Tales from the Loop post game thoughts

This past Friday I was blessed with the opportunity of running some friends through Tales from the Loop: Roleplaying in the 80's that never was. The game turned out great in my mind and I had a blast running this for The RPG Brewery. The players were fantastic and they all got on board the train. I devised this mystery myself and just thought I'd share my notes with everyone. At first I made a different mystery that was more Lost Boys themed but I quickly scrapped that as I wanted more of a Halloween themed adventure. Luckily the game got posponed and I had time to come up with another idea. I'm so glad that happened eventhough it sucked because I was really hyped to run the game two weeks ago.

If you haven't seen the video yet, I suggest you go watch it here on Youtube. The basic premise of the game was the 1982 classic Poltergeist movie written by Steven Speilberg. Overall I'd say the game went fairly well. I planned for 3 clue scenes but the third one wasn't needed. I did think the game could have gone a little more smoothly but that might just be my own perception. The players said they enjoyed it so it was a success in my books. There was one image near the end of the game that couldn't be seen in the video because we did it all theatre of the mind so VTT's were not used and Skype can't do screen sharing. The players had just crossed through the portal and as they turned around to look at their envrionment they see a tribe of native american warriors on horseback charging straight at them.

If I were to run it again I'd shorten the name of the ride to Troll Tunnel or Troll Twister. A mistake I made during the game came near the end in the showdown. Kelly decided to use her Lead skill for the showdown in order to add dice to the other players dice pools. What I did wrong was let her keep her successes for the total showdown accumulation. The showdown specifically requires the Lead skill to either add to the total success or give additional dice to the other players, not both. At least I know now for future reference. As you can see below, my notes are rather short and just give the truth of the mystery. Everything else was more or less adhoc. I had some ideas but I wanted to see where the players took the game.

Next time on Thoughts Of A Barbarian I think I might do a bit of a science fiction RPG review. I have Stars Without Number by Kevin Crawford in mind but there is another I might do first. I'd also like to mention that the weekend of November 30th Hobbs & Friends of the OSR are hosting an online gaming convention called Hobbsapalooza. Check out this video for more information.

Don't forget to come out and join the Nerds-Interantional at Con on the Cob in Richfield Ohio this November. Our tables will be located in the Atrium near the swimming pool. I'll be running some Lamentations of the Flame Princess and the new Judge Dredd game. I had an amazing time last year and this year should be even better.

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Can you hear the Lamentations?

As I’ve been getting into the OSR scene, I noticed that there was some controversy over a game called Lamentations of the Flame Princess. To be honest, at first I made a snap judgement that this game was not for me as it appeared to be predisposed to an attempt to shock the readers with graphic images. I had only read a few posts on a forum up to this point so when I saw the book in my FLGS I picked it up to look at it. I put it right back down into the bin because I saw a $25 price tag on this thin little book. I know, the cost shouldn’t have been a factor and I know several publishers that would scold me for making this statement but I’m being honest here. That thought made me think twice about it and picked it back up before I was heading out the door. As I flipped through the book, I was astounded by the amazing artwork and construction quality of the book.

Even though this book is 176 pages, its A5 size and page thickness made it look like a puny little thing. I think this is where my cost vs. matter kicked in and I bought it. This book is a hardcover with a smyth sewn binding that lays flat easily and every part of the book is expertly utilized. The inside front and back covers have charts and tables that continue on to the flyleaf and include artwork on the normally blank backside. The quality of this book is A+ top notch. My only wish would be to have a ribbon bookmark included. To me this would set it apart from the rest of the competition. Well, that and an edge index. Speaking of an index, this book is missing one. Not to fret though, the table of contents is very thorough.

As soon as I got home, I started reading this gem. Right away, I noticed that there wasn’t any kind of theme or background info included. Before I continued reading, I needed to do some more research. That means trying to find interviews of the author James Edward Raggi IV. What I found out is that the overall feel of the game was intended to be a weird horror set in the real world 17^th century Earth. When I heard that, I was like oh, ok, that makes sense now and the choice of art throughout the book resembles that. I think the fact that there isn’t a setting included in the book is a good selling point for me. This is the rules and magic book and the lack of a setting allows me to use this in any setting I desire.

