've had. Pretty sure I've mentioned the Terminator idea before, and I posted over 20 times about the Maritime Campaign. This game would probably be best with a modern 'high power PCs' system like 5E, or if run in old school D&D we'd need to start at 5th or 6th level. In Land of 1000 Dragons, there is an open sandbox world, and EVERY lair or dungeon is the home of a dragon. Of course there will be other monsters cohabiting (or lurking and scavenging the leftovers). But the whole game would be focused on dragons. Lots of dragons.

Some sort of Supers game. I'm not sure exactly what the hook should be for this. Supers as a genre is really about preserving the status quo, while most RPGs seem to work best around groups that work outside the system and upset it. If I ever do run a game, it would probably be best to set it in some sort of Sin City type setting, where everyone and everything is corrupt except for our heroes. Or, flip it and run a supervillain game! Let the players run amok until the local heroes get on their tail, then come up with plans to foil the caped crime-fighters! That could be fun.

East Marches. I mentioned this the other day. My West Marches game is going so well. The format makes it really easy for players to buy in, and for me to prep for games. I'd love to run a second game in this format, but with Asian fantasy themes (there are some in my WM game, but it's for the most part standard D&D fantasy). I could easily use the TSR-East classes I'm working up now for this. But I really don't have time to prep and run TWO Marches-style games at the same time.

Fiendish Pits of Dr. Lao. This is an idea I had many years ago. An Asian fantasy themed megadungeon. I'm less keen to run this game these days (and I realize I must have gotten the name Dr. Lao from an old Tony Randall movie -- reading the description I don't remember seeing it before, but I probably heard of it somewhere along the way). I think East Marches would be a better game. But I could probably throw a smaller version of the Fiendish Pits into the East Marches. Or work this idea up as something to try and sell some day.

Sand in the Box

My son just turned 9, and has been wanting to play D&D with people other than just me. There is a local group with three spots open (playing 5E), but when I asked the DM if he would mind playing with a 9-year-old, he reluctantly said he'd ask his players. I told him don't bother. I figure if he's uncomfortable with the idea, it really doesn't matter what the other players say. So, I'm falling back on my plan to start a new face-to-face group where my son can play.

A while back, I made several posts about running Dragonlance as a sandbox campaign in 5E, thinking I'd run that for my son and whoever else. Dragonlance because the world does have a lot of neat elements to it, and I read tons of the novels when I was a kid, so I know it pretty well. 5E because that will make it easier to attract other players. Sandbox, because I'd rather not introduce my son to playing group games by making him ride the DL module railroad.

But then I thought, why not save myself a lot of time, and just run it with 1E AD&D? It may be harder to get players, but easier to run the game. It would be even easier if I ran it using my BECMI houserules but with race and class separate. But again, getting players might be a problem.

Then, last week, I found a game on RPOL.net with an old school DM running a West Marches game using 5E, and I joined it. And I've decided to copy that rather than set my game on Krynn. Part of the decision was a bed-time discussion with my son, before I got the answer from the local DM, about what sort of character he'd like to play. I gave him a run-down of the 5E races and classes, and he thought a Dragonborn Monk would be fun to play. Not very DL, at least not pre-War of the Lance. So something more open, less defined, and with plenty of options might be in order.

So, I'm thinking how I'd run my own West Marches style sandbox game. There's a bit of a desire on my part to try my saltbox Maritime Campaign from a few years ago, but that's more work for me. With a more standard West Marches type set-up, I can plop down TSR modules, old dungeons I've made, free downloads from WotC/Dragonsfoot/the OSR community, and the like throughout the wilderness, and let the players explore to find them.

I say "West Marches style" because I'm planning to only run it with this one group, meeting regularly. It will be pretty open ended, but since there's only the one group, I'll probably need to lay down lots of rumors and the occasional mission/request for the townsfolk to get them motivated to explore, at least in the beginning.

So now we get to the nitty-gritty of this post. What do I need to run a West Marches style hexcrawl sandbox?

1. A Map: Of course, I need a wilderness hex map. The home town is on the far eastern edge, in the middle, and players have free reign to explore to the west, northwest, or southwest of the town. But if you go east, you're entering into retirement in the civilized settled lands of the Empire.

I'll probably start with a small scale map at 6 miles per hex, with various Basic level dungeons scattered here and there, and a few tougher dungeons and monster lairs. Later, if the campaign lasts long enough, I can create a larger scale map (24 miles per hex).

2. Wilderness Encounter Tables: These are most important, since from the beginning the players will be exploring the wilds trying to find dungeons or monster lairs with treasure. I don't have the 5E DMG yet, just the PHB and MM, and I don't remember if there are wilderness encounter tables in the free Basic Rules DM download, so I may have to just use the Expert Set ones, or make my own custom ones. Custom ones would be a better West Marches fit, so that each area of the wilds can have its own flavor, so I'll probably work up some custom jobbo.

