Claimh Solais

White Wolf: The Trouble with the Clans

Brianne asked in the comments why I felt White Wolf needed to do away with all the clans.

My reasoning on doing away with the groupings is this: I see it as unneccesarily adding more complexity. Character motivations and backgrounds should and will vary anyway. All the multiple groups within groups makes the setting a lot busier than it needs to be. For a long time, I've felt that the Gothpunk world had too many Vampires and the two most successful games I ran in Vampire was a Dark Ages game where the PCs new very few other vamps in the world and a Sabbat game where the PCs were a bunch of Sabbat vamps travelling through the US in an old R.V. like the one in Near Dark and in each city they found that weren't nearly as many vamps in the world as they had heard. (The basis of the game, the players eventually realized that the Vampire organizations like the Camarilla and the Sabbats were nothing but rumours.) By making the world less populated with supernaturals, it kept the game from getting too busy and gave more reason for the PCs to roleplay between eachother and eventually create the conflicts between eachother. It's like in Amber. You give them a lot of power (there were no methuselahs breathing down my PCs necks) and a big playbox and they eventually make drama between eachother. The game becomes less about the powers and all the different factions and more about the personalities.

Let's compare Vampire: The Masquerade to Amber. Both Amberites and Vamps come from the same bloodline and choose from a limited set of powers based on being from that bloodline. Amberites don't need all the different political factions to cause the conflict for the setting. The groups in Vampire are an artificial way to cause conflict.

In Changeling, the Kiths made sense. When Vampire came out, the Clans were a pretty neat idea. When White Wolf went and applied the same idea to every one of their games, it became to much. By the time White Wolf finished the first five games, the world was already getting pretty crowded, with almost a hundred different supernatural factions, each with their own agenda. Then, the success of those lines led to Hunter, Mummy, Demon, etc. It's just too much.

I'd like a simple system for creating supernatural creatures and a basic world a lot like ours with a darker, supernatural edge. That's all I think the game needs.

WISH 74: I Wish I May, I Wish I Might...

Ginger asks:

Name three or more supplements (or core books, for that matter) for existing game systems that you’d like to see. Why? What inspires your interest in these supplement? What existing supplements or materials are you using instead?

I guess I'll handle this by the systems I play and/or run:

Amber- Any new supplement would be welcome. I can't describe how tired I am of explaining to people that Amber is not a dead game. A collection of original shadows with ideas on how to use them in an Amber game would be extremely cool and could be of use by a GM of any game where characters routinely travel through dmensions as well. I would also be happy to see a supplement that breaks down points for buying different variations on the Amber powers. For example, how much to have Pattern Imprint and be able to walk shadows but nothing more with it? I've seen many GMs come up with their own lists of alternate versions of Amber powers but it would be nice to have an "official" version. In fact, this could be a great way to launch an "Amber: 2nd Edition." Let me dream.

Buffy/Angel- A big 'ol book of original demons and supernatural creatures along with plot hooks for them. I'm thinking something like GURPS: Creatures of the Night but with stuff more suitable for the Whedon-verse. I'd also like to see a book that clarifies a lot of the Unisystem rules. I like having a simple and flexible rules system, but I'd also like to have rules available when I want them. Right now, there are a lot of gaps in the Unisystem....a lot of situations that the rules don't cover. I don't have too much of a problem coming up with rules on the fly, but it would be nice to have rules for things like...say.....vehicles, already. (Note- There has been some hints on the Eden Studios message boards that a Unisystem Vehicles book is coming out that will be usable for all the Unisystem games.)

Champions- Hero System Lite. The Hero System 5th edition book is the most amazing set of rules I have ever read. It can handle every genre you could think of and has all the rules you will ever need. It is also a huge, intimidating book that will scare off a lot of potential players. Its $40 price tag alone is enough to send a lot pf players somewhere else. GURPS got around this problem with GURPS-lite, a simpler version of the GURPS rules that doesn't include all the extra rules that aren't usually needed. They have been putting the GURPS-lite rules in the back of books like GURPS: Discworld and GURPS: Hellboy, making each of those books a stand alone game that does not require the GURPS Basic rules to be played. I'd like to see the same thing done with the Hero System.

World of Darkness- I would say I'd like to see them do books about the end of the world, but they are already doing that. After they finish ending the worlds, I'd like to see them introduce new versions of the Goth-punk worlds that simplify them a bit. The rules would need some huge improvements and they could get away from the 13 clan/tribe/tradition/kith format that they have been using. Let the characters personalities and powers be what seperates them. Not their clans.

Dungeons and Dragons- I've said many times that I think that the GURPS sourcebooks are some of the best sourcebooks ever made. I'd like to see some sourcebooks for D&D that borrow some of that elements. For example, if you flip through a D&D monster manual, it looks like some dry stats and description. The only things in them that really fire up the imagination is the color art....which is extremely cool. I'd like to see some sourcebooks that give more story ideas with the stats and tips on how to adapt them to your campaign or how to make creepy creatures creepier and mysterious creatures ...errr....mysteriouser. I'd also like to see a good set of alternate d20 Fantasy rules that gives much of the same feel without the level based progression. Something like Green Ronin's Mutants and Masterminds for the Fantasy genre.