Also of note is that the support materiel for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP) is not a unified product line. This is much like Savage Worlds in the fact that new supplements don’t use the same setting and are vastly different. For more information on this go to the LotFP webpage ABOUT tab or just click on the hyperlink. As far as I can tell, LotFP is based off the D&D B/X rules with his own twists included. For more information on B/X, see my previous post. It should also be noted that I saw recommendations on line to be a little familiar with the B/X rules because it would help me to understand the LotFP rules better. I decided to forego this advice because I wanted to see how well the book stands alone on its own.

Back to the book. The first criticism I have that jumped out at me were the page numbers. Say what? What do you mean the page numbers? I know that seems like such a trivial thing to criticize but it really, really, irritates the shit out of me. The book has two different locations on the page where the numbers can be located. On most pages they are on the top outer edge. At the start of a new section they are at the bottom center of the page. Then you have instances where the pages don’t even have numbers on them. Why did this irritate me so much? It’s because every time I flipped through the book to find a certain page number I didn’t know where to look. Scanning the page to find the number makes me feel lost. Sometimes I even had to count pages backwards to find the right page.

LotFP character creation is straightforward and shouldn’t surprise anyone. They did change the Thief class to a Specialist and allow the Specialist to start with points to use for improving skills. All classes start with a 1 in 6 chance for all skills. Some classes like the Dwarf will increase a skill. Yes, they are still using race as class in this game. Even though the game is intended to be real world 17^th century Earth, he included Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling classes. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the race as class of D&D old but you can remove it or ban its use if you want to in your game. There also appears to be a typo in the description of the Specialist on page 17. It lists the skills and that everyone starts at 1 in 6 but they omitted the 1 in 6 next to the sneak attack skill. This did confuse me a bit at first but luckily, there is an excellent cheat sheet for character creation in the back of the book on pages 166-167. This cheat sheet is invaluable. If you’re starting a game up, I suggest you copy these two pages and give them to each player.

My next bout of confusion comes on page 35. Here we see rules on some hazards such as ability score loss, aging, and diseases. My problem comes from the table in the upper right corner of the page. Here we see a chart that references the aging rules, which could be important if magical effects cause a character to age rapidly. The chart gives the starting age that a character must make a saving throw versus Paralyzation, at what age there are penalties, and how often they are made. The table has all the information except that the interval, or how often to make a save, is just a number. It doesn’t tell me what the number means. Am I supposed to have the player make the save every round, every day, or every year? I suppose I’d just make something up during the game but I would expect this to be defined in the rules.

This next little bit is a slight departure from the old skool D&D, at least I think so anyway (I’m probably wrong). Character death doesn’t occur at 0 HP. Instead, you are unconscious at 0. When your character reaches -3 HP, it is mortally wounded and will die in 1d10 minutes. If your character reaches -4 HP it is dead, dead, dead. Another great little feature is the language skill. Even if your character doesn’t have a known language listed on the sheet, you can always roll to see if you understand it. There is a 1 in 6 chance your character can understand a foreign language. This roll is also affected by the characters Intelligence modifier. A +1 Int modifier means that your character has a 2 in 6 chance of understanding the language.

I’m not going to go into detail on all of them but there are a total of 9 skills available for everyone to use. They are Architecture, Bushcraft, Climb, Languages, Search, Sleight of Hand, Sneak Attack, Stealth, and Tinker. Tinkering is important for the specialist because this is what is used to disarm traps and unlock doors. There is a caveat of course, the character must be able to see the device they are trying to disarm or unlock. Things like a pressure plate can’t be disarmed because the only way to see the mechanism is to activate the trap. “A character gets one attempt to use Tinkering on any particular object. If that one attempt fails, the character must gain a level before attempting to manipulate that object again.”

It’s refreshing to see that I’m not the only one who wants maritime rules in their game and Mr. Raggi does too. Next up is a four-page spread on Maritime Adventure rules that start on page 43. Here we have ship stats, water conditions, manning the ships, and encounters at sea. Encounters at sea include chases, ship-to-ship combat, ramming, and boarding. It’s in the ramming rules where I came upon another oversight. The ramming rules are separated into two categories, small and large ships. The problem is that these categories aren’t defined. I didn’t see anywhere, where he says these ships are small and these ships are large. This is important because smaller ships do less damage than larger ships when ramming. If I had to make a judgement call on the spot, I’d say ships that require a crew of 20 or less are considered small but that’s just my opinion and others may say that 75 or less is small.

