F.A.T.A.L. Characters: Race, Gender and Body.

F.A.T.A.L. it has a reputation for being the worst tabletop RPG of all time, but how bad could it really be? To find out I have procured a copy of the rules and will make a character, with commentary.

The first thing I find when I set out to make a character in F.A.T.A.L. is that there is no character creation section. No, the author instead says that a player should read through all 977 pages of the book so that they don't miss any steps. In the next breath he goes on to say that some chapters are completely irrelevant to character creation. It looks like I'm going to have to do this chapter by chapter, just as the author suggests. Not a great start.

This is such a large undertaking that I am going to have to split it up into multiple blog posts. This first part covers the Race, Gender and Body of character creation.

Race & Gender

The very first chapter of the book is Race & Gender. The game presents a list of 16 races and suggests that we select one for our character at random. I like random character generation so I'm going to do just that. I roll d100 and get a result of 36. That makes me a human, by far the most common option. I want to showcase F.A.T.A.L. in all its glory, so I'm going to roll again and hope for something a little less... pedestrian. My second roll is 62 and that means my character is going to be a Kobold.

I've always liked Kobolds in D&D. There's just something about their little lizard snouts and crude spears that speaks to me, so you can imagine I was pleased to get to play one in F.A.T.A.L. What a fool I am. Moving on to the Kobold section I get to learn a little bit more about Kobolds:

• Kobolds are obsessed with silver. They like it because it is the same color as their skin and they compulsively mine and steal silver.
• The only thing that Kobolds like as much as silver is slave trading.
• Kobolds force other races to crawl on hand a knee so that they may be taller than them.
• Kobolds are known for their ingenious and cruel traps.

Turns out that Kobolds in F.A.T.A.L. are nothing like what you find in D&D. They're just silver-mad little men with napoleon complexes and a penchant for slave trading.

In F.A.T.A.L. the races grant something called Sub-Ability Points. These haven't really been explained yet, but the Kobold gets:

• -40 Strength
• -15 Bodily Attractiveness
• -15 Facial
• -15 Vocal
• +15 Kinetic
• -10 Rhetorical
• +15 Hand-Eye Coordination
• +15 Agility
• +15 Reaction Speed
• +15 Enunciation
• -10 Language
• -10 Analytic
• +15 Spatial
• -15 Drive

Then there is a bunch of other stuff, also not yet explained:

• Base Current Armor 10
• Base Life Points 15
• Morality -50
• -25 Sanguine, +25 Choleric, +25 Phlegmatic
• Direction Sense +3
• Mining +3
• Trickery +3
• 1 Weapon Proficiency

Next we are supposed to randomly determine Gender. The rules don't actually say how to do this, so I just flipped a coin and ended up male. There are a list of modifiers that need to be applied to stats based on your character's gender, but the rules say that we aren't supposed to apply these modifiers until determining other factors later in the rules.

It's worth noting that the author attempts to justify this table by referencing a variety of papers and philosophers.

The gender section then carries on for another page or two discussing the worlds culture and society with gems like these:

Prior to marriage, maidens are expected to be chaste, though few fulfill this expectation. Once married, a wife is expected to be submissive to her husband, he owns her.

 ...belief regarding gender is that females are inferior to males physically, intellectually, morally, and emotionally. For example, menstruation may be understood as punishment by the gods.

It's interesting that the author regularly attempts to cite studies, philosophers and various historical sources. It is clear that they are aware of how sexist the writing is and they attempt to remove themselves as the arbitrator of these "facts" through citations and appeals to authority. It strikes me as a strange decision to focus so completely on the so-called reality of sexism for the purposes of historical accuracy and then throw in a dozen fictional races. With that note, let's head on to chapter 2.

Body

In this section it looks like we will be determining our Kobold's various physical characteristics. The first of which will be Age.

To determine a Kobold's starting age I roll 4d100, divide that by 4 and then subtract 30 from the result. I rolled 345 so that works out to 56 years old. According to the lifespan table a Kobold doesn't live beyond 80, so that makes my Kobold quite the old man. I get to apply some modifiers due to the character's advanced age, but not until I determine some other things first.

Next up is Height. A male Kobold's height is determined by rolling 6d6 and adding 33. I rolled 27, so that makes my Kobold 5' tall before modifiers. Accounting for old age, my Kobold is actually 4'9". My Kobold is pretty tall and statuesque for his race so the rules say I get +7 lbs weight, +7 strength, and +3 Bodily Attractiveness for each inch above average. In my case that is 3" above average so the Kobold has +21 lbs., +21 strength and +3 Bodily Attractiveness.

Weight is next, a 3d6 roll that we add 70 to. I got 11 which means my Kobold is 81 lbs before we factor in its age. Elderly Kobolds are 10% heavier, so that brings us to 89 lbs. That extra weight also gives our Kobold +9 Strength.