(EDIT- I'd like to add that I'd also really like to see a good, playable RPG based on the DC superhero comics, but I'll probably see a Rebma sourcebook before I see that.)

The Nightside

I recently read Simon Green's Into the Nightside and it's follow-up, Agents of Light and Darkness and I've been meaning to mention them in my blog. If you've played in any of my Dreaming City games or read the site, you might be familiar with my character, Lazarus Jones. Lazarus is a detective who specializes in taking the weird cases. I started writing little short stories about him when I was in High School and even ended up playing him in a short RPG campaign. Then, he was shelved for years until I decided to run the first Dreaming City game at Ambercon a few years ago. I dusted him off, updated him a little (making him a Werewolf instead of his original curse which was more complicated) and placed him in a setting where he seemed right at home.

I've always had a weakness for the noir detective genre. Add in a little bit of the fantastic and it becomes even cooler. So, when I saw the Nightside series, I had to read it. From its description it sounded a lot like my Dreaming City and it did have a lot of similiarities.

Anyways, I was going to write I nice review of the books, but I was looking online for a list of the books in the series (these are the only two so far) and I found this website's review and it says about everything I was going to see. It's a worthy read. Check it out.

D&D Minis: Chainmail

WotC has releases a list of Chainmail minis that can be officially be used for games of D&D Miniatures Skirmish games. The list is here.

(EDIT- Merricb has built this page to show the metal Chainmail figures next to their Harbinger counterparts. As much as I like the Harbinger minis and not having to glue or paint, you can really see the difference in quality. Of course, most of my Chainmail minis are unpainted and even the ones that are aren't painted to this quality.)

Expensive Childhood

The game, Crossbows and Catapults was mentioned on a message board. For those of you who don't know, Crossbows and Catapults was a game series released in the eighties where kids built castles with plastic blocks and used little rumber-band poweres crossbows and catapults to try and knock them down. This game was tailor-made for both the destructive nature of young boys and that engineering nature. (I'm not saying that young girls can't enjoy these things as well, just that young boys tend to crave building things just to blow them up and this was a safe way to do just that.) The game was a blast and it got me wondering how much it would be to relive that memory of childhood.

Never mind.

Wish 72: Character Interrupted

WISH 72 asks: Talk about a few characters you had to stop playing before their stories felt finished. Where do you think they would have gone?

I would say that there are three main reasons that a character stops getting played. One- The campaign ends early or for some reason, the player's involvement in the game has to end. This one, I am sure has happened to way too many gamers and isn't really worth talking about. Two- The character becomes unplayable because of circumstances in the game. Three- (the second most common) Character death.

Well, I briefly mentioned in an earlier post what happened with my Champions character, Chango. That was one of those times. Usually with a character, I don't see a character as having a defined ending for their story. I take the dice where they come to lie and if their ending turns out to be slaughtered by Orcs, on the end of an assassin's balde or sucked out an airlock to die in vacuum, that was their story's end. If games are to be like real life, then it doesn't always end the way we'd like it to and sometimes something completely meaningless happens and causes a character to die an early death. Since playing Amber, that mentality toward the character has lessened for me, since random deaths can be less common in an Amber game that I diced death. In Amber, it's poor decisions that can lead to death or premature character endings, but then the ending is because of one's own actions and seems more like a complete character ending. It's the fatal flaw (or flaws) of the character that leads to the ending.

Halfway along the journey of my life,
having strayed from the right path and lost it,
I awoke to find myself in a dark wood.
-Dante, The Divine Comedy

I became a little bit attached to Chango (aka Dante) over the few years I've played him. He started as a slightly goofy ex-supervillain given a job by one of the world's governments to act as a wetworks operative. As the game developed, he ended up joining one of the world's premiere superteams, Vanguard. Like Major Disaster in the current JLA comics, Chango didn't quite fit in. This became his story for me. Here was a character who had done some horrible things in the past, being given a chance to be a hero. Him struggling with coming to terms with this change in role was part of what I liked in the character. While his teammates were heroes in the classic sense, Chango saw the world through the eyes of the criminal. I couldn't say how his story would end, but I knew he needed to become a real hero first.

He was doing pretty well at it, but then he started to stumble back into his old ways. Other characters noticed but never talked to him about this. I made the choices this character would make and it led him further and further from the hero's path. As a player, I expected that the eventual intervention would take place before it went too far, but events went too quickly and Chango and his old team, The Loa, caused hundreds of people to die.

I struggled roleplaying Chango. He was a tough character for me to find "his voice." I think that may be another reason I felt his story wasn't over. I was just starting to find "his voice."