It wouldn’t be D&D B/X if we didn’t have retainers, or cannon fodder as it’s more commonly known as. LotFP has five pages of retainers including a chart on the first page followed by a short description of each type. There are 27 different retainers detailed here and their loyalty/morale rules confused me a bit here as well. This confusion was short lived though as I kept reading these particular rules were better defined nine pages later. I’m not really sure why people do this because this happens more that you’d think. It’s kinda like acronyms, first you define the acronym then you can use it. Same goes for rules. First defined the rules then reference back to them later.

Following the Retainer section is one on property and financial investment. This is an interesting idea to include in the rules but these really should have been put in the appendix. Even though they seem fun, they would rarely be used. Characters with a substantial amount of disposable wealth can buy properties and make investments that will have an annual return/loss. With the roll to see how it turns out only happening annually in game, I would certainly forget about it and would rely on the player remembering for me.

Next up are some encounter rules. Again, I haven’t brushed up on the B/X rules so if this is standard fare forgive me. Spell casters in particular will have a slight problem if they plan to cast anything in combat. Casting the spell takes an entire round and the caster can’t move. Then at the start of the next round, before initiative, the spell activates (unless the spell is labeled as instantaneous, then it goes off immediately). This only works if the spell caster doesn’t take any damage during the round of combat, as this will negate the spell. Does it use up the spell slot if my caster took damage during the attempt? I don’t know the answer to that one. As a referee, I’d say no.

Oh, and firing missile weapons into a melee combat with your friends is an easy way to gain more enemies. Everybody in the melee has a chance to be hit by the missile. The referee randomly assigns a number to each combatant and rolls a d6 to see who is hit. If the shooter takes a full round to aim then the enemy combatant counts as two people for the purposes of determining who gets hit. I’m pretty sure this rule is in B/X.

The oil and fire rules seem a little too conditional to me. When you throw a lit oil flask and hit the opponent, you roll 1d4 damage. If you rolled a 4 for damage then the enemy has to make a Breath Weapon saving throw. If the saving throw fails then the victim must take an additional 1d4 damage on his next action. If this comes up a 4 again, they are engulfed in flames taking 1d8 damage every round thereafter.

After the eight pages of full color, full-page illustrations, we come to the start of the magic section. Just like the rest of the book, those color illustrations are fabulous by the way. The magic section pretty much rounds up the rest of the book except for the appendix. First up are the Clerics, they can cast any spell on their spell list and don’t use spell books. A first level Cleric can cast any 1^st level spell. Each day they must pray for their divine powers at a rate of 1 hour per casting level (otherwise known as memorizing spells). Once they cast a spell, it is lost from memory and must re-memorize it.

Magic-Users start with 4 spells in their spellbook, which are Read Magic and 3 more randomly selected (roll a d20 three times) first level spells. Elves start with only Read Magic in their spellbook. Just like the Cleric, Magic-Users must prepare their spells. They must study their spellbook for 1 hour per casting level at which time they have memorized their spells for the day. Again, once the spell is cast, it no longer is available for use until re-memorized the next day.

These magic rules effectively make casters useless for the first few levels. 1^st level is 1 spell slot, 2^nd level is 2 spell slots, and so on. This really sucks and it would pretty much make the supplement Vaginas Are Magic (VAM) a requirement in my game. VAM allows casters to use unprepared spells even if they are out of spell slots for the day. This comes a risk though. Hence, Risky Casting, the caster must make a Magic saving throw or suffer random consequences. The rest of the magic section is dedicated to the spell lists and descriptions of the spells. I’m not going to cover those but there are some really fun ones like summon. You never know what you’re going to summon or if you’ll even be in control once it gets here.

The last section of the book is the appendix, which contains a glossary, an 8-page section on firearm rules, and the character creation cheat sheet. I’m glad the firearm section was moved to the appendix. That makes if feel more like optional rules than if they were in the main rules section. No, there aren’t any modern firearms included. They’re all of the muzzle loading variety.