F.A.T.A.L. now starts to veer off into madness. The next step is to determine the characters Body Mass Index (BMI). To do this, well, let me quote the book:

...simply divide [the character's] weight by the square of their height, and multiply the result by 705.

Yeah, real simple. I'm lazy so I used a BMI calculator. The result was 19.3. That puts us in the ideal category for Kobolds so, thankfully, I won't need to apply more modifiers to the character.

Here is another choice quote for you:

If a male character has a BMI of at least 30, then he will be unable to see his manhood while standing without using a mirror.

Thanks for the tip, F.A.T.A.L.. That's a piece of information that is both useful and relevant.

Next up is a section called Body Part Proportion. The idea behind this section is to determine how likely any part of the body is to be hit during combat. Lucky for us, we don't have to do this yet because it is yet another example of something that depends on some aspect of character creation we haven't done yet.

This next one is a fun one. We get to roll 2d100 to determine our Kobold's most and least attractive physical features. We rolled an 11 first which means my character's most attractive feature is his patchy gray hair. The Kobold gets +10 Facial Charisma. My next roll is a 30 which makes the least attractive feature a pair of Jagger-like lips. -10 Facial Charisma for a net of +/- 0.

Determining skin color would be next, but as a Kobold we must always have silvery white skin. (Remember, that's why they like silver so much.) We would also roll hair color, but because our Kobold is elderly it has to be gray. Don't worry, we do get to roll for our Hair Length. This is another d100 roll and I have the dubious luck of getting a 98. In the world of F.A.T.A.L. this means that my rich mane of glorious hair is between 31 and 38 inches long or, in the author's words, "ass-length". I'm not joking, that's really what is written in the book.

Ass-length hair.

Oh, I spoke too soon in describing the Kobold's hair. Silly me, assuming that we were finished after just three tables. I now need to determine the quality of the hair. Is it thick? Frizzy? Let's find out! This is yet another d100 roll and because I'm a Kobold I get +10.  Lower numbers on this table result in a penalty to Facial Charisma.  Apparently Kobolds are known for having better quality hair than most. It's also worth mentioning that the author gives the largest bonus to hair that is of "medium thickness and wavy". Good to know, I guess. Anyways, I rolled 32 which after the Kobold's racial modifier comes to 42; thick, curly and oily hair is my character's best feature. This results in -1d8 Facial Charisma. I rolled a 4, making my Kobold slightly uglier. Unless there are more tables on hair later on, I think we are finally finished.

Time to roll for eye color. 1d100 yields 89, blue-gray eyes. I'm surprised the author didn't assign any Facial Charisma modifiers to eye color. I guess something as trivial as eye color shouldn't factor into Facial Charisma, not like hair. We're also supposed to calculate Breadth or armspan at this point. This is just 50% of the characters height, so my character has a reach of 2'4".

Now I get to determine the quality of my character's vision. This is another d100 roll and I got 54. This means that my character has "Perfect natural vision". Interestingly the rules note that I will be determining the quality of my other 4 senses later on. I'm sure that will be... an experience.

Speaking of experiences, the next section has me rolling for facial features. The author seems to subscribe to Physiognomy, which is a pseudoscience that attempts to correlate personality traits to physical characteristics. It's certainly a weird choice since the author has been so scientifically rigorous so far.

Scientific Rigor.

The Facial Features table is a beastly table spread across two pages. The rules don't actually say how many times I'm supposed to roll on the thing, so I'm just going to do it once. I rolled a 62 and that means my character has a mole on his throat. According to the respectable and peer-reviewed science of Physiognomy it means that my poor Kobold is prone to intestinal problems.

This next one is a doozy, we get to roll 1d1000000 to find out if my kobold is a "Freak of Nature". Getting a result of 1 means the character is a freak. If the character is a freak then we get to randomly determine what kind of freak. Options range from having an extra finger to being a hermaphrodite. I rolled d1000000 and didn't get a 1, big surprise there.

If you thought Physiognomy and the Freak of Nature rolls were bad then I have bad news for you. The next section is Sexual Features. The rules actually label this section as optional, but I fear that if we are going to get an honest impression of this game we are going to have to go through this section. Okay, let's get this over with.

Step 1)
Determine areola diameter. d100 roll from which I got 97. That means my Kobold has 3" areolas and this obviously means he should have -1d6 Bodily Attractiveness (-5 in this case).

Step 2)
Determine areola hue. That's right, the color. I rolled a 98 (yes, really) which means they are dark and nets me -1d4 Bodily Attractiveness, or it would if my character was female. Apparently hue doesn't factor into male beauty.

Damn! Those are some sexy areolae.