3. A Home Base: In the RPOL game, the home base town is really more of a hamlet, with about 30 residents, not including adventurers. That's easy enough - the town just has the basics needed by adventurers and nothing else. But I may use the "home town" I've been developing for years now, Silverwood, just because I know it and the NPCs there well. I'll likely scale it down in size from around 5,000 residents to merely 500 residents for this game, but the various inns and shops, the mayor and town officials, the temples and thieves' guild, will all remain the same. Like I said, I want this game to be easy for me to run.

4. A Few House Rules: Just exploring for the sake of exploring may not really interest the players. Like I said above, unlike the original West Marches campaign, I'll need to bait the hooks with rumors and missions to get the players out of town and where the action is. Old school games do this well by giving XP for gold. 5E, however, has a very very fast progression rate compared to BECMI or AD&D, so I'll need to tinker either with the amount of treasure worth 1 XP or else with the advancement table.

I think 5E works well getting PCs to level 3 quickly, so that everyone can choose their specialization early on. I'd like to keep that. So I'm thinking I'll give out 1 XP for every 1pp (10gp) in treasure, plus use monster XP from BECMI. That might actually give more XP for higher level monsters, I'd better check on that. Also, the old school "no more than one level per adventure" rule must be implemented.

5. A Jeff's Gameblog style Triple Secret Random Wilderness Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom: Even though I'm only going to be running this game with one party, I'd rather not leave them out in the wilderness between sessions. There will be "safe haven" locations on the map, which can be used to rest and recuperate, resupply and maybe get a bit of information, and of course the players may set up more of their own if they attempt such. If they don't get back to town or to one of these safe havens by the end of the game session, I'll roll and see what happens to them.

6. Dungeons (and dragons, too!): I've still got the Caves of Chaos 5E conversion from the Play Test, and the Isle of Dread, and maybe there was another adventure in there? So I have some stuff already with 5E stats and the like to use. I've got plenty of old TSR era and 3E WotC era modules/adventures on the computer that can be easily converted to 5E, I think. And it's not hard to whip up a few 5 to 10 room ruins, caves, and the like. So I can scatter those around the map, plus leave clues/rumors to other locations in each. I'll also need to decide on a few "pockets of danger" like dragons, undead, or other tough beasties who have a known (or easy to recognize as a more dangerous place) lair in some of the easier areas closer to the home base.

Goodman Games is apparently releasing classic modules with 5E conversions soon, but I'll likely just do the work myself instead of waiting for them to get around to it. The good thing is that I can put a few things I already have near the town (like the Caves of Chaos...in fact, maybe I should use Castellan Keep instead of Silverwood as the home base...), and work up or convert other stuff, as the players get closer to them in their explorations. I could even use those Dragonlance dungeons I was planning to convert to 5E anyway!

That should do it!

Setting Sail (again?)

In between bouts of pounding away at my dissertation (fingers crossed I'll have it ready for defense in November), I've been curating my RPOL Chanbara game (three new players, maybe four) and working on filling in things in my old Maritime Campaign document.

You'd need to be a long-time WaHNtHaC... reader with an excellent memory to remember, as I was working on this, and ran two sessions of it before it collapsed, back in 2010.

"What is this?" I hear new readers and old readers without such excellent memories asking. Well, it was nine sheets of A4 maps of coastlines and archipelagos, and a few notes on running a massive oceanic sandbox game. I did the math. At 24 miles per hex, and 52 hexes top to bottom (portrait orientation), it stretches from arctic territory to tropics on an Earth-sized planet. Basically, the top 15 or 16 hexes on the top three maps are above the arctic circle, and bottom 15 or 16 hexes on the bottom three maps are below the northern tropic (fantasy world, so the tropics would have other names than Cancer and Capricorn).

There are coastlines (mainly peninsulas) on all the maps but the center one, obviously, and LOTS of islands, some big, some small.

The idea for it is to throw lots of rumors and quests at the players, but let them sail around exploring as they please in a Jason and the Argonauts style ship full of heroes. The Argonautica, the Odyssey, the voyages of Pytheas, Harryhausen Sindbad movies, actual Sindbad legends, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Pirates of the Caribbean movies, stories of Zheng He, Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea, King Kong... All sorts of inspiration.

Back in 2010, I'd filled in some planned encounters on one of the maps only, plus I had some Random Encounter Tables (one of my old posts has them). That was about it. I had some vague ideas of teasing the players with an artifact quest, but leaving it up to them if they would bite or not.

Now, I've filled in information about each region on each of the maps -- culture/government/religion, languages, terrain types/climate. I'm working on random tables for determining what's on any particular island (or hex of larger islands, or mainlands) that makes it interesting (or not). I will also have a dozen or so planned encounters per map. All of the maps have some pirate/buccaneer, dragon, and "other big monsters" lairs marked on them. I need to also plan some artifact quests, lots and lots of rumors, inaccurate starting player maps, and a few other little things (like noting places other modules might fit in well), and I may have a marketable adventure module here.