Would I recommend this book to anyone? Absolutely! The production value of the book alone makes the price worth the purchase. The pdf is thoroughly bookmarked and easy to navigate. With a digital edition only costing $5, I say you should not be without it. There are some minor issues I have with it but I can overlook them. The writing is concise and easy to understand. It adds more crunch than the White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game (WBFMAG), but that is to be expected since they are based on different versions of D&D. I would say LotFP could almost be my favorite OSR version. That spot still belongs to WBFMAG. There are some free supplements on the LotFP webpage, which I suggest you grab if you’re interested in this game. There are two I suggest at a minimum; the old Grindhouse Edition LotFP Referee Book and Vaginas are Magic.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Weird on the Waves, a LotFP supplement book by Kiel Chenier. He is currently taking pre orders for his weird sea adventuring rules which sound like fun. As far as I know, he’s only planning on releasing a digital version which only costs $5.99.

Be sure to head over to the Nerds-International Google + community and don't forget about NIV Con on September 15th and 16th. You don't need to be a member to sign up to run or play in games. So head on over to the sign up page here. I look forward to hearing some new voices or even seeing new faces during the online convention.

Oh, and one more announcement. Come join the Nerds-International at Con on the Cob this year. It’s in Richfield OH, at the Days Inn & Suites. We will be in the Atrium by the pool. I’ll be running an OSR game on Thursday afternoon and a yet to be determined game on Friday morning. Both of my games are off the books so come over, say hello, and join us in some fun games.

Nerds-International Google+ community page

Con on the Cob!

Today is November 24 which in the good ol' US of A means Thanksgiving. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Corny, I know, but happy holidays to everyone.

This is a long overdue post report of Con on the Cob and some thoughts on a game I'm a player in. Con on the Cob is a convention put on by Andy Hopp near Cleveland Ohio. For those of you who don't know, Andy is the author and illustrator of the Savage Worlds game Low Life. This convention was a blast to be a part of. This is the most family friendly con I've ever seen. For me the best part of the con were than the group of friends that attended with me.

Nerds-International was proudly represented at Con on the Cob by Gary McCallum, Jamie Pierson, Blaine Wagner, Eric Lamoureux, Matthew Jones, Chris Holmes, Stephen Dragonspawn, and Tony Fanning. This was the best convention I've ever been to and it was because of these people. Most of us arrived on Wednesday night before the con started. We played a couple of games but mostly just hung out in the atrium. Later that night we saw Andy and he stopped by to say hi. I had so much fun that most of the days start to blur together for me. I remember all the games just not when they were played. All of the games I played were run by the N-I folks so I can't really speak about the other games going on at the con.

Thursday morning I ran Tales from the Loop: Roleplaying in the 80's that never was. This was my first time running Tales from the Loop so I was a bit apprehensive but got into the groove pretty quickly. This game was the most fun I've ever had as a GM and it was all because of the players. We started out by making some characters from the archetypes in the book plus one I made up. This took us somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes. Then we introduced each character and got right into the first mystery in the book; Summer Break and Killer Birds. I think this game went so well because the players fell right into the roles. I think its because all of us at the table grew up in the 80's and they're a group of great role players. I really liked that I didn't have to make any dice rolls as the GM and I could focus more on what the players wanted to do. My job was to give them clues and see how they reacted. Fortunately they had some great ideas and I was able to roll with them. I only used two scenes from the mystery and everything else was based upon what the players wanted to do. I really like Tales from the Loop and if you don't have this yet then you really should pick it up.

Later that day we had a full table of players for Blaine's game of Formula D. This was the second game I've played of Formula D. It was still a little confusing on some of the rules but nonetheless we all had lots of fun. It took us 4 hours to do 2 laps around the board.

On Friday morning I was scheduled to run Savage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Overall I would say the game was a success but there were definitely some problems. I was using Palladium's Truckin' Turtles book for the adventure and the story was inconsistent at best. There were some great scenes and the players were great but the story just seemed to fall apart. I brought along some props for the players but I didn't get it to the level I had hoped to. This game will be a work in progress for sure. I also got some great feedback from the players as well. Later on in the day I met the guy who inspired me to make this game. Norm Hensley's blog, savageboldfistblog is where I got the characters from and I just needed to modify slightly because he made them using the older Savage Worlds rules.