Chango is, once again, in jail. As the only surviving member of the Loa, he will stand trial...and I feel cheated. Yes, I made the choices for him that led to the situation. I made the only choices I could see him making. I also realized after speaking to with my fellow players that the way I roleplayed him, I also led them to believe that Chango wouldn't hear them if they did speak with him. So, I don't blame the other players or the GM for Chango's fall. It happened.

My other long running character in that same Champions game failed on his quest too. Jubei was involved in a long quest to save Japan. Without going into details, he died in the final fight. He failed in his quest, but I felt he had a complete story anyway.

Maybe, because Jubei was a samurai, I felt that his story would be complete as long as he died honorably. To be honest, I never expected Jubei to live as long as he did. Perhaps I just never became as attached that his ending had to be a certain way.

To be honest, I can't think of any other character whose story ended because of reason two or three that did not feel complete. If my character's story ended because of something he (or she) did or someone he upset, I took it as the poetically just ending. If he died in a fight, it was a fight he chose to participate in because he was being herioc (a fine reason for the story to end) or because of a character flaw which goes back to the poetically just ending.

....but Chango...I was rooting for him to come out the hero.

Gillian the Vampire Slayer episode 1.3 "Purple Haze"

Purple haze all in my brain,
lately things just don't seem the same
actin' funny but I don't know why,
'scuse me while I kiss the sky
-Jimmy Hendrix

The third episode of Gilian the Vampire Slayer started the Sunday after "That's Entertainment!" with several scenes of the characters going about their week. Andrew met with some LARP gamers but decided not to join them after seeing that they were going to be playing Vampires. "Too much like real life." Amy, Nigel and Gillian got together at Nigel's to cast a scrying spell on the sword that was used by the mystery vamp in the last episode and found that the vampire is some sort of very territorial vampire that has claimed Ann Arbor as his territory. George spent Sunday and much of the week reading up on demonology on the internet and thinking about reading about how to mix mysticism with modern technology. (The character has two levels of Super-Science.)

Through the week, Amy tried very hard to help Gillian with her slaying duties by putting up a map of Ann Arbor with pins in it whereever a mysterious, possibly vamp related death occurred. This upsets Gillian who sees each pin as a failure. Eventually, Amy takes the pinboard down but starts tracking the deaths on her PC instead as well as starting her own scapbook of the weirdness happening in town.

Patrolling during the week, Gillian encounters some vamps who claim to be soldirers of "the darklord." She easily dusts them.

Amy has some conversations with Nigel about the dangers of magic and Nigel stresses to her the importance of not learning the arts too quickly.

Gillian has some converstions with Nigel where she finds out that Nigel Harker was once married and learns about his family's history and it's connections to Dracula. The Mina Murray and Jonathon Harker that Bram Stoke wrote about were real and the arker family has been the protectors of Dracula's London estate, Carfax Abbey and several other old Dracula haunts for generations. She gets a peak at the "Book of Dracula," a book Nigel's family has kept where they've chronicled everything they have found out about the vampire.

The next Sunday night, Amy and Gillian are visiting Nigel. It is late at night and they don't realize how late they've been out and start heading back to the dorms. Meanwhile in the dorms, Andrew wakes up and heads to the bathroom. In the bathroom, he encounters Warren, his old partner in crime...who died months ago. Believing this to be a trick of the first he ignores Warren until he sees Warren turn the faucet on. In the room, George wakes up to see that Andrew has left the door open and a purple mist is floating through the halls. He closes the door and turns to go back to bed when he finds a man with a gun pointed at him. Andrew hears a gunshot and rushes back to the dorm room to find George tossing in his sleep. We cut to a scene of George frantically calling for help on his cell-phone and finding none. He heads down the hall to find help and passes out from blood loss. Andrew, certain that he is dreaming, tries waking himself up and both wake up back in bed with a purple haze around them.

What follows is a looping nightmare as George keeps living violent gun related scenes and Andrew keeps running into people that died long ago, speaking for The First. The First saying that it wants Andrew back. At one point Andrew, in dream, uses magic to push a message out to Gillian in the real world.

Gillian and Amy were walking home discussing stuff when she gets smacked in the head with a magical whammy and knows that Andrew is in trouble. Running back to the dorm with Amy, they run into more of The Darklord's minions. The vampire minions challenge Gillian to fight the Darklord and usher into an alley. A group of vamps step aside to reveal the Darklord. The Darklord, a vamp in a trenchcoat, takes a look at Gillian. His eyes go wide. "The Slayer!?" He hops a fence and runs away. The minions look embaressed at their boss's fear and run away themselves. Gillain and Amy meet up with Nigel and rush to the dorm. There, they find a purple mist all through the halls and students that have fallen asleep wherever they are.

Andrew's and George's nightmares come to a climax as George faces up to one of the gunmen and takes the gun away. The gunman smiles. "You have the gun, but you still need bullets." Andrew, trapped in his room, sees Anyanka enter his room as Warren and Jonathon call to him from the inside. 'I saved you for a reason Andrew. She's going to need you." Anyanka motions to the door that Warren is calling to Andrew from, "The First wants you to fall. It's waiting. It thinks you will....but she's going to need you. You need to be there for her."