A nautical sandbox. Wave Crawl? Seabox? Get on the ship and go to the place to do the things to get the things? I'm working on the catchy label for this type of adventure. And to make it more marketable, I'll probably either release it with dual stats (OSR/5E) or release two versions of it. 

Too many ideas!

I think many of you suffer from this problem. Most gamers are creative types, so we're always coming up with new ideas. Maybe it's a character concept you really want to play. Maybe it's a campaign you'd love to run. Maybe it's an adventure you'd like to develop. It could be your next awesome rule-set. But before you get to it, or just after getting started, you've already got another idea or three knocking around your brain.

I'm at that point big time right now. And since I'm actually starting to prep for my dissertation study, I really have NO TIME for any of it. But just got give you a glimpse of things you may, possibly, some day see from me in a possible future where I suddenly have oodles of time to write gaming stuff, here are some of the ideas I currently have:

Chanbara (of course, that's #1): My OSR with heavy character customization fantasy feudal Japan game. The third (or is if fourth?) draft incarnation of the rules are ready to be tested. I think they'll work better than before. I just need some time to run a few games. Well, that and flesh out the "starting area" for the campaign section of the book.

Presidents of the Apocalypse: Paul's and my take on super silly, super simple super presidential post-apoc gaming. One of these days, Paul and I will agree on a final version of the rules (or agree to make two versions). Then you, too, can be a mutated Founding Father beating the crap out of Ronald McDonald, Mikhael Gorbachev, King George III, Kim Jeong-Il, Justin Bieber, and any other foes of America you can think of, set in a ruined world of the future.

Under the Hillfort Ruins: The adventure module I wrote originally for 3E and have recently revamped for Labyrinth Lord (or whatever classic or OSR game floats your boat). A fairly standard dungeon tomb complex with lots of puzzles and traps, and plenty of loot as well. I just need to make a few edits, add some random encounters for the actual hillfort ruins above the dungeon, write up some hooks and rumors, and then this one will be ready to sell.

Demon Castle Dracula: This one's been on my mind recently, what with Halloween a week away and all. Not that it feels very Halloween-y here in Busan, where most people don't celebrate it. Anyway, this may end up being for LL or for Retro Phaze (the 8-bit OSR RPG) since it's basically the Castlevania games translated to table top. Could I get this Gothic horror-action sandbox ready for sale before next Halloween? Guess it depends on how the dissertation study goes.

Mysterious Seas: The maritime campaign I tried to run about 4 years ago or so. The idea was to mix up Jason and the Argonauts, the Odyssey, Sindbad the Sailor, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and the like into a big nautical sandbox. If I get around to finishing this (I really only had the first map half-way keyed, and there are nine maps), it may have to get broken into separate modules for each sector.

Ghost Castle Hasegawa: The test adventure I created for the previous version of Chanbara. I'm planning to update it to the new version when I get around to play-testing it, so eventually I'll also probably publish it. A castle cursed by its lord when it fell to his enemies, the Hasegawa family would like the curse removed so they can move back in and restore their standing at court.

Oni no Ran: The old 1E/2E Oriental Adventures campaign I ran back in Evansville in the late 90's before going to Japan was building up to a conflict between the Oni King and the PCs' daimyo. It wouldn't be too hard to convert stats to Chanbara (once I decide this draft is final or not) and release this as either a series of linked adventures, or a mega-adventure (again, if somehow time ceases to be an issue).

Of course, if I ever get any of these finished, they'll be for sale from my DrivethruRPG storefront, Hidden Treasure Books. And if I have time to write up modules and game systems, hopefully I'll have time to create more of my paper minis series.

The Dragon Sandbox: Plotting

Damn, now I've thrown my mind out of samurai/ninja gear, and into my "dragon sandbox" idea.

Plotted out what I think I'd need to do to get it off the ground.

1. Use my old Maritime Campaign maps.  Here's the Maritime Campaign that barely got off the ground a few years back.

2. Name those islands and peninsulas!  At least name ones where lairs will be placed, and ports will be located.

3. Place dragon, giant, and other large monster lairs.  At least a dozen to start, maybe more.  Maps of lairs (some caves, some ruined castles or cities, some in the wilderness, etc.), denizens (the big monster & it's treasure, plus any guardian creatures/traps, and lesser beasts that dwell in conjunction with or in the shadow of the big attraction).

4. Have a list of what sorts of information/help could be found at ports, with some info specific to each port location (sages, libraries, wizards, navigators, heroes retired and active, etc.)

5. Have at least 5 "treasure maps" of varying levels of accuracy for the players to discover (and they should likely start with at least one already).

6. Make sure each lair's treasure hoard contains some Keystone Treasures (famous named items, whether gems/jewelry like Hope Diamonds, or famous magic items like in my Unique Magic Items downloads over there on the sidebar).  For hoards that are only coins, have a history of how they got there (lost pirate treasure, cultists sacrificing to the beast, ransoms paid, or whatever).