In the afternoon Tony ran a game of Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars RPG. I really wanted to play this game for two reasons. Number one its Star Wars. Come on, who doesn't want to play Star Wars. Number two was because I was always skeptical of the narrative dice system used by FFG. Tony ran a great game and it left me wanting to try the narrative dice again. We went through an entire adventure of Star Wars without once firing a weapon. Well almost. Tony really wanted to show us noobs how combat worked in FFG so he made us fight one minion group of troopers. Unfortunately I think it backfired on him just a little bit. We managed to take out the troopers before they even had a chance to do anything. By the end of this game I was just starting to grasp the concept of FFG's narrative dice. I was still a little confused on the symbols and how to utilize the effects of the dice. With Tony's help and with the help of other experienced players at the table the mechanics of the dice narration made the game run smoothly. I'm still not sold on it though.

As Saturday rolled around, Chris ran a game of Edge of Primeval Thule. This is his home-brew game of FFG's Edge of the Empire mixed with Primeval Thule. Think FFG's narrative dice used with a gritty fantasy setting where Cthulhu is alive and well. I wanted to play this game because I really enjoyed reading Primeval Thule and it would give me another chance at using the narrative dice. The adventure was great and only two characters died at the very end. Chris did a great job of challenging the players and the dice system was starting to grow on me. It's still slow going when trying to interpret the dice symbols but that would come more naturally over time. My biggest confusion with this system is how to use advantage, threat, triumph, and despair. Chris was able to provide suggestions on how to use them best and it worked out well for everyone.

I think Chris and Tony both did an excellent job of explaining FFG's narrative dice and I thoroughly enjoyed both games. Both of you guys are excellent GM's. After the con I find myself wanting to play FFG Star Wars and now FFG Genesys' release is just around the corner. I think my biggest complaint about the narrative dice system is the symbols on the dice. It's not intuitive as to which symbol cancels the corresponding inverse symbol. An explosion (success) cancels a triangle (failure). With the new Genesys dice coming out I think that problem will be solved.

An hour later Eric ran a playtest for a new game he's writing which is tentatively called Wiseguys. This is a full blown Savage Worlds setting in a similar vein as Just Insert Imagination's smash hits Fuhgeddaboudit! and Badabing Badaboom! Eric has some great ideas for this game and the pregenerated characters were awesome. I played an Elvis impersonator who can disguise himself and impersonate others after studying the mark for a short time. He was also a cooler. This was hilarious. As a known cooler in Las Vegas, I was banned from all casino's. Of course I had to convince a casino employee to give me his uniform so I could sneak into the hotel. Then as I walked through the casino floor to the hotel everybody started losing and the machines were acting funky. Eric did a great job with his description of what happened. More wacky antics ensued and in the end we got the guy who sold us out. Keep your eye out for Wiseguys.

Throughout the con we pretty much stopped the RPG's around 7pm every night. That was reserved for events and live streams. We had our own table at the con thanks to Andy and we hung out together and played card games. Gary was the evening entertainment most nights. That guy if fucking hilarious. Gary, you're the man! He convinced a police officer to allow an artist to draw a penis on his forearm. Of course when I said this con is family friendly, the evening is for adults only. All of the child friendly events were held during the day up to 7 pm. There was a costume contest, miniature golf, basketball, video arcade, swimming pool, miniature painting, and more. They even had staff to entertain and babysit the kids so the parents could partake in the convention games.

I also wanted to take this time to write about a bi-weekly game I'm currently in on Wednesday nights. Mutant Year Zero from Modiphius Entertainment. We have played a few sessions of this game and I find myself getting a little bored with it. The setting, the GM, and the other players are good. It just feels like there's way too much book keeping for my tastes. We literally have to keep track of everything. Currency, food, water, status of our ark projects, and condition of our ark are most of it. We just hit a cliffhanger last night so I'm interested to see where it goes but I'm losing focus of my character how to play him. It's really hard to explain why it feels the way it does. There's social conflict in our Ark and now we just got attacked by outsiders. One of the difficult things for me is the meta knowledge. Imagine yourself as someone who has never seen a pair of scissors before. In the game your character doesn't know what they are but you know what it is and how to use them. Separating everyday common knowledge from the game and roleplaying it is difficult for me. I'm also curious to see what the others think about this game. I believe Eric said he's losing interest in the game as well but I don't want to put word in his mouth.

