Game Reviews 2 - rpg punk

DCC Tower of the Stargazer play report

Yesterday I ran/played Dungeon Crawl Classics for the first time ever.

It was awesome.

Finding DCC was reminiscent of when I discovered Lamentations of the Flame Princess years ago; a breathe of fresh air! The fantasy game I’ve been looking for, for the last 20 years.

All the modifications I was making to LotFP are already included in DCC. So, I’m switching systems. A lot less work and stress for me to build the game I want. That’s a big load off my shoulders.

The rest of the group enjoyed their Zero Level adventure as well.

So what adventure did we play?

Well, I ran Tower of the Stargazer with a lot of modifications.

First, I removed all the background from the module. The players were supposed to control four characters each, but three players chose to control three characters; I still have no idea why. I explained, exhaustively, how that wasn’t a particularly good idea, but they insisted on three.

Anyway, the characters were all from the same town in a run-down barony ruled over by a powerful wizard. The wizard himself hadn’t been heard from in many years, and the barony was run by an appointed magistrate who was killed in an ambush by bandits a few months before. Since then, the area around the town has been plagued by monsters, bandits, crop failures, cats mating with dogs, etc. So the town sent a small group of villagers to the wizard’s tower in order to appeal to the wizard directly for help. They never returned. The player character’s were the B team, sent to talk to the wizard and see what happened to the first group.

Outside the tower, I changed the four large lightning rods into a huge field of smaller lightning rods of heights varying between 10-20 feet. Each with a cable running from the base of the rod to the base of the tower. There was stone path leading to the front door of the tower.

Walking along the path at normal human speed would take 3 rounds to reach the front door.

There is a 1% chance x number of characters that a random character is struck by lightning for d6 damage.

Walking through the field of lightning rods reduces the chance of lightning strike to a flat 1%, but unless walking carefully at half speed, there is a 1 in 6 chance of a character stepping on a “hot” wire and being electrocuted for d6 damage. I had figured that the players would be fearful of the lightning and attempt to run to the tower to avoid getting hit.
There were three bodies of the A Team of villagers on the path, and three bodies in the lightning rod field. Searching a body takes a round, which means another roll to see if lightning strikes.

The first character death occurred when a dwarf grabbed a lightning rod and tried to pry it out of the ground. Lightning strike for 1 damage; the dwarf had 1 HP.
The second death occurred when a human attempted to search a body of a villager and was struck by lightning.

Death Count: 2

One of those dead villagers had a coin that when flipped, would always land on its side. This would become very important later on.

Reaching the front double-doors, one character decided to knock using the door knocker, while simultaneously another character went to open the other door by grabbing the door knob. Got stuck with a poison needle, failed the save, died.

Death Count: 3

I decided that the tower should not be cleaned/kept up by “magic” as stated in the module, and instead the Calcidus the Stargazer utilized animated dead bodies (zombies) as maids and butlers, While living assistants cooked food and helped with experiments.

Each of the zombies had an iron bar through their neck and would only be animated for a period of time before needing to recharge in the cells in Basement Level 1; each cell had a device with copper wires attached that the zombies would plug into and recharge. Two zombies plug in at a time, while two others work elsewhere in the tower.

So the characters enter the tower and in the foyer is a zombie maid dusting the couches and coffee tables and a fake plant in the corner. The maid has a note pinned to her dress that says, “Please wait to be summoned, Calcidus.” One character found some Copper change in a couch, another stole a painting of Calcidus as a young man from the wall. This was a mistake on my part, as I intended for the painting to be the False Chanterelle painting from Maze of the Blue Medusa, but I completely forgot.

Eventually, they tired of waiting to be summoned and opened the door to the next room.

Opening the door caused the maid to attack the character who opened it, while from the other room, a zombie butler rushed at the character moaning, “nooooot summmonnnneed,” and attacked. The zombies were eventually defeated by bashing in the skull of the butler, maiming the maid with a critical hit to the knee, and then finishing the maid off by dowsing her head in holy water. Fun tidbit; the Lick-Spitter character armed with a bucket and a tin of breath mints tossed a mint into the maid’s mouth with a great roll before she was destroyed.

Searching the Sitting Room, where the butler attacked from, I described the china cabinet and the fine, fragile dishes within. A player stated that one of his characters was going to throw the dishes into his sack. The fragile dishes all shattered.

They quickly figured out the stack of crates were fake and found the trapdoor underneath. After carefully examining the statue, they figured out it too could be slid away revealing another trapdoor.