7. Make a big ol' list of rumors of all of the above.  Make sure the players start with a bunch of rumors, not just one or two (one of the problems last time was that I still hadn't developed much, so I didn't have many rumors for the players).

8. Have a few stock ruined cities, mysterious temples, etc. that could be thrown onto unstocked islands, which would provide some clues to other lairs/important locations if they are explored.

Dead in the Water

Last night I attempted to rally the troops for our next scheduled game this Saturday.

Dave is busy with job hunting and can't make it. If he gets the job as a professor in Daegu tomorrow, he'll be leaving soon.

Lucy is now in Seoul doing an internship for the summer (will return in September).

Alex is available, but if it's just him and Josh he's not interested in playing (as he's stated before). At least Alex had some good constructive criticism for me on how to make the game go a bit smoother. It's refreshing after all the complaints lodged against Classic D&D by him.

Didn't even hear from Josh. He's usually the first to reply to any messages.

Anyway, we may be getting together with Steve for board games instead of RPGs on Saturday. I get the feeling we won't be returning to the Maritime Campaign ever.

Oh well, I may still finish writing up the skeleton notes for the maps I made and posting them as a sandbox module for Labyrinth Lord or something. We'll see.

In other news, I've started work on the Dragon Fist simulacrum game. I've got the character class descriptions/charts done. Kits (renamed Profiles) are next.

Maritime Campaign, Session 1

We got to play last night. Lucy and Dave came first and we finished up their characters. Then Josh and Alex came and we eventually got down to business, resulting in only about 2 hours of actual play time.

In that time, they got sent on their "quest" (no need for them to follow it up if they want, but it's there if they choose) to find the Chalice of Winter, a lost artifact that the king of their home city-state claims is necessary to save the realm. Find it within a year, or be forever banished from the city-state of Samos was the message.

Well, they found out a few rumors about the Chalice, and learned of the Library of Cadmia where they could research more. They sailed uneventfully north for a week to the Library, got good reactions from the librarian/monks, and left Alex's Illusionist there to aid with the research while the rest sailed east to the Zephyrus Archipelago to do some raiding.

The very first island they came to was one of my keyed locations, a small pirate stronghold. Alex's Cavalier and Josh's Thief went ashore first and checked out the apparent fishing village, and found out it was a pirate stronghold. The Thief retreated, but the Cavalier stuck around to get some info, and eventually got taken to the leader, The Hyena. He attempted to make a bargain with the Hyena (neither side intended to keep it, of course), and was released.

Using clever tactics (Josh's Thief riding his trained giant squid) they scuttled one of the pirate's galleys and drew them out into a night battle.

I was a bit rusty with the rules--I haven't run a sea battle in Classic D&D for over 15 years--so despite having read over the rules several times in the past few months, I forgot a few things. So Alex's ship got off a few extra catapult shots before he should have. Oh well. Josh's illusionist was making the pirates think their sails were on fire, Alex's marines were peppering the enemy with heavy crossbow and ballista fire, and the giant squid/Thief were hindering a ship by stealing the oars away. The Cavalier on his hippogriff managed to kill one of the captains in one swoop attack.

The pirates surrendered, and Josh, Alex and Dave had a debate about whether to execute the leaders or recruit them to help attack the Hyena and the rest of the pirates in the stronghold.

The good parts of the night were that we finally got organized and got to play. The bad parts were that as captains of ships, Josh and Alex did pretty much everything, while Dave and Lucy were mostly spectators. Especially in the sea battle. Alex was also complaining again, both about the short time of the session and the general lower power level of Classic. Finally, we were playing at my place, and my son was not wanting to go to sleep because of all the people around (and the colorful dice on the table) which made my wife angry.

Well, they have two more ships now, so if we get into any more naval engagements, Lucy and Dave can also captain ships, so that should help that problem. I've also got a good idea now what they want out of the game, so I can tailor my prep work more to what they want out of the game. Also, Dave has found a coffee shop with a back room with a nice big table that we might be able to reserve for gaming. Finally, we're done with character creation so we'll be able to play for the whole session. So hopefully things will go a little better next time.

Large group combats

Hmm, need to give some thought to what to do for ship-board actions in the Maritime Campaign. I'd rather not spend time rolling 20+ attack rolls a round for the NPC crew members, and equal numbers for their adversaries.

The War Machine is a bit much, and I'd rather not dig into Chainmail right now (I've only got it on pdf, and only have skimmed the rules).

I'm thinking I need a system where I make one die roll per troop type, then adjust damage depending on how well or poorly that roll went. Dice of damage would be then be divided between the enemy forces, one die to one opponent.

But do I want a flat roll, like a normal d20 hit roll, or a curved distribution like a 2d6 roll? Or should I dispense with attack rolls and just assume a number proportionate to the chance to hit defender AC are hit each round?