Step 3)
Determine cup size. This is a weird one because it isn't labeled female only. You might think that makes sense because there is such a thing as a pair of man-boobs, moobs if you will. Let me ask you just one thing, though. Are moobs attractive? F.A.T.A.L.'s author seems to think so since a pair of D-sized moobs will get you +2d10 Bodily Attractiveness, regardless of sex. I rolled a 29 here which gets me a set of B-sized chest ornaments. Sadly that is not enough for a bonus nor a penalty to Bodily Attractiveness.

Step 4)
Nipple length. I know nipple length is the single most important feature I look for in a mate, so I appreciate that the author has included it here. I rolled 90 which means my kobold's nipples are .75" long when erect. Naturally, this being the optimum length, I get a +1d4 bonus to Bodily Attractiveness. (4, in this case.)

Step 5)
We would do vaginal circumference and depth next, but our character is male. Curiously, the rules don't actually say that these tables are for females only (as they do with areola hue), but I think it's clear that males don't normally have a vagina.

Step 6)
Tongue size. The author is careful to note that this is only the length of tongue that can be extended outside of the mouth. F.A.T.A.L. mercifully doesn't care about the rest of it. I rolled 81, which means my character's tongue is 2.5" long. The rules say that this is long enough to touch the tip of my nose.

Step 7)
And we have reached the infamous Anal Circumference section. Before we determine how much room we actually have back there, we need to figure out if there are any modifiers to the roll. Since my character is elderly we get +5 to the roll. You knew your sphincter loosened up with age, right? I get another +5 just for being male. We could get up to another +50 if the Kobold is "accustomed to anal sex" or a nymphomaniac. Since we haven't had to roll for sexual orientation I think I'm just going to assume the character is a boring old heterosexual.

Now I roll on the table. I'm blessed with a roll of 13 which we modify to 23. This tells us that my Kobold character has an anal circumference potential of 6", enough to accommodate "normal manhood" according to the table. I should mention that this is anal circumference potential, if something larger than that potential ends up in there the "orifice will rip to accommodate the incoming object". Does this mean there will be rules for this later on? I sure hope not.

Not gonna fit.

My fears come true on the very next page. Rules for "ripped orifices", "hymen resistance", pregnancy likelihood, menstruation and infant mortality rates are all found on page 53 of F.A.T.A.L.

Step 8)
Manhood What could that possibly mean?

The Manhood of a male character is his penis.

Thanks for clearing that up, F.A.T.A.L.. The author has obviously put a lot of thought into this section, so I decided to share the whole page.

Click to enlarge. Har har.

Quadratic equations. Sheesh. The author spent waaayyy too much time thinking about dicks. After some calculations I was able to determine that my Kobold's penis is 4.2" long and has a circumference of 7.5". Yes, my kobold is a girthy motherfucker.

With that the Sexual Features section is finished. Now we get to move on to the Rare Features section. This is another optional section, so of course we are going to do it. How bad could it be?

The first rare feature that needs determining is foot size. I rolled a 58 and this give my character feet that are 9" long. After feet size we move on to fist circumference. I suppose this would be useful if I needed to find out if there would be any "orifice tearing". Apparently this is whatever the foot size is, so 9" fists for my Kobold.

Now I get to roll to find out if my character is left or right handed. It's just a 10% chance for left-handedness and I rolled a 75. My character is not a southpaw.

Next up: head circumference. I rolled a 91 and this means my character has a head circumference of 23.12".

After head circumference there is a section on pregnancy, which seems a little out of place. Following that is a section called Allergies, Intoxication, and Disease. There is actually a table in the Intoxication section that determines what happens if a character has a bad trip while eating magic mushrooms. Sadly, the only  relevant section here is Allergies, but we can't do that until we have determined the characters Health sub-ability value. With that we get to move on to chapter 3. Take a deep breath, because things are only going to get weirder.

 That's It For Now

I cry uncle. Figuring out character creation AND writing commentary is a lot of work. This took me about 6 hours to write. (Admittedly, I was also surfing the web and procrastinating like the awful Kobold that I am.) Eventually I'll get to the next section, but I don't have the mental fortitude to carry on at the moment.

Categories: character creation, FATAL

Dungeon World - Session 4

This week we added a new player. He will be taking on the role of a stoic dwarven fighter and already has a rivalry with the halfling fighter and some trouble brewing with the bard. An interesting piece of trivia for our new player, he's a professional DM. I don't know how well he does because, well, I was too afraid to ask. I was a bit worried he would be snobby and critical of my skills, but he either kept it to himself or had a good time. I'm going to go with the second one if it is all the same to you.

Planning at The Sideways Stallion

The game began, as these things often do, with all of the PCs sitting around a table at The Sideways Stallion discussing where they would go now that they had finished their business in Sandover. The group argued for a little while before deciding that their destination would be Lambatar, a large city to the north. Their reasons for heading to Lambatar were twofold: a rumour of a beast terrorizing the countryside and an unlabled treasure map they had looted from the ruins might have something to do with lost vaults of treasure in the region. Very few adventurers can resist the lure of riches and fame and so the decision was made.