George and Andrew wake up to the real world as Amy removes the purple mist from their room with a Babylonian Demon Trap. The whole group traces the purple mist to an Asian snake-like demon, a Yuan-ti, in the basement that seems to be creating it. Gillian starts to fight the demon but Amy asks it politely to leave. The Yuan-ti bows and leaves but tells them to look for the real evil at the top. The mist is disappearing by the time they get to the roof. On the roof they find a sinister looking demon and his henchman, an impish creature with one mesmerizing eye. The big bad demon tells the Slayer and her friends, "another time perhaps....." and disappears in a cloud of purple smoke.

Quotes: Our usual quote chronicler wasn't there but I did write down one.

Amy, the witch, telling Gillian, the slayer, to let her handle a problem: Back off! This is a magic thing!

I Think I Need a Bigger Brush

Reaper has added their newest dragon miniature to their website, here. Makes me wish I had $75 to blow on a miniature. I wish they had pictured another mini with it for a sense of scale, but I'm guessing from the price that it's huge.

A Question for the Audience

Events in the Champions game lead me to ask this of the roleplayers out there:

When is it safe to assume that information was shared between PCs in-between sessions? In other words, if PC1 knows something, what times it is safe to assume that he shared it with PC2 even if it wasn't played out in the game and what kind of plot elements are ones that you would assume would only be shared "on-screen."

Obviously, if pc1 is madly in love with pc2 and he has never told pc2 in game, the player of pc2 can not just assume that pc1 has confessed his undying love off screen, right?

What about important plot elements? Backgrounds? What's fair game for off-screen sharing?

My Champions character made a whole lot of apocalyptically bad choices recently that the other PCs had information that may have prevented him from making those choices. They assumed they shared that information "off-screen." I assumed it was never told, since they didn't share it when they had the chance "on-screen." There was a whole lot assuming. Now, for the first time in a very long time, I am getting worked up over things that happened in a game outside of the game as I feel that Chango is no longer a playable character now, not because he made the poo choices he did, but because of assumptions.

World of Connemara: Session Three "Into the Elysium"

The third session of our D&D game ran last night. At the end of session two, the PCs decided to go ask the elves for help against the legion of undead. Entering the ancient forest the elves call home, The Elysium, the characters found an extremely thick forest where the canopy almost blocked out the sun. They had the first hints of the strangeness of The Elysium as they had an encounter with some Orc mercenaries who were lost in the forest, Orcs who had been dispatched to take part in "The Battle of Ironwood Hill" an epic battle between Orcs and Humanity that took place 200 years before they were born. They also had an encounter with golem made of wood that was apparently set in the forest as a guardian by the elves against intruders. The golem seemed to expect the PCs to give something to them, but when they could not figure out what to give the golem (it was actually something the characters had but never thought to try). Eventually they ended up fighting the man of wood.

It was a light role-playing, heavy combat game. Next session, they meet with the elves and try to get help from a people that want to have nothing to do with humanity. There should be much more oppurtnity for roleplaying.

Comic Book Quiz

Is this because I'm non-violent or because I sold my soul to the devil?

Either way, he's one of my favorite characters of all time.

You are John Constantine.
John has a strong knowledge of the occult and at
times he appears to wield strong magical powers
but he has also become known as something of a
con-man, more likely to talk himself out of
trouble than pull a rabbit out of a hat.


What Gritty No Nonsense Comic Book Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

D&D Minis: Dragoneye Previews

WotC has posted a preview of their releases for the next couple of months, including six pictures of figures in the next expansion for the D&D miniatures game, Dragoneye.

Also, I'd like to point out a correction for my review of the D&D minis game. A friend pointed out to me that Magic: the Gathering no longer issues rares in different rarity levels (and hasn't since the very early days). Uncommons and commons are still different rarity levels, but WotC doesn't make the "ultra-rare" cards anymore.

World of Darkness Quiz

(Via Eternal Eponine)

Shifters: You are a group untied in two things:
your understanding of the Weaver, Wyrm, and
Wyld, and your ability to change forms in order
to better maintain the balance. Cat, spider,
raven, rat, bear, lizard, coyote, or shark, it
all matters little. You mourn the loss of your
fellow shifters the were-snake Naga; killed by
the too proud werewolves in a war not easily
forgotten. Your numbers may be few, but you
make up for your it with ingenuity and using
your brains. The earth is in peril, and you
fight, each in your own special ways, to keep
it from harm.


What type of World of Darkness Creature Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

This might actually explain why I've never had much interest in running a Werewolf campaign. I guess it was too much like real life.

D&D Miniatures: A Review

I've been wanting to post a review of these for a little while but I held off until I'd actually had a chance to play a few games. I've played now and feel qualified to review the game.