Firearms in the Maritime Campaign

I'm allowing personal black powder weapons in this game. It just wouldn't be a pirate game without guns. Cannon, however, are getting left out. I didn't find any cannon rules (let alone ones I liked) aside from rules for field artillery for mass land combat. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I've got no problem allowing pistols and blunderbusses (blunderbi?) while not allowing the big guns.

I have stats for pistols, dragons (pistol blunderbi), muskets, blunderbi (okay, I'll stop now), hand held bombs and large placed bombs. Gamma World 4 and d20 Past were my primary sources of information/inspiration for this.

Pistol -- damage 2d4 -- rate 1/3 -- range 20/40/60 -- price 100gp -- enc. 40cn
Dragon -- damage 3d4 -- rate 1/3 -- range 10/20/30 -- price 150gp -- enc. 60cn
Musket -- damage 2d8 -- rate 1/3 -- range 40/80/120 -- price 300gp -- enc. 100cn
Blunderbuss -- damage 3d6 -- rate 1/3 -- range 30/60/90 -- price 400gp -- enc. 140cn
Hand Bomb -- damage 3d6 (10' radius) -- rate 1/2 -- range 10/20/30 -- price 50gp -- enc. 50cn
Large Bomb -- damage 5d6 (20' radius) -- placed only -- price 250gp -- enc. 250cn
Powder and Shot (10 rounds), any type -- price 25gp -- enc. 25cn

These weapons misfire on a natural 1 on the hit roll, resulting in a) an automatic miss, b) necessity to clean the weapon (1 turn) before use, and c) Save vs. Wands or take 1 die of damage of the weapon's die type.

Any of the four gun types can be used as a club (1d4 damage) and the musket only can have a bayonet for 1d6 damage.

Hoist the sails!

On Saturday night, we met up at Josh's house and rolled up characters and fitted out ships for the Maritime Campaign.

Lucy came, which was a surprise to me. Dave couldn't come. We've still got a bit of work to do on Lucy's characters. She has one complete and ready to go, but still needs to decide on equipment (I'll likely work on that for her) and her specials. I'll also try to get Dave to roll up his guys before the next game as well (we've got two weeks).

Alex was pretty unhappy at first because he started gaming in the late 2E era, and mainly played Palladium games where there's more selection and min-maxing. He wasn't happy with rolling down the line 3d6 for stats, but I relented on the by the book 'only change your highest roll into your PR' stance I had hoped for and let him make one switch of rolled numbers. That way, he was able to have a Half-Orc captain, something he had wanted to do. It wasn't that big a deal for me, and it was better than a full on 'place your numbers where they'll do you the most good' option that Alex wanted.

Anyway, by the time he got to the 'select a special' and select some potions and scrolls section, he was happier. He did complain that his Fighter's magic weapon was only a +2 bastard sword (they're starting at 10,000 xp, so that's a 4th level Fighter). But when I allowed him to upgrade the party's small sailing ship to a small war ship instead of taking another boat for his captain option, he was happy. Another character took a special mount, and he spent most of the rest of the evening doing comparison shopping on the best monster to take (ended up with a hippogriff). He was min-maxing, but he was doing it with an eye toward strategies that would keep them safe in combat or allow them overwhelming odds, which I applaud.

Alex sometimes has trouble thinking outside the mechanics of the game, but at least he does well using the mechanics in creative ways.

Josh, on the other hand, was done relatively quickly with his characters. He also chose one captain, with a longship, and spent all of his characters' gold on kitting it out. Another took a special mount as well, and decided on a giant squid. Alex had taken 'aristocrat' as his final special, so he had extra gold to spend, and still has some, but his ship is full of reserve provisions and water, and a small complement of marines.

Lucy's Elf is the only one so far with a special decided, and she took a Wand of Petrification.

So far, Alex has a Fighter, Half-Orc, Illusionist and Cavalier. Josh has a Thief, Illusionist, Barbarian and Bard. Lucy has an Elf, Thief, and two Fighters. No idea what Dave will come up with.

The highlight of the evening for me was probably Alex considering taking a Living Rock Statue as his Cavalier's mount, but instead of riding it afixing it as the figurehead of the ship, so it could attack other ships with liquid hot magma.

I can see this turning into a really fun campaign. Everyone's pumped for it, and it will take minimal prep from me from the sounds of what they want to do--mostly freebooting and some trading, with only the occasional quest or search for fabulous treasure.

We're getting the band back together

I've got Josh and Alex confirmed for tomorrow night. We're finally getting the Maritime Campaign going. Dave may not make it, but he said he'll be there if he can.

So I'm pretty pumped about that, and I'm going through all my stuff to make sure I've got enough prepared. I never do, but at least I have enough that I can make it look like I do...

Anyway, getting back to gaming with the guys has gotten me nostalgic about my old gaming groups.