This is where things got tricky.

The party decided to split into THREE groups. One group went up the stairs to Level Two. Another group went down the trapdoor leading to the storage room in Basement One. And a single character went down the trapdoor leading to the small room in Basement One closed off with a portculis.

The single character didn’t even try to lift the portculis, but that was partially my fault; I described it as iron bars, leading them to conclude it was a jail-type cell. My bad. Not that they would have been able to lift it by themselves anyway. Still, I made another mistake. They did notice a red glow coming from beyond the portculis but they couldn’t see the source. More on that later.

The second group that went down to the Storage Room found the secret door, and the character with a background as a miner made a skill check to figure out what would trigger the door to open, and discovered a suspiciously loose flagstone on the floor and stepped on it, opening the door. Oddly, no one wanted to open the regular, normal door. They also did a cursory search of the crates, but found none of the strange contents to be interesting enough to take.

Going through the secret door, they found the zombie recharging stations. The last three cells I kept as actual cells, including the 15 armed skeleton. That tripped some of the players out. I also kept the brain leech, and one of the characters swallowed it. That should be a nice surprise at the beginning of the next adventure!

The laboratory I kept pretty much as written, including the mirror room and the body on the table, and the microscope with the blood vials. One character immediately wanted to look at the blood through the microscope and missed a saving throw and licked the smear off the slide. ewwww. I haven’t decided how the blood will affect the character; perhaps some sort of slow, agonizing death as the virus contained destroys their cells. Or maybe a couple rolls on the Corruption table! That’s an even better idea.

The mirror room has an issue within it that I didn’t realize until the players discovered it. One of the mirrors produces a doppleganger which either fights you or melds into you doubling providing another hit die. If you fight it, it has all the same equipment that you have, so potentially, you could just keep looking in the mirror and doubling your equipment and money, or get more hit points, for as long as you want.

Anyway, another character died here when they failed a save and a laser beam cut a hole through their chest. Two characters saw their ability scores increase, and one saw theirs decrease. Two of the mirrors were smashed. One character looked into a mirror and gained a profound knowledge of something… an answer to a question of their choosing at a later time. More on that later.

Death Count: 4

This group of characters discovered the elevator and took it up to Tower Level 5.

On Level Two of the tower, the other group of characters found the living servants quarters, which has been long abandoned. They were very interested in the oven and several characters thoroughly searched it, finding nothing. They went up the stairs to Tower Level 3.

The door to Level 3 is locked and trapped, as written, in a really strange way that isn’t consistent with the theme of the tower. So I changed it.

Instead of a trickle of blood, followed by a wall of blood pouring out of the door, I changed it to a simple lock trap that electrocutes the lockpicker if they fail their skill check. Unfortunately, the character that attempted to pick the lock failed their skill check and was electrocuted. A few of the other characters used a coffee table as a battering ram to force the door open.

Death Count: 5

Entering Level 3, the characters found the Wizard’s chamber. When I ran Tower of the Stargazer last, I felt that the wizard was… lame. So I killed him. The wizard was dead, laying face down in the circle of salt. Died of old age/starvation/whatever before the characters got there. One character decided to try and enter the circle to check on him. I allowed this, with the idea that anything can enter the circle, but nothing can leave. Before this little fact was discovered though, a different character swept some of the salt away, breaking the circle.

One of the characters took the Star Crystal, and they discovered the elevator on this level. Messing with the dial, they saw the characters who used the elevator to travel to level 5 go down past them, all the way to Dungeon Level 2.

Dungeon Level has a puzzle, and it took a while for the players to finish it. Earlier, one character looked into one of the magic and gained knowledge of something they could choose to ask about at a later time. They used it to figure out the puzzle.

All the characters regrouped at Level 4.
I didn’t like the thing in the freezer, so I changed it to a Face-hugging alien who implanted its seed in the belly of an unfortunate character. That will be a gruesome death later on. I figured that an alien monster would make more sense for a wizard’s tower dedicated to finding life on other planets than a vial of living, but evil, blood. Plus, there was already evil blood in the basement.