I've been looking forward to the D&D Miniatures Game for a while now. When its predecessor, Chainmail, was cancelled I wasa upset to hear that it was being replaced with a pre-painted plastic collectible miniature game. I really liked the Chainmail minis. The game was one of the best miniature games I had played and the miniatures were a joy to paint. The quality of the scuplts in the last couple of Chainmail sets were excellent. Eventually, I heard that the new Collectible Miniature Game would feature rules that were very similiar to Chainmail and my anger faded. I also looked at my hordes of unpainted Chainmail minis and looked forwarded to a game that could give me a break from painting. By the time the first D&D mini set, Harbinger, came out I was happy to greet this "Chainmail 2.0."

In the D&D miniature game, players build "warbands" consisting of miniatures that represent creatures and characters in the D&D world. The first set offers many of the classic D&D creatures such as Displacer Beasts and Umber Hulks. Each warband must be comprised of figures from one of the four "factions": Lawful Good, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil. Each miniature costs a certain number of points to field in the game. With the default game being 100 pts, most warbands will have about 4-7 miniatures. Players than choose a scenario to play with the most basic scenario being a battle between the two (or more) opposing warbands. Other scenarios include a "take and hold" scenario where the warbands try to hold a piece of terrain against the opposing forces and a scenario where the two warbands attempt to get their warbands across the battlefield losing the least amount of miniatures possible.

After warbands and a scenario have been chosen, players take turns placing cards representing terrain on the "battle grid," a large paper map with 1" squares. Once the terrain is placed, miniatures are placed on the map and play begins.

Each player takes turn moving the miniatures, two at a time, until all the miniatures on both sides have been moved. A miniature can take all of the standard actions available in the d20 game with a few minor changes. Once all the miniatures have taken their actions, the turn end and a new turn begins.

Rules: This is the game's strongest point. Playing as a "simplified D&D", combat resolution is fast and easy and yet the rules have enough complexity to still offer some interesting strategies. As I said above, their are some minor differences from the D&D RPG. Most of these were changes that makes the game move faster. For example, when a creature hits another creature, there is no dice roll for damage. Damage is a set amount in multiples of 5. These are usually about the average amount of damage that the creature would have done in the RPG, rounded to the nearest five. Another dice roll was removed from the game regarding criticals. When a 20 is rolled for an attack, it is automatically considered a critical hit with no threat roll.

Of course, they also added a few rules that are not in the RPG. Creatures have to take Morale checks to see if they will continue fighting after they have lost half of their hit points. The Morale check is a save with a difficulty of 20. Special creatures called Commanders can give bonuses to the roll if they are near the creature or in line of sight. If the morale check is made, the creature continues fighting as normal. If it is failed, the creature runs.

Miniatures: Like all of the other collectible miniature games on the market (Mage Knight, Heroclix, LotR), the miniatures in the D&D game are not as high of quality as the miniatures you would paint yourself in a traditional miniature game. The sculpts are simpler and the paint jobs can be horrible at times. The larger miniatures in the D&D game like the Ogre, the Minotaur or the Umber Hulk look great. The smaller figures are not-so-great. The Axe Sister, a human woman swinging a large axe, always seems to look like she has a receding hairline. The elves and halflings have no details in their face and paint from their swords and accesories are often spilled onto their clothes. To compare these paint jobs to other CMGs (or more commonly TMGs, Trading Miniature Games), these miniatures are much better than the earliest Mage Knight sets but not as good as the recent Heroclix and Mage Knight sets. (I have never bought more than a few packs of Mage Knight minis, to be honest, but I see them at hobby shops enough to know what they are like.)

The thing I like the most about these minis when compared to the minis in other CMGs is that they do not have the "clicky" bases that the Wizkids games have. Instead of putting the stats on the base, this game puts the stats on a seperate card, so the figure is usable in the RPG as well as the miniature game. With the other games out there, you need to find a way to remove the figures from their bulky bases before they would fit in the squares or hexes used in most RPG maps.

The thing I like the least is the flexible plastic they use in the miniatures. The Wizkids plastic minis are fairly sturdy and keep their shapes very well. The D&D minis often have bent weapons and sometimes bent bodies. I've been told that this is easily fixed by dropping the miniatures in near-boiling water for a few seconds because the plastic they uses has a memory and will return when heated to its original shape. I haven't tested this yet, but that should help. However, since I like to paint minis and would be interested in being able to convert and paint these minis, I am also worried that the malleable plastic will make them difficult to convert and paint.

Manual: The instruction manual is well designed, well-written and gives plenty of examples with illustrations. It also seems to cover the rules for abilities that will be in future expansions which is welcome relief after Chainmail, where they released books with every set explaining new abilities. Spell abilities are printed on the card of creatures, which is also a lot better than Chainmail where one had to refer to the manual during the game to find out what a spell did.