Preparation for their perilous journey (as Dungeon World puts it) took a few days and lead to the party putting the word out that they were hiring a quartermaster to look after their animals and traveling supplies. While there were a few interested parties, the group couldn't agree on who to hire and were just about to give up when none other than Jaim Sandover (Lord Sandover's youngest son) approached them in secret. Jaim wanted to join on as a way to escape his father and the dry future planned for him. After a brief argument the group decided to bring him on, a choice that I will surely exploit sometime in the near future. The next day the party sallied forth, heading north through hills, scrub and later into the rocky wasteland that surrounds Lambatar.

Bard Song: The Beast of Lambatar

I have this habit as a GM that whenever a player declares that they are singing a song, telling a bawdy joke or otherwise performing where I put them on the spot and ask them what song they are singing or what the joke is about. So, when the Bard declared he was singing while they traveled north, you can be sure that I asked what song he sang. His answer? The Beast of Lambatar. The song was a bawdy tale that reimagines the mythical beast that terrorizes the city as a kind of unstoppable Casanova.

Elf Facts

Another habit I have as a GM is answer player's questions about lore with questions. This came up for the first time in our Dungeon World campaign during this session when a player asked if elves had a better sense of smell than humans. My answer? You tell me, you're the elf!

I like to let players influence game lore as we go and this is a good example of one of the ways I do it. From this point on in our game elves will all have an excellent sense of smell instead of infravision.

Justice, Fire & Disagreement

Eventually the road to Lambatar hit a fork and the players, they took the road less traveled. Unfortunately, the road less traveled lead straight into the waiting ambush of the notorious highwayman The Scorpion.

The Scorpion opened with the classic line, "Your money or your lives." The party, however, was having none of that and made short work of his petty band of thugs. They evaded his nets, his poisoned arrows and even his six bandits. The Dwarf and Halfling fighters worked together to take down the majority of the thugs, but the Cleric stole the show when he clubbed a thug to death using his crystal orb/holy symbol.

When the dust cleared three bandits had broken and run for the hills only to be stopped with the Bard used his handy new Amulet of Rhissel to summon a wall of flame. Things then took a turn for the worse as the Dwarf and the Bard argued about what to do with the remaining bandits. The Bard wanted to give them Rhissel's justice and have them walk through fire to purge them of their crimes. The Dwarf thought that was violence and not justice and to prove his point he walked through the flames and feigned death. The Bard was unfazed and promplty pushed the bandits after him. One died, while the others suffered burns and were healed by bard song and then sent on their way with Rhissel's pardon. Something tells me this won't be the last time that the Dwarf and Bard butt heads.

The Maiden in the Cliff

A few uneventful days of travel later and the party was now working their way through the wasteland proper. Just when they were about to die of boredom they stumbled across a mysterious dwarven woman carved into a rocky cliff. The carving took up nearly the entire cliff and could be described as gigantic. This lead us to a quick round of...

Dwarf Facts

• Dwarves live beneath the rocky desert that makes up the Lambatar region.
• Dwarves have a patriarchal society.
• Female dwarves have beards, but only as maidens. Upon marriage they begin shaving and their husband wears a matrimonial beard clasp. (That's how they knew the carving was of a dwarven maiden.)
• Dwarves have many secret societies.
• Dwarves build funeral statues.
• Dwarves have darkvision.

Desecrating a Secret Dwarven Tomb

Further inspection of the cliff maiden resulted in discovery of a secret entrance, a place wear one could wade through the stone as if it were a kind of thick water. The group found that they could "swim" inside of the cliff and when they headed down they landed in a pitch black chamber. It was a good thing we established earlier that dwarves can see in the dark!

Inside the chamber were eight stone tablets with dwarven writing on them. The party tried to take them from the chamber, but found that as soon as they were exposed to sunlight that they started to turn to dust. They quickly returned them to the dark and the dwarf translated a heartbreaking tale of forbidden love and the death of an unlucky dwarf's wife-to-be. The Cleric and the Dwarf new from clues in the tale and the secret entrance that this place must have been constructed by a member of the semi-secret society of stonewhisperers. This, of course, lead the Cleric and the Dwarf to want to learn more about the place. The Cleric because he serves a god that collects and deals in secrets and the Dwarf because he was just plain curious.

Searching the chamber lead the Halfling to a secret door and the Bard to a trap. The trap was a nefarious one where ordinary stone would allow someone to pass part of the way through it (or all of the way), but once in the stone was unmoving leaving them sealed indefinitely. The Dwarf and Cleric argued about the secret to getting free from such a trap and the Cleric had the right answer, so it's a good thing he was the one the Bard listened to. Nearly drowning in stone was enough for the Bard and he retreated to the surface along with the Halfling to have an angsty conversation with Jaim Sandover while the Dwarf and Cleric continued to explore.