The characters searched the first library extensively and found what was hidden in there. They reached the “game room,” with the ghost and a player had a great idea for beating it. The last time I ran Tower of the Stargazer, a character died playing against the ghost in a game of Blackjack. This time, it was a different player not involved the first time around who played against the ghost. This player’s character was the one who picked up the trick coin earlier in the adventure. The game he chose was to flip the coin, and allow the ghost to call heads or tails. If the coin landed on what the ghost chose, the ghost wins. If it lands any other way, the ghost loses and the characters can pass through the door.
The ghost lost, and the players found the magical library. They searched this library even more extensively than the first, and found a few low level magical scrolls. I’m not as worried about overpowering low level characters with magical scrolls as I would be in other game systems, since they have to roll a d10 vs the DC of the scroll in order to use it successfully. It’s pretty much a trap, unless they somehow get really, really, lucky.

Moving to the 5th floor, the characters find the telescope. I had planned for the telescope to be a trap as well; if the controls were manipulated in the wrong way, the whole thing would blow up, destroying the tower and everything in it.
I didn’t count on the players though, a classic GM mistake.
The players quickly figured out the pool of water with the fish was acid. They quickly figured out to put the coal and the powder in the coal chamber. And, most surprisingly, they figured out the controls for the telescope on the first try.
However, after putting the powder into the coal chamber and powering the laser, a character looked through the view finder and was transported to another world. Where they were promptly killed and eaten by aliens. This grisly deqth was viewed only by another character who quickly jumped to the telescope when the first character disappeared.

Death Count: 6

The remaining characters found the other part of Dungeon Level 1. I changed the stone spider into a lava giant, who acted as protector if the “treasures,” within. The characters dispatched the giant after a time with no casualties. Searching the treasure they quickly figured out the trick. Going into the easternmost room, one character made it in before the portcullis fell and trapped them. Another character got hit by the trap but managed to survive. The trapped character drank ALL of the potions. So, in a way, that character changed enough to almost be considered dead.

The remaining characters left the tower and made it through the electrical field outside without a hitch. They were talking about using the tower as a base of operations in the future.

Final death tally: 6, with 3 more dying (brain leech, alien virus blood, alien egg) in the near future.

For a group that started with 21 zero level characters, I feel like this wasn’t dangerous enough. Which means I failed.

Next adventure I plan to either run Deep Carbon Observatory, or Maze of the Blue Medusa.

Thoughts on Shields Shall be Splintered

The original is at Trollsmyth’s page here.

It’s a wonderful rule and I’ve incorporated it into LotFP games in the past. I wrote a previous post about shields and armor, with different shield sizes and materials. Wood can be sacrificed once, metal can be sacrificed twice. I am thinking about changing that though. Both can be sacrificed once, but metal shields give a bonus of +2 melee AC and +2 ranged AC, as opposed to the +1/+2 of a wood shield. The idea being that a metal shield will allow fewer things to go through; much like leather armor and plate armor cover the same amount of body area, but the material of plate gives it a much higher armor class.

Anyway, back to Shields Shall be Splintered…

Looking through the comments though, I got some ideas.

Why can’t armor be sacrificed in the same way?
Can you use the rule to block damage from any attack? Like a giant throwing a huge boulder that would realistically squish you completely?
Since the shield already adds to your AC, why should it also block damage?

So, to address the first point, allow armor to be sacrificed. That helps to get rid of the armor the player character has had for the last 10 years of game time through hundreds of battles and a half dozen levels. It makes armor more than just an after thought, same as it does for the shield.

The second point, is simple; GM fiat. That’s the GM’s job after all; to adjudicate situations. In the aforementioned example, I would say no, you can’t sacrifice your shield or armor to block that attack.

Third point is the trickiest and least likely to be incorporated; just an idea I’m bouncing in my head. Instead of simply blocking damage, a shield or armor can be sacrificed to turn a critical hit into a regular hit. This would not be applicable to sneak attacks or backstabs, as the person being attacked is surprised.

Armor and more on Encumbrance

Because of the specifics of the setting I’m working on, the large list of armors from Castles & Crusades, as well as the very small list of armors from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, do not work for what I want.

First, about armor and encumbrance. I detailed encumbrance in this post.

Shields and helmets are considered a standard item, for encumbrance purposes, so they take up a single item slot.

Helmets: While there are a dizzying array of helmet designs, they fall into the following categories. Helmets provide an AC bonus only against attacks specifying the head. Helmet AC is not added to regular AC. Cost is generic: I haven’t decided to go with a silver or gold standard yet.