Collectibility: One of the important things in collectible games is creating abilities for card or miniatures that have different effects when combined and that easily lead to "theme decks" (or in this case "theme armies"). In Magic: the Gathering, there are cards that give all creatures of a certain type a bonus or all creatures on a particular side a bonus. These instantly lead to deck ideas putting those cards together with cards that can benefit from those bonuses. This game goes a long way towards that end as each commander has a commander effect where creatures under their command get certain bonuses. There's only one set so far, but as more are released, their will likely be all sorts of cool combinations.

One of the things I really appreciate in this game is the fact that they made all rares of a certain rarity have the same level of rareness. In Magic the Gathering, some rares are rarer than others. They are usually the cooler cards and it causes the price on these rares to go sky-high. This is good for the makers as it gives a reason for buyers to buy boxes of cards long after they have gotten most of the cards they want....looking for those diamonds in the rough.

This new game is still divided into Commons, Uncommons and Rares, but there is a twist. All Rares should have just as many other out there as all other rares. No uncommons should be rarer than other uncommons. This takes a bit of the gambling out of the game.

A flaw in how they were randomized has, however caused a problem with how well distributed they were. There may be just as many Gnolls out there as any other uncommon but most of them were shipped to Europe from what I've heard. I've found a Gnoll in a pack, but from what I've heard, I was lucky. Gnolls are really tough to find in the US. Meanwhile, I've opened up four Orc Archers and four Tiefling Fighters already (both uncommons) and I haven't bought that many packs yet. I hear this was also a problem with the early releases from Wizkids and they eventually got the random distribution worked out a little better, so I'm hoping this will be better with the next D&D set, out in December.

Overall: I think this is a great game. It's well worth giving a try. Even if you find you don't like the game, you can use the miniatures with many other games. I've already put some of these minis to use in my D&D campaign.

Thanks to the Ferrett...

...Claimh Solais is now readable through Livejournal! The LJ user ID is jarnoldi. The LJ site is here.

Michael Moorcock in Locus

An upcoming issue of Locus has an interview with Moorcock. They have a special offer to pre-order it. I don't have the money to send them this week, but I'll have to make sure I do this. I don't want to miss this issue.

U-Con

The U-Con game convention is this weekend and I'm really looking forward to it. I wasn't able to affor Ambercon North or Northwest this year, so U-Con is my gaming convention fix. I'm running a Dreaming City adventure on Sunday. It's a scenario I've run diceless at Ambercons twice before, "Blood and Darkness in the Dreaming City." There's not a whole lot of games I'm interested in playing in, but I'll probably play in at least one D&D game, since I've never played in a D&D 3rd edition game before. (For that matter, I only played AD&D twice.) There's a few Fantasy Hero games I've thought about playing in. I've always been interested in finding out how well the Hero System works for Fantasy.

Last year, there was a wealth of Buffy and Amber games to play in. This year, there are a lot less. I didn't see any Amber games in the book, but there may be a good reason for that.

I've set aside a few gaming books to put in the U-Con auction. We'll see how that goes. I really need the money....so I can buy more gaming books. It's kinda sad, I know.

Depending on if I decide to play a RPG in the slot, I may end up trying a miniature game that some guy is running based on Irish mythology. The game is Erin from Alternative Armies. I don't like the miniatures very much, but it seems to try to be a little more true to the myths than Celtos did.

I like game conventions. I was talking to a friend on the phone about it the other day and how gaming becomes a pretty expensive holiday once you start going to conventions. I think it has been worth it for me. I've gotten to meet some really cool people that I may not have met otherwise and become friends with them. It's cool meeting new people with similiar interests and gaming with different people. It's part of the social aspect of the hobby.

Dragons

WotC has posted the gallery for Draconomicon, the new D&D book that's all about (what else?) dragons. A little while back, they put out a Magic: the Gathering expansion with a dragon theme, Scourge. They've also revealed that the theme of the next D&D minis game is dragons.

It seems that WotC has realized that dragons sell.

When I started gaming back in high school, I never understood the gamer fascination with dragons. Yeah, they're cool magical creatures but so are griffins, pegasi and unicorns. They're powerful, but so is Balrog demon. You don't see too many gamers buying trinkety little statues of Balrogs to decorate their homes with. It was a fascination that I just couldn't grasp.

These days, I've fallen for the big beasts like so many other gamers. I have a few miniatures of dragons that I've painted up and I want more. In Magic: the Gathering, I've built three different decks based around dragons and even though they lose more often than they win, they are my favorite decks. There is something about them.

I think it's that they are powerful AND graceful. They can decimate an entire village from the air and the whole time make it look like an aerial ballet.

...and they have that mystical element. Like the dragon's breath that Merlin summons in Excalibur, dragons usually seem to be a powerful magical force in fantasy worlds.

For this reason, I'm not sure if I like how they were handled in the default D&D setting. They don't seem to be that mysterious. In the D&D Monster Manual, they are just listed as another monster to slay. Sure, they are a very powerful monster that can usually obliterate most adventuring parties, but they are still just another list of stats.