A few narrowly avoided stonemeld traps later and the duo have found their way to a stone room, filled with stone furniture containing one very dead dwarf. The dwarf rested in a stone chair with his head submerged in stone, an apparent act of suicide by stonemeld. The long dead dwarf didn't stay dead for long, though, and he was very angry at having both his lady love's memorial and his own rest disturbed. In a fit of poltergeistic rage he flung objects around the room and then possessed the cleric to use him as a channel for potent stone magic. Stony arms reached out from every stone surface and attempted to strangle both Cleric and Dwarf, luckily the Dwarf managed to evade the grasping hands long enough to keep both himself and the Cleric safe while the Cleric regained control and fired off a Turn Undead. The ghost returned to his corpse to cower in fear while our heroes hastily looted the small room, finding nothing of interest except for a small sphere. The sphere was carved with ancient dwarven runes and set off the Cleric's "secret detector".

The Cleric and Dwarf escaped the tomb only to stumble out into the light and find that the dwarven spirit had regained its senses and taken physical control of the stone maiden. She was swinging her chiseled arms out of the cliff face and trying to both smash everyone in sight and claw herself free from the cliff. The Cleric saved the day by casting the small carved stone into the light and watching it turn to dust. This seemed to appease the restless spirit and the party distanced themselves from the killer cliff as soon as possible. Nobody realized that the Cleric had enough time to use his orb to "scan" the stone sphere and send its secrets off to his patron.

Finishing Up

We went through the XP checklist and a couple characters leveled up. The Cleric asked me about the secrets of the sphere and I may allow him to get a compendium class out of it (Stonewhisperer). We'll see.

Alright, that's it. This little recap turned into a gigantic one. I hope I'm getting better at writing these session reports as I go, but I think next time I will aim for something shorter.

Categories: Dungeon World, Dwarf Facts, Elf Facts, fantasy, session report

Dwarven Name Generator

I've decided to make a few more simple name generators. First up: dwarves. I prefer my dwarves to have cheesy names rather than more lore-friendly names based on your makebelieve language of choice is. I seeded the generator with a lot of mining terms, precious metals and stones and similar things. For first names I gathered up a bunch of dwarf names from various sources, cut them up and added pieces that fit into the results. Enjoy.

Categories: dwarf, fantasy, generators, javascript, names

Dungeon World - Session 3

Our third session of Dungeon World is complete and it was our best yet. The party returned to Sandover Ruins and cleared out the rubble blocking their path deeper into the dungeon. I adapted Dyson's recent ziggurat dungeon to fit with the established game lore. This went over very easily as we had already determined that the ruins were part of a temple to an old, forgotten deity. I kept the traps, replaced any and all undead with lantern goblins and updated the stats for DW as needed.

Things started off with a bang, with the PCs discovering the remains of a would-be looter. They took the coins and sword off the bones, to my delight, and I got to mark two of them down for future Endure moves to fend off the poison whenever I decided it would kick in. It kicked in a few minutes later and like the good GM I am, I laughed maniacally as one of them got a 6- on their Endure. The traps didn't stop there, when the party next came upon a room full of statues they argued about entering for a while and were promptly attacked by the reanimated bones of the robber they had just looted. He was powered by the mysterious lantern goblin flames, but the group made short work of him in any case. Unluckily for them, the battle took them into the statue room and nobody said their morning prayers which meant they now had several alabaster figures coming at them from behind.

I decided to up the danger factor in the statue room and gave the statues high enough armor that the group would have a difficult time defeating them in a fair fight. It was a good thing the cleric is anything but a fair fighter, while the rest of the party kept the busts busy he puzzled out a way to deactivate them by forcing the symbol of the forgotten deity (a rising sun) to set. In other words, he covered the symbol up with some extra clothing he had in his bags. Of course, there was no easy way to keep that holy symbol covered as it was carved into a stone wall. Someone had to stand holding the fabric in front of the carvings. Normally this would not have been too much of a problem, but the halfling decided to go and trigger another one of Dyson's traps and unleash some knockout gas into the room. I was saddened that the character holding up clothing was unaffected by the gas; you can't win them all, I guess. My spirits soon recovered when that same halfling decided to loot a bunch of cursed gems and distribute them among the party.

Eventually the party made it out of the statue room and continued to explore. They made their way through a couple of rooms uneventfully before discovering the anointment chamber. It was here that the bard decided to anoint himself, everyone else was too fearful of traps at this point to touch the glowing liquid. This is important because the trap that was about to be set off could have been avoided if they had been a little braver. I know I am making it sound like the group went stomping through the dungeon setting off every single trap and, to a certain extent, that is true. I should probably mention that the Cleric did keep being made aware of danger thanks to some great Discern Realities rolls and a few hints from his deity, unfortunately he was having a very difficult time convincing the rest of the party to tread as carefully.