The original group: Todd (best friend #1), Ben (best friend #2, and 2nd cousin), Tim (little brother) and myself were the core. Bridget (my little sister), Josh, Adam & Jacob (Ben's brothers) and the occasional other friend would sometimes play. We grew up in the country, so it wasn't unusual for a 'game session' to be just one DM and one player. We mostly played BECM (Ben had Immoratals Set I think, but we never did more than look at it), and Star Frontiers.

Magic the Gathering and some members of my university gaming guild who were the stereotypical gamers you don't want to game with kept us from playing much in college, but after graduating I fell in with Tim (not my brother), Kenny, Jason and Steve. Tim and Jason were co-workers with me at Circuit City, Kenny was Tim's roommate, and Steve was a friend of theirs. We played a lot of short lived campaigns that were a mish-mash of 1E and 2E AD&D, including me running a game set in Feudal Japan for a few sessions. This is the Evansville Group.

Then I went to Japan, and after a couple years 3E came out. A few other teachers had also played, and we were all curious about the rules so I picked up the PHB when I was at home for the summer and ordered the DMG and MM when they came out. With the nature of the expat life, we had a bit of a revolving membership, which included Billy, Chris, David (he's Puerto Rican so it's pronounced Da-veed), Nick (who was actually the exchange student at the high school I taught at), and Gene. This is the Toyama Group. We played 3.0 D&D.

I moved to another part of Japan, and Billy, Chris, Gene and I tried gaming online with voice chat and OpenRPG, but it didn't go so well. We did get to try out d20 Modern and d20 Star Wars though.

After a few years, I got to talking with some other gamers in Tokyo on the Wizards message boards, and we formed the Ebisu Gaming Club. The members were Steve (not Steve from Evansville), Pete, Gene (from the Toyama group, he'd also moved), and toward the end Tim (number 3). We met once a month at Steve's apartment in Ebisu and played marathon 8 hour sessions on Sundays. We played 3.5 D&D, d20 Modern, d20 Conan, and tried out several Forge Indie games including one Steve was working on himself.

Concurrent to the Ebisu group, I fell in with some local guys who were playing a game of White Wolf's Trinity. This was Paul, Brent, Tanya, Mish, and another guy whos name is escaping me at the moment. The other guy was frequently absent, so they asked me to join up. After that game ended, Brent, Tanya and Mish all left Japan, but Paul and I recruited some other friends and formed a second group.

This second group was Paul, Atley, Josh, Jacob, Michelle, and Mark. Later, Lauren, Rick and Renee joined after Mark left the country and Atley lost interest. We started out with a d20 OA game that I ran, but then switched to a Classic D&D game run by Paul. Another guy named JD also ran a 3.5 game with some of the same players, but I was too busy to join them for that. Collectively, this is the Yamanashi Group.

And then I moved to Korea and fell in with my current Board Game Group.

Maritime Campaign about to set sail

Looks like we're finally getting things going! This Saturday, we're going to launch the Maritime Campaign.

Last Saturday night, board games fell through again, so Josh and I ended up drinking in front of a convenience store (legal here in Korea to do that). We were both pretty drunk--I was on my third bottle of baeksaeju, Josh his fourth--when Dave happened to wander by. I called him over, we started talking, then I went to take a piss and he and Josh started talking. They worked out their differences, and so Dave is in!

Alex, who normally doesn't want to play any version of Classic or pre-2000 AD&D, is excited about the sandbox oceanscape, with no demands on battling monsters or fulfilling quests unless they choose to do so.

Josh is just itching to play anything, since we've had so many cancellations.

The only down side is that Dave is going on a trip up to Gyeongju on Saturday to see the old Silla kingdom ruins, and probably won't be back to play. So it might just be me and Alex and Josh. But we'll roll up characters, see what sort of ship they end up with, and just hand-wave that Dave's characters are part of the crew.

A 'Second' look

For some reason, the urge struck me about an hour ago to pull the old 2E DMG off the bookshelf and see what sort of rules it had for ocean travel/combat. I found a small section for travel, nothing for combat (was it in the PHB? Have to look later). I was wanting to see if there was anything I might port over for the Maritime Campaign if we get it off the ground.

I started flipping through the book after reading the small section I was looking for, and was reminded that there's a lot of good stuff in there. Sure, it lacks the simplicity of BX or BECM or the grandiose verbosity of Gygax in the 1E DMG. But there are some nice little tidbits to find within. [And the art wasn't quite as bad as I remember--better than the RC anyway.]

In particular, I'd forgotten that there are about 20 different types of Protection scrolls. I've always been a fan of them, and missed them during my 3E era. They provide cool effects, and are usable by any class. Scrolls don't become the 'dump on the M-U' item with them available.

Usually when I think of 2E I think of the rules bloat of the Complete this and that series. But the core books are solid, and deserve another look every now and then from those of us not playing them.

You never know what you might find that you can use in whatever other edition of the game you're playing.