There were many, many, many more games hosted by Nerds from the network that I didn't mention only because the blog post is getting lengthy. I didn't forget and they aren't any less memorable than the ones I mentioned here. You guys Rock! Con on the Caaaaab!

P.S. Thank you to all the people I mentioned earlier for making the first annual Nerds-International gathering at Con on the Cob one I will never forget. Thank you Andy Hopp for your hard work putting on the con and letting us take over part of the atrium. I'm still waiting for you to run Low Life for us Andy, maybe next year.

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Class Clown Kid update

This is just a short update to add my poor attempt at a final version of the Class Clown Kid. I'm going to be running Tales from the Loop at Con on the Cob this year for my friends over at Nerds-International. I also plan to run this for my friends at my LFGS, Affinity for Gaming in DeKalb IL. You can click on the hyperlink above to get your own copy or you can see a quick preview of the file below.

Memorial Day Weekend Update & Random Thoughts

I've been quiet for some time now on G+ and here at my blog. This past month has had me busy at work and at home. With the weather warming up and the weekly yard work I've had less time to think about RPG's. We are in prime construction weather here in Illinois which means I'm staying busy at work with airport improvement projects and the seasonal HVAC issues at many of my sites. At home I've been busy with getting my Chargriller Smoker put together and varnishing the wooden bits. This Saturday I'll be seasoning up Charlie for her maiden voyage on Sunday. She'll be smoking me up a brisket for this Memorial Day weekend.

Just yesterday I made a trip to Rockford to pickup a used Char-Broil grill. It's missing a door but not bad for $60 used. This 6 burner baby retails for around $300 new. Not bad eh.

Soon I will be fixing up my front porch which will require at least a full weekend to repair then on to painting. This will have to wait after our family vacation in a couple of weeks. We're going to Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida. I'm dreading the drive. Google maps says it will take 18 hours but my father-in-law says it is more like 22 hours. I'm sure it'll be a blast once we get there but 22 hours in a car, ugh!

In my last blog post I said I was going to try to run a game of Tales from the Loop, well that game fell through. I might try to get it going again but lately I've been reading Rippers Resurrected and I'm getting interested in trying to start a campaign for this. I've played in a game of this before but I really didn't know anything about the setting so it didn't really sit well with me. Now that I've had a chance to read the first half of the players guide I really like some of the mechanics. I need to get back to writing because Con on the Cob is just around the corner on Veteran's Day weekend and I want to run a great game. I also need to work on my second Beasts & Barbarians adventure for the Fantasy Grounds Convention coming in October.

For the online FG Con, I plan to run a follow up adventure to The Curse Of Calimah. This first adventure was an introduction to the Beasts & Barbarians Pirates of the Dominions. I tried to design it so that it would ease the players into this new setting materiel without feeling like it was overly swashbuckling. This next adventure will solidify the characters' path into the murky seas of pirates amongst barbarians. They will have been Pirates of the Dominions under the tutalige (perhaps miguided) of the crew aboard Etu's Manhood for more than a month. This will allow the characters to have "forgotten" some skills in favor of learning new, more seaworthy ones to replace them. Captain Kodar has a special mission for the newest members of his carousing crew.

Lots of members from the Nerds International G+ community will be meeting up at Con on the Cob this year and I've been doing some research for a one shot I plan on running. I'm not 100% sure that I can make this work but I want to run a game titled Attack From Mars!. I've had Steve Jackson's GURPS Mars Attacks source book for some time now and have read it several times. I hope to have this adventure ready for the Con, which will include miniatures, maps, characters, bennies, and of course the story. So far the basic premise is that the Martians have landed and the players need to get to the most defensable building in town to fend off the never ending wave of Disintegrator Ray gun toting Martians.

Please take a moment this weekend to remember those that gave their life to keep this country free. I wish everyone a fun and safe Memorial Day weekend. Post your weekend pics on G+ for me to see.