Leather Cap: +1 AC, cost: 4
Metal Pot: +2 AC, cost: 5
Helm: +5 AC, cost: 10
Great Helm: +7 AC, cost: 20

Shields: Shields provide two defensive bonuses, and a special defense. The first is against melee attacks, the second is against ranged attacks, and the third is the Shields Will Be Broken Rule. This rule is that a shield may be sacrificed to take the full damage from a single attack. A Modification to the rule allows for the material the shield is made of. Wood shields are unusable after being sacrificed. Metal shields can effectively be sacrificed twice. This rule does not apply to the Buckler, which is too small (you’d be sacrificing your arm).

Buckler: +1 AC melee, +1 AC ranged, cost: 2
Small Shield: +1 AC melee, +2 AC ranged, cost: 3 wood, 9 steel
Medium Shield: +2 AC melee, +3 AC ranged, cost: 5 wood, 15 steel
Large Shield: +3 AC melee, +4 AC ranged, cost: 7 wood, 21 steel

Like any other item, armor uses up an item slot. No matter what kind it is, armor takes up a single item slot. Heavier armor, because of its weight, bulk, and restriction of movement, also has a further penalty.

There are three basic types of armor, and how they work with encumbrance is as follows:

Light Armor fills an item slot.
Medium Armor fills an item slot AND a point of encumbrance.
Heavy Armor fills an item slot AND two points of encumbrance.

A half suit, basically covering the chest and torso, or the classic chain/plate bikini, or the bracers/gauntlets, shoulder plates, shin guard combo all work the same, and are considered a half-suit for game purposes.

A half suit of Light armor takes up an item slot.
Half suit of Medium armor takes up an item slot.
Half suit of Heavy armor takes up an item slot, AND fills one point of encumbrance.

Now, on to specific types of armor available! The armor listed includes the Armor Class bonus for half and full suits, as well as the cost. These are guidelines, but cover most types of armor. While many other types of armor exist, they all effectively fall within these categories and use the same stats.

Light Armor:

Hide or Leather: +1 AC half suit, +2 AC full suit, cost: 5/10
Studded Leather: +2 AC half suit, +3 AC full suit, cost: 12/24

Medium Armor:

Chain or Scale: +3 AC half suit, +5 AC full suit, cost: 100/200

Heavy Armor:

Plate: +5 AC half suit, +8 AC full suit, cost: 300/600

Encumbrance; a Little Less Sucky

Encumbrance is probably the least used and most boring part of RPGs. I don’t think I’ve ever been a player in a game where encumbrance was ever an issue that really came up, as most games use complicated systems that suck the fun right out of the game, so no one ever bothers with them. Or they use a system based on Strength and how much you can lift and nothing else, making it silly and unrealistic. Castles & Crusades, at least in the 4th printing that I own, has a terribly convoluted and dare-I-say-it unplayable encumbrance system. I knew when I started this that it would be the very first thing I scrapped from the system.

Encumbrance doesn’t have to be so crappy, though.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess was the first game I ever played that had an encumbrance system that wasn’t terrible and was simple to implement.

So I’m porting that into this game.

In LotFP, you can carry any number of items. However, the more you carry, the more Encumbrance Points you accrue. It uses a system of equipment slots. Every sixth slot you fill grants an encumbrance point. Small items, like an arrow, can have many carried before filling a slot. Certain types of armor automatically count for encumbrance points.

Having so many encumbrance points affects your speed and, in the case of Magic Users, your ability to cast spells.

While Encumbrance doesn’t have to be continually tracked throughout play, the Referee is allowed to audit a player’s equipment at any time, with the player penalized accordingly if they are carrying too much stuff.

Add to this the importance LotFP places on hiring retainers, and it’s a very effective and simple system.

In a nutshell;

Carrying 6 or more items is a point.
Carrying 11 or more items is two points.
Carrying 16 or more items is three points.
Carrying 21 or more items is four points.
Oversized items, two-handed weapons, some armor = 1 point.
Giant sized items, some armor = 2 points

More on armor and how it affects encumbrance in the next post.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess, though, is designed for a more gritty, low-fantasy, setting. Not the high-fantasy, ridiculousness of Strathos. Some some changes are necessary.

Constitution Modifier applies to Encumbrance. This means that you receive extra item slots based on your Con mod, before you take an encumbrance point. On the other hand, having a negative Con mod means you can fill fewer slots before taking an encumbrance point.

Example 1: Sheila the Barbarian has a +2 Con modifier. This translates to her being able to fill 7 slots of items before accruing an encumbrance point.

Example 2: Brxrfrx the Mushroom has no Con modifier. It can fill up to 5 slots of items without accruing an encumbrance point.

Example 3: Trent the Wizard has a -2 Con modifier. He can only fill up to 3 slots of items before accruing an encumbrance point.

Okay, but what does it mean to accrue and Encumbrance Point? How do they affect the game?

Zero or One encumbrance points = Unencumbered. This has no effect on your character.
Two encumbrance points = Lightly encumbered. Speed is reduced 20%.
Three points = Heavily encumbered. Speed is reduced by 40%, and Magic Users cannot use magic. Characters suffer a -1 penalty to all combat rolls and skill checks, as well as dexterity based saves.
Four points = Severely encumbered. Speed is reduced by 80%. Characters suffer a -3 penalty to all combat rolls, skill checks, and Dexterity based saves.
5 points = Overencumbered. The character cannot move.

Example 4: Trent the Wizard is carrying a spell book (1 item slot), a pen and ink set (1 item slot), a dagger (1 item slot), a weeks worth of rations (1 item slot) and a staff (two-handed weapon: 1 encumbrance point), making him Lightly Encumbered. Why? Because he has filled 4 item slots (remember, he can only fill three slots without accruing a point) and has a two-handed weapon. That totals 2 encumbrance points.

While all of this makes sense to me, I know that it doesn’t necessarily make sense to anyone reading this. So I am happy to answer any questions.

Violence and Teenage Girls

Even if you aren’t a geek you should at least look at these games for the unique and pure humor

The first is called Violence: The RPG of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed (careful, the link goes to a PDF document)

i love that title!

“Violence is ostensibly an RPG about playing thugs, thieves, and serial killers as you break into homes, kill the inhabitants, and take their treasure.”

you see, the game was designed as a parody of “hack and slash” gaming where the players simply wipe out everything they see. or as the back of the book says,

“Excessive is not enough to describe Violence. Bad taste doesn’t even get close. This is role-playing’s answer to the snuff movie.”

bullshit like that is why a lot of people are turned off to RPG’s. they hear some smelly geek shriek with his ear-piercing and jarring falsetto breaking pubescent voice “i slayed an elfin warlord! Excelsior!” and immediately think… lame.

well yes, that is lame in the highest caliber. and this game makes fun of that. only diference really is that in Violence, you play in modern times and choose from gangsters, cops, or psychotic killers as classes. and they are all rolled up the same, so how you turn out is really up to you and your own hidden psychosis’ in how you play the character.

the humor is layed on pretty thick by the game designer, a eurotrash brit who calls himself ‘Designer X’ ooOOoo! sneaky!

for an idea of how this game works…
“Consider Frank Miller’s Sin City and Batman: Year One, or the movies Pulp Fiction, The Big Hit, La Femme Nikita, The Professional, El Mariachi, any movie by Quentin Tarantino or John Woo, and so on. You get criminals, cops, guns, and victims together, and suddenly you have a plot.”

see? you’ve seen those movies… you wondered what it would be like to be that bloodthirsty. don’t deny yourself. embrace your sick imagination.

moving on towards a less violent but equally disturbing game…
the winner of the 2002 Indie RPG Award for Best Free Game…

Nicotine Girls

as the website says,
“nicotine girls is a roleplaying game of teenage, lower-income girls looking for happiness.”

wow.

First off, the game is free. you don’t have to pay for it, you don’t even have to download it. the rules are like 2 pages in length. you can simply cut and paste the text into MS Word.

Second, the point of the game is thus: pretend to be a 16-19 year old girl with the goal of attaining “your dreams.”

whatever that means. i know some dudes who would interpret this into the sickest thing you would ever hear of.

i think the best part is how the characters manipulate the game world, get what they want and attain their dreams…
you use four attributes that they refer to as “Methods”

1) Sex: should be obvious. girls use sex and the promise of sex or the implication of sex in the future to get what they want.

2) Money: this should also be obvious. a girl needs money to get shit, right? and she can simply use her Sex stat to get money in a variety of ways.

3) Cry: i hate it when girls cry. nothing paralyzes me in fear more than some poor chick balling her eyes out.

4) Smoke: i think this is the coolest RPG idea EVER. if you have to make a decision, you can opt for a Smoke Break and ask for advice from other characters as to a course of action.

there is some more to it than that, but not much. and the Fear list is quite humorous. at least to me.

i think Nicotine Girls was made about almost every single girl i went to high school with. and, by extension, every girl in high schools everywhere. well, at least the bad ones.