Anyways, next on the list was the magnum opus of the dungeon's traps: a mosaic that, when stepped upon by one that was unanointed, would summon a wall of flame, blind everyone and conjure an invisible stalker do what it does best. This created a dangerous little fight that took a sizable chunk of life off the fighter. I'll say this for Dyson, he certainly isn't lacking in ideas for cruel ways to whittle an adventuring party down to size. However, in this case the party carried on without losing any members. The characters searched the room thoroughly, but for some reason avoided opening the black stone sarcophagus in the middle of the chamber. I wonder why? In any case, they found the secret entrance Area 6 (secret tomb) and the Bard managed to sweet talk the apparition of Rhissel that appeared into giving them an amulet and a stack of gold. Things took an unusual turn here because the Bard decided that he might be interested converting to Rhissel's faith and, even more surprising, the Cleric encouraged this! Why, you ask? It turns out that the deity the Cleric worships is the last of the old gods and despite his deity's differences with Rhissel, it is in his god's interests to assist another old god return to power. I smelled campaign fodder in that explanation and you can be sure that I will be building upon it as we progress.

With the visitation of Rhissel's apparition gone, the party decided they had seen all there was to see and they returned to the surface. A visit with the Sandovers later and they had collected their reward for clearing out the remaining monsters and were well on their way to drunk at the local tavern. We ended the session and went through all of the end of game tasks, such as assigning XP and having tangential conversations.

Sadly, this session also marked the death of the planned Deck of Fate campaign. Since that campaign hinged on the PCs getting involved in a race to collect the pieces of Fate's deck while fending off various interests, it pretty much fell apart when the Wizard character ran off in the night along with the macguffin and the player in control of it. I could have salvaged the campaign, but the players happily latched onto the idea of forgotten gods awakening and I am just as happy to indulge them with a campaign built around that idea.

Categories: actual play, Dungeon World, fantasy, session report

Goblin Name Generator

A while ago, when I was feeling ambitious, I decided to try branching out of computer hardware and into a little programming. I got through a couple of beginner-level Python courses before getting sidetracked by other things. This weekend I got it into my head to try making a name/word generator that I could put on the web. Of course, getting Python on the web is beyond my meager skills so I ended up taking a crack at javascript.

The result of my javascript experimentation is this: a goblin name generator. I seeded it by going through Paizo's Goblins of Golarion and hacking the goblin names/tribes into pieces by syllable. This means that the names that pop out of this generator ought to be lore friendly for Pathfinder/Golarion games. Even if you don't play Pathfinder I think you will find the names are goblin-y enough for your needs.

Some things that I would have liked to include in this generator, but was unable to puzzle out: male/female toggle and batch generation of names.

Categories: fantasy, generators, goblins, golarion, javascript, names

The Deck of Fate: DW Session Report #2

We sat down for our second of Dungeon World a little while ago, but due to a very busy December I have just now gotten around to writing about it. For this session we were short both of our new players. One couldn't make it due to an exam, the other just never showed up. We didn't let being without both Wizard and Cleric get us down. The remaining players were happy to don their adventuring boots and leave the warm glow of The Sideways Stallion.

It was a role play heavy session, which is a nice contrast to the straight up dungeon crawl we had last week. Things started out with Bard trying to find some leather armor in the no-horse town of Sandover. After his brush with death in the ruins to the north he was determined to get a little protection. There is no armor shop in Sandover, so our hero had to make do with the local leatherworker. It was here that Bard learned he didn't have enough cold, hard coin to get some leather armor made for himself. He bartered away his pipeleaf for a heavy leather apron with a number of alterations to make it more armor-like.

The rest of the adventuring day was spent chatting up locals and putting on an impromptu performance in the town square. The Bard worked up a great tune and the Halfling got into the spirit of things with some tumbling, when he wasn't busy chatting up locals going about their business. Their performance caught the eye Jaim Sandover, youngest son of the area's ruling lord and the party earned themselves a dinner invitation to Sandover Manor.

That evening the party met the rest of the Sandover clan and, for reasons I can not explain, they all had cheesy southern accents. Dinner was short and sweet, with a little bit of role playing before we got into the meat of things: a request from Lord Sandover for the party to return to Sandover Ruins and delve deeper. It turns out that the local ruins have long been the lifeblood of Sandover, supplying the town artifacts and metals that are its primary trade. The recent monster infestation has changed that and Lord Sandover, being an example of a responsible feudal lord, was keen to get things back in order. This exchange between the players and Lord Sandover ended up being interesting to me (mechanically) as it marked the first time that the Bard used his various social Moves. It was a bit clumsy at first as we read over how things work, but it was not a bad experience at all.

Dinner closed with the party striking up a deal to clean out the ruins so long as some locals acted as guides and porters while they make their way through the ruins. We decided to end the session at the entrance of Sandover Ruins in hopes that we would have a full group again in the new year after holiday madness leaves.