Maybe this Draconimicon will add a little more magic to them. I flipped through it at the comic shop and it just sounded like another book full of stats and prestige classes, but it will sell. It has dragons.

Movie News: Batman and Catwoman

According to the new issue of Wizard, Batman has officially been cast for the next movie. He'll be played by Christian Bale and not David Boreanaz that had been rumoured.

Also in the issue, it has a picture of Halle Berry in the costume for Catwoman and all my hopes for the movie have been shot. The costume, while showing a lot of skin, looks ridiculous.

It didn't mention it in the magazine, but there were a lot of rumours online that David Boreanaz was actually cast to play Superman. It was just rumours.

Heorot: An alternate Amber setting

This one's been sitting at the back of my mind for a while now. An Amber setting based around Heorot, the mead hall in Beowulf. This Amber would have an early Anglo-Saxon feel with the elders and common-people alike meeting each night to drink in the great mead hall, Heorot.

Of course, what I'm thinking about is an Amber retelling of the Grendel attack with Grendel as a creature that lives somewhere off in shadow and kills the people in Heorot and drags the dead off to his cave (and his mother) somewhere in shadow.

The Price of Books

Who said roleplaying was a cheap hobby?

Between the Buffy game and D&D there are several books I want to buy. At first, I thought I wouldn't be wanting to buy any more books for D&D after the core books, but I've seen a few I really want.

For Buffy, I want to pick up Monster Smackdown, a book of the creatures and demons that appeared in the TV show. I also need to pick up The Magic Box, the magic sourcebook. There are also some general Unisystem books I want to pick up, mainly All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Terra Primate.

For D&D, I've really been wanting to pick up The Book of Vile Darkness and The Book of Exalted Deeds. WotC is doing a wise thing by having those art galleries online because the art got me looking at those books and I really want them now. There's a few others but those two books sound really cool.

The problem is, of course, that I don't have that much money. RPG books are really expensive these days. They're almost all in color which brings the price up even more (although it makes the art a little cooler to look at). With my weekly monetary "offering" to the comic shop, I don't have a lot of money to spend on books...at least not ones that cost $30+.

So, I think I need to start selling off my old roleplaying game books. I have boxes and boxes of books, mainly for GURPS and White Wolf. I like the White Wolf games and will keep the core books but few of the supplements are really worth keeping. The GURPS books are great and I've already gone through them before and weeded out ones that I didn't "have-to" keep, but I'm sure that a second time through will turn up some.

....and I have lots of obscure RPGs. Most of them are great games that I want to keep but not all of them are that great. There's the auction at U-Con or eBay. I've never attended a convention auction and am not sure if I can get as much. Does anyone know? Either way, I could use the money to get the books I will use and clear out some of the books that are currently being generously stored by J&P. (Thanks guys!)

The hard part is. I use these books, even the crappy ones. Old RPG books are constant sources of gaming inspiration for me. Sometimes it's the art. Sometimes it's the words. I constantly go back to sourcebooks for RPGs that I'm not playing at the time and find some kernel of inspiration. (The GURPS books are amazing for this.) I hate giving them up sometimes.

World of Connemara: Session Two

The second session of my new (and first) D&D game met last night. Two weeks ago, we needed to cancel because I was sick. Everyone seems to have had a good time, but it did not go as well as I would have liked.

The scenario started right after the end of the first session. Something evil was awakened in the cave on the hill and the PCs had gone to the home of Torian, the only person in town familiar with the occult. As they discussed what happened on the cave, they a little more about the "five that lie sleeping," a children's rhyme they had learned long ago referred to the five generals that led a dark army against the people of Connemara thousands of years ago. These generals had been given immortality by their leader who is referred to in versions of the myth as the "Dark Lord" or "Liche King" Supposedly, the elves had found a way to seal the powers of these immortal generals and hid them scattered across the land.

As they characters discussed this, Verna Goodberry (the Halfling Cleric), rushed home so she would not be in troubl with her parents. As she approached the town she came across the walking dead who seemed to be heading towards Torian's. The scenario progressed as the characters in teh house found themselves beseiged by the undead and Verna tried to bring the cavalry to them in the form of her dear old granny. (Her Granny is an old priestess of the goddess Mara and knew powerful prayers to turn back the undead. The seige ended as the leader of the undead, a wraith-like creature was attacked by some mysterious cloaked figure and while he was distracted and the undead were turned back by Granny's prayers, the group ran from Torian's home to the village.

At the village they put all the pieces together and figured out that the Wraith may have been The Liche-king himself and that he may have been attacking Torian (whom the wraith taunted during the seige to "come out and let me pick your me pick your brain) because he wanted information about the location of his generals. They discuss that the Liche-king will need dead people to build his army and it is realized that a legendary battle took place a short distance east from the village (Glendun) and thousands died there. The characters decide to head west to visit the elves in the mysterious forest, The Elysium. (Despite NPCs making several mentions of the fact that the Elves once enslaved humanity and Elves and Humanity have never gotten along since.) They hope that the Elves may remember the spell that can seal away the power of these generals. Torian and Frederick (a PC whose player will be unavailable for a few months) went east to warn the Duke Ertai, the local lord before he finds himself atatcked by an army of the damned.