Considering RPOL again

Looks like the either Star Frontiers or D&D game isn't gonna happen this summer after all. Chloe isn't interested (she plays darts every Saturday evening) and Bill's not interested and will be away for 6 weeks anyway. There had been some hope that if Chloe played, Bill would (they're dating).

That leaves just me, Josh and Alex, and Alex doesn't want to play RPGs with only 2 players, if the other player is Josh especially. So we may just stick to board games for now.

So if I want to put all this work I've sunk into the Maritime Campaign to use, the internet would be the way to go. With my crazy work schedule, Skype or chat games won't work. But something like RPOL, a message board game, could maybe.

But every time I've tried to get into a game on RPOL it's always died a sudden death shortly after things get interesting. People just don't seem to have the attention span to stick with it. And I get obsessive about checking for updates all the time, and waste so much of my day on the site hoping someone's posted something.

Bummer.

Shake Ups Again

Well, the Board Game Group is up to its normal convolutions. We haven't had a meet up for normal games all month, and our weekend RPG thing seems to have died again. Last Saturday we had problems scheduling, so we thought we'd shift it to this Saturday (tomorrow my time). Then we had more scheduling problems and Josh decided he'd rather go play Warhammer 40K, so Pat called off the game.

Looks like Bill is also going on vacation soon, so that leaves just me, Alex and Josh (too bad Dave and Josh had a falling out and Dave won't go anywhere if Josh is coming). Alex is interested in the Maritime Campaign, but only if there are lots of others playing. With just him and Josh, he's not interested.

Josh is interested in Star Frontiers though, and suggests we play that from time to time at the Board Game Group (which we should be getting going again next Tuesday).

On the up side, at least we don't have to play any more 4E. Pat, Alex and Bill all want to pick it up again in the fall when Pat and Bill come back, but I'm really not interested. I think I saw enough of the system to know it's not what I want out of a game. So if they get together to play, I'm gonna bow out.

Disappointing, but then while I like all of these guys, our RPG styles and expectations just fail to match. We're probably best off sticking to board and card games.

Ocean Encounters

If I'm gonna run an campaign set at sea, I'm gonna need better ocean/sea encounter tables than the list in the Expert Set. So I made my own. For encounters on islands or coasts, I'll use the normal terrain type tables from the book. But at sea, I need a bit more. So I made these.

Hopefully the formatting won't get too messed up when I copy/paste this:

Maritime Encounter Tables

Encounter Chances (d6)
Coastal 5-6 (5 on land, by terrain type only)
Deep Sea 6 (5 hexes away from any land)

Encounter Type (d8)
Coastal Deep Sea
1 Ship 1 Ship
2 Ship 2 Ship
3 Ship 3 Swimmer
4 Swimmer 4 Swimmer
5 Swimmer 5 Swimmer
6 Dragon 6 Dragon
7 Unusual 7 Unusual
8 Flier 8 Unusual

Ship Encounters (d12)
Coastal Deep Sea
1 Adventurers 1 Adventurers
2 Barbarians 2 Berserkers
3 Warship 3 Warship
4 Natives 4 Pirates
5 Pirates 5 Pirates
6 Pirates 6 Pirates
7 Traders 7 Traders
8 Traders 8 Traders
9 Humanoids 9 Traders
10 Humanoids 10 Humanoids
11 Ghost Ship 11 Ghost Ship
12 Personality 12 Personality

Swimmer Encounters (d12)
Coastal Deep Sea
1 Giant Octopus 1 Giant Squid
2 Giant Crab 2 Elemental, Water
3 Spiny Rockfish 3 Giant Sturgeon
4 Insect Swarm 4 Storm Giant
5 Giant Leech 5 Sea Hydra
6 Mermen 6 Mermen
7 Nixie 7 Plesiosaurus
8 Rats (shipboard) 8 Rats (shipboard)
9 Shark (any) 9 Sea Serpents
10 Sea Snake 10 Shark (any)
11 Water Termites 11 Water Termites
12 Whale (any) 12 Whale (any)

Dragon Encounters (d12)
1 Chimera
2 White Dragon
3 Black Dragon
4 Copper Dragon
5 Green Dragon
6 Blue Dragon
7 Silver Dragon
8 Red Dragon
9 Gold Dragon
10 Hydra (sea or flying)
11 Wyvern
12 nearest lair

Unusual Encounters (d12)
Coastal
1 Djinni
2 Efreeti
3 Imp
4 Devil
5 Demon
6 Gelatinous Cube
7 Gray Ooze
8 Ochre Jelly
9 Shadow
10 Event
11 Event
12 Event

Fliers (d12)
1 Cockatrice
2 Elemental (Air)
3 Fairy/Pixie/Sprite
4 Gargoyle
5 Griffon
6 Harpy
7 Hippogriff
8 Manticore
9 Pegasus
10 Robber Fly
11 Roc (any)
12 Stirges

Humanoids (Ship Crew) (d12)
1 Bugbears
2 Dwarves
3 Elves
4 Gnolls
5 Gnomes
6 Goblins
7 Hobgoblins
8 Halflings
9 Kobolds
10 Lycanthropes (any)
11 Orcs
12 Serpent Men