As I said above, this was a nice counter to our first game of Dungeon World as it focused on a completely different side of the game. While the night could easily have become a wash out we were able to soldier on and have a good time and I think it is a testament to DW's good design that it doesn't require a full party of four to get things done. Speaking of design, the Halfling Fighter's player told me that he thought a Paladin was much more appropriate for the character he had in mind and that he was disappointed that it wasn't an option. I'm pleased to say that it is now (and so is my player). Thanks to Dungeon World being nice and open I was able to go onto Github, grab the Paladin Playbook and add some additional options to it. The whole process didn't take me longer than twenty minutes, but it does require a copy of Adobe InDesign. The good news is you can get a 30 day free trial to work your homebrewing magic if you don't have it at your disposal.

Our third session of Dungeon World is scheduled for next week and after a month without any role playing I'm  itching for a chance to roll some dice.

Categories: Deck of Fate, Dungeon World, Homebrew, Paladin, RPG, session report

The Deck of Fate: DW Session Report #1

Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After having been ravaged by lost players and conflicting schedules my regular group finally got together again last Wednesday. While we had been getting together regularly and playing all manner of board games and one shot RPGs it wasn't until last week that we were final in a position to start a persistent campaign again.

We picked Dungeon World as our engine to run this latest campaign and I must say that the first session went rather swimmingly, with the exception of a few minor hiccups which I will talk about a little bit later. For now let's talk about character creation.

This was our table's first time with Dungeon World and character creation went as smoothly as I have ever seen with an RPG. Each character class has its own character sheet and players go down the sheet checking off and circling the options they want. Had we not all been new to the game I think more of the players would have opted to write in unique bonds and descriptions to make their characters a little less by the playbook, but everyone seemed satisfied by what was available this time. I was initially worried that players would fight over the character classes and I only had so many sheets to go around, but that turned out to be a pointless anxiety as everyone settled into a persona without any fussing. Once the dust settled we ended up with a Fighter, Wizard, Bard and Cleric. There will also be a Ranger or Druid joining us later on in the campaign (played by my wife), but she was unable to stay through character creation due to some things that came up.

I wanted to start our very first game of DW off with a simple dungeon crawl. I find crawls are a great way to get a feel for new games and new players, which were both present for this session. I slapped together a quick adventure using one of Dyson's maps and a nasty little monster called a lantern goblin which I found on the Dungeon World blog. I did make a few minor changes to those lanter goblins, though. The first was to change them from having glowing eyes to flaming eyes and the second was to have that light/fire also light up torches and braziers found throughout the dungeon. I whipped up a new move to use with my fiery new friends called Revenge of the Lantern Goblin that was used once those torches lit up. It looked like this:

Revenge of the Lantern Goblin

1d4 damage, targets one except on 7-9.

10+ the torch launches a gout of flame at a nearby PC.

7-9 the torch launches a gout of that hits a monster and a PC.

            6- the torch launches a gout of flame and then sputters out.

All I needed to complete my dungeon was a reason for the player characters to visit there and thanks to some character bonds and cooperative players that was soon supplied. My players had decided that they their characters were mercenaries hired by the Wizard PC to help him collect a rare material component for use in a ritual. Who would have thought that rare material component was found in this dungeon I had prepared? What luck!

The party delved into the dungeon and soon discovered its unusual inhabitants. This is where one of the players threw me my first curveball: the Cleric managed a 10+ on Spout Lore on the goblins and decided to make them undead. I rolled with the punch and the party continued winding through the dungeon, fighting off goblins and extinguishing torches as fast as they were lit. This is actually where we bumped into our first hiccup. You see, one of my regular players has a somewhat... let's say offbeat sense of humour and he thought it would be funny to have his halfling fighter try and put out a torch with urine. One of the new players at the table was less than impressed by that turn of events, but we glossed past it and no harm was done. Clearly nothing that anyone can fault DW for, but a common problem when integrating new and old players.

When the party eventually reached the final section of the dungeon, an altar room with four braziers and an empty frame, I made my first mistake with the rules. The fighter ran into the room to attack the group of goblins guarding the altar and failed all of his Defy Danger attempts miserably. I hadn't realized that monster groups attack as a single unit and slew him outright. When I looked up the death rules to see what happened next I realized my mistake and had to do some retconning. That minor emergency out of the way, we played out the rest of the battle and the simple puzzle of the altar and the empty frame. The solution was, as you have probably guessed, to light all four braziers with goblin fire. This required some quick thinking from the party since Revenge of the Lantern Goblin made this a little more difficult than lighting torches would normally be.