The players seemed to have a good time, but the game went wrong in a few ways.

1- I wanted the game to give the feel of "Night of the Living Dead" with the characters defending the building against zombies. Horror is always tough to pull off in a roleplaying game but it even tougher when you use miniatures to track the combats. Instead of doing it turn-based and using minis, I should have done it more narrative and had long periods go by between attacks and characters wondering if they will ever leave the house alive.

2- The big threat upon the home besided the undead was a reanimated troll that was going to try and break the back door down and burst through the magickal seals on Torian's home. Carla's character, a bard effectively neutralized him through the whole seige but was unable to do anything because she needed to keep playing music to him to keep him neutralized. This resulted to her doing the same action turn after turn. "I keep playing." This couldn't have been fun for her.

3- The player that won't be making it for a while was playing the main muscle of the group, a half-orc paladin. With him gone, the group needed some more muscle and I planned to introduce a Barbarian GM-ran PC that would add soem muscle to the group. I planned to introduce it as the PCs went east to warn Duke Ertai. (The Golden Rule of GMing- Whatever you think the characters will do, be prepared for them to do the exact opposite.) Obviously, they decided to go west and I winged introducing the character, but the way I tried to introduce the character as being in the woods that the Elves inhabit did not work out and he did not come off as all as I picture him.

4- Names. My notes were horribly disorganized and spotty. Because of this, I had several ocassions where I mangled names or took time to look them up.

The good-

1- The characters are going to the Elysium! While this may be bad for the characters, I'm happy about this because I have some cool ideas for how "The Taurguessir" (The Elves of the Elysium or Wood Elves) are different than your typical Fantasy Elves and it will be fun to explore their world. Hopefully, they don't get themselves killed. The Elves are kinda funny about "Edan"entering their realm.

2- One of my players was telling me this morning how much he was enjoying the game and he was the one that I was worrying the most that he wasn't enjoying himself. He didn't seem as enthusiastic as the others. Speaking to him this morning, he had a lot of good things to say about the game. I think, however, this is more due to bad experiences of his at the hands of other DMs. He told me a few D&D horror stories. To give you an example, he cited one of the reasons he liked the game as being that it didn't take place in a dungeon.

3- I think I am starting to get comfortable with the D20 rules. I won't go as far as saying they are a great rules system. I won't even go near saying that. I'll say they're good. For every flaw I find, I find something I like. This is a lot for me to say considering how much I despised the old D&D rules.

Gaming Resource: Castles

Floor Plans!

Gaming Resource: More Art!

When I linked to the D&D art below, I should have also mentioned that there is some good Modern Fantasy art in the D20 Modern book, some of which is in the gallery here.

Also, I checked the other games they have on their site and found they have a great gallery for The Wheel of Time RPG that's filled with good fantasy art.

The Transatlantic Tunnel

I saw a bit on the Discovery Channel last night about the plans to build a transatlantic tunnel to run a bullet train through the ocean from the US to Europe. Why am I posting this here? This seems like I nice detail to add into a Cyberpunk or other Near Future game. Right now, it's far away from ever being a made a reality but the engineers say it should soon be a possibility and it would be able to get a passenger from one side of the ocean to the other in 58 minutes.

Also, while I was searching for the link on Yahoo, I found a website describing how the Bible predicts the building of the Transatlantic Tunnel and that the anti-Christ will come out of the US, "The New Atlantis."

Irish Mythology Quiz

Meera provided this link below.

Normally, I wouldn't post these quizzes here, but this one begs to be here.

CuChulainn
You are the hero of Ulster, the only man who can
fight without falling down in the pain of
childbirth. However, you have a nasty
temper(sorry! :-P) and you have a tendency to
think with your fists.


Which Mythical Irish Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Maybe I'm not Nuadha...

Actually, I got the impresssion from the questions that the children of Danu weren't included in this quiz. Still, I can't be disappointed with my result.

Gaming Resource: The Book of Exalted Deeds

Keeping an eye out for art I can use for my roleplaying games, one of the things I regularly check is Wizards of the Coast's D&D gallerypage. One of the reasons I bought the third edition books was the great art and these days, they usually post several color and black & white pieces on the web.

The newest book is the companion piece to The Book of Vile Darkness, The Book of Exalted Deeds. It's a book that is supposed to explore the really good guys.

The gallery is up and there's a lot of good pictures for GMs of almost any game to use. There's several great Angels for an In Nomine GM. There's a few good demonic looking creatures for a Buffy GM (or many other settings) and, of course, there are plenty of good images of fantasy characters for use by any fantasy GM.

A few of these pics will probably show up in my D&D game. At least one will show up in my Buffy game. I'll remember the others for later use. I know I'll be able to use the angels someday.