Ghost Ships (d10)
1 Derelict
2 Skeletons
3 Skeletons, Wight captain
4 Zombies
5 Zombies, Wraith captain
6 Ghouls
7 Ghouls, Spectre captian
8 Derelict, Vampire
9 Ghost crew
10 Ghost vessel

Personality Encounters (d12)
1 Captain Hook
2 Solomon Kane
3 Jack Sparrow
4 Flying Dutchman
5 Blackbeard
6 Long John Silver
8 Sindbad
9 Captain Ahab
10 Captain Nemo
11 Horatio Hornblower
12 Belit

Maritime Map done

Not sure if we'll be playing my Classic D&D game after all. Josh and Alex are up for it, but Bill isn't. Josh is actually more interested in Star Frontiers, and Alex still wants to run that Rifts game he's been talking about forever.

Well, anyway, my nine maps full of islands and peninsulas are complete. Here's a composite of all 9 maps.



I just printed them out, and printed a hex grid over each page (A4 paper, 36x51 hexes per page) and assume 24 miles per hex. That's a lot of sea to campaign in!

It's also a lot to stock. Luckily, I'll only be marking important monster lairs, locations of important treasures, and bases of known pirates at first. The rest will all be randomly filled in as needed during play.

Oh, crap!

This Saturday will be our final 4E session. Pat's going back to the States for the summer. That means everyone's going to be turning to me for my Maritime Campaign (although there were a few mentions of a Star Frontiers game as well...could run them through the Volturnus cycle in a pinch).

I've still got to create the final 2 maps, decide what the hell sort of macguffin I want their 'quest' to be, and then figure out where on my maps the important NPCs, monsters, and treasures are.

Oh, and come up with a new set of maritime encounter tables, including random ghost ships and pirate crews.

That's a lot of work for 2 weeks, since I'm also working on a screenplay and in the 1st month of doing a live daily radio show. Volturnus is starting to look better and better...

But the Maritime Campaign will be a lot of fun if I get it going!

Character Creation for the Maritime Campaign

I've decided that the characters will start out around level 4 for this game. I'll likely just have the players roll stats down the line (switching one pair as they like) as usual, then give everyone a set amount of XP (10,000 seems good) and they can level up to whatever that makes them.

Each character will get to roll d4+2 for starting potions and scrolls (I'll have a short-list of what they can choose from). Then they consult this chart:

Character Creation Customization.
Choose or roll 1d10:
1. magic weapon (type chosen by player, bonus by DM)
2. magic armor (type chosen by player, bonus by DM)
3. magic wand (type chosen by player, charges by DM)
4. miscellaneous magic item (chosen by DM)
5. extra 1d4+1 potions and/or scrolls (chosen by player, up to L3 spell scroll)
6. captain (small sailing ship, small galley, or longship)
7. 1d6+2 followers (0-level NPC men-at-arms)
8. henchman/cohort/sidekick (2nd level NPC, class chosen by player)
9. special mount (up to 6HD creature)
10. aristocrat (have land holdings and titles on mainland, +1d4 x1000gp)

I'm also considering the possibility of making any PC with an 18 in any ability to be considered a 'demi-god' of the mythic Greek variety, with an immortal patron and immortal trying to hinder the hero's progress. Then again, the players want a more Victorian pirates type thing than the Greek mythology thing, so I might drop this.

What makes an island mysterious?

Planning for the Maritime Campaign. It won't start for a while, if ever. But one thing I realize I need are less historical pastiche nations/islands, and more weird crazy shit. So to help me along during game times, when I'm sure the players are bound to decide to explore islands I haven't filled out or decided to be the home of a module, I've got this random table cooked up.

Of course, this is only a first draft.

Mysterious Island Random contents:
Roll 2d6

2 Important Clue
3 Powerful Monster Lair
4 Witch
5 Ruins/Dungeon
6 Common Monster Lair
7 Settled
8 Empty
9 Hermit
10 Cursed
11 Unusual Environment
12 Roll 2 times

Important Clue: Someone or something here will point the PCs toward the goal of their quest.

Powerful Monster Lair: Dragon, Giant, Cyclops, Bronze Golem, Vampire, etc.

Witch: Random alignment, may Charm, Polymorph, attack, scare off, seduce, imprison, etc. the PCs.

Ruins/Dungeon: Lost City, Caverns, Temple, Stronghold, etc. Could be inhabited, or empty.

Common Monster Lair: Normal animals, humanoids, or low hit die creatures.

Settled: Town/City, Stronghold, Colony, Camp

Empty: Nothing to see here, but foraging and water available.

Hermit: Crazy, Sage, Spell-caster, religious, guardian

Cursed: The island, its inhabitants, certain locations, or visitors are cursed.

Unusual Environment: Unnatural physical features, flora or fauna.