The party's prize for solving the puzzle and slaying the goblins was a magical tarot card titled Trial by Fire, one of the cards that makes up the god of fate's personal tarot deck. Think of Fate's Deck as a deck of many things that was broken up and scattered because it was too powerful for mortal hands. I'm planning to build the campaign around the idea that these cards are resurfacing and all kinds of people want a piece of them, including the party's wizard and patron. I have had the idea to do a campaign like this bouncing around in my skull since this blog post got me thinking about the infamous deck in ways that I never had before.

Obtaining Trial by Fire marked the end of our first session and things should start moving along at a steady pace in the coming sessions now that we have our footing. I'm looking forward to wreaking chaos over the fantasy lands using the magic tarot cards and I don't think my players have a clue how seriously I'm planning on taking those impending doom sections on the Campaign Front once we get going.

Categories: actual play, Dungeon World, fantasy, session report

The Pale Forest (My 2012 RPG Geek 24 RPG)

The dust has settled and this year's 24 Hour RPG Competition at RPG Geek is now over. I threw my hat into the ring this time around with a game called The Pale Forest, but with 37 other great entries I didn't expect to win (and I didn't). That honour goes to the much more popular (and presumably handsome) RPG blogger Lowell Francis.

If you are unfamiliar with the special kind of "fun" that is the 24 hour RPG, let me explain it to you. A bunch of crazy game designers get together and decide that it would be a good idea to create a game with no prior work and no outside help in just 24 hours. There is no stopping the clock, once you start you have exactly 24 hours to finish the thing. It's a mad dash and a lot of fun provided you have a masochistic streak.

This was my first time entering a 24 hour RPG competition and I really didn't put as much of the 24 hours into it as I would have liked. I think my break down was 1-2 hours brainstorming, 3 hours designing and then throwing away my first idea, 3 hours on my second idea and 1 hour layout. Then probably another 1-2 hours of  hanging out in the official thread and otherwise procrastinating when I should have been working. All things said, I probably spent 10 of my 24 hours actually at my computer "working" on the game.

You can view/download The Pale Forest here.

My cover design skills aren't great, but this
one was terrible even by my standards.

Now that the contest is over I'm allowed to talk about my game a little. It's not actually against the rules to do so, but there's a kind of gentleman's agreement not to for fear of influencing voters. Here are some rapid-fire thoughts on The Pale Forest:

• I went with a kind of mad-libs style of character creation, mainly because I couldn't think of a way to marry character creation with game play. I'm not particularly happy with it.
• The big mechanical idea I wanted to play with was a built in time limit and a mechanical resources that run out. I accomplished this with a spindown die that represents health/gear/sanity and so on. It decreases with each scene and action and players gamble it to overcome obstacles. I think there is more that can be done with the idea, but I'd need more than 24 hours to truly make it work. I'm really interested in the feedback on this one.
• I was also interested in experimenting with gambling as a mechanic and I tried to tie that with the resources. I like the idea that players set their own risk/reward as it frees things for the GM and makes for an unpredictable game.
• When the aforementioned resource runs out something bad happens. I think the game is going to be rather CoC-esque in that there is rarely a happy ending.
• The game is very freeform with the only guidance being in random tables and a few paragraphs of exposition. With the mad-lib character creation someone should be able to get it up and playing in less than 10 minutes. I'm worried that there might not be enough guidance, but an experienced GM should be able to accomplish a lot with just the random tables and the way the gambling/resource mechanic works.

I don't think that I will be returning to this game to flesh it out and otherwise improve it. The reason? I don't really like it. I like the setting and I like the ideas that birthed the game, but I don't really like the result. I will continue to experiment with gambling mechanics with Rollplay Engine and I'm not convinced that a limited resource really works in an RPG without giving it more teeth and turning it into a competitive or very short game.

If you do end up reading or trying The Pale Forest please let me know how it goes. I am always curious about people's experiences and I haven't even had a chance to play the game myself.

Categories: 24 hour rpg, Age of Ravens, Game Design, RPG Geek, The Pale Forest

Grotesque

In case you haven't noticed, I'm rather enamoured with Technoir. I have rambled on about the game previously, so I won't bore you with another glowing review. Instead I'm going to tell you that I put together a transmission for the game and you can download it right now for free.

For those unfamiliar with Technoir and its transmissions, let's just say that they are a group of NPCs, Factions, Locations, Objects, Threats and Events that a GM links together to create an adventure. Transmissions are intended for use with Technoir, but aside from some NPC stats everything in the transmission could be used in another science fiction/cyberpunk game without issue.

As you may have surmised from the above image, the title of the transmission is Grotesque and it adds a mutant population and biotech industry to any cyberpunk city you want. I wrote the transmission so that you could plug it into any cities you have dreamed up or created using another transmission. It should work okay even if you don't have another city to plug it into, it just might be a little one dimensional.

Alright, that is all I am going to say about this. Take a gander at the transmission and maybe even give it a play. As always, I appreciate and welcome feedback.

You can download and view Grotesque here.

Categories: Adventure, cyberpunk, Technoir